Show HN: Dead simple Hacker News reader for iOS
brushedtype.coShameless plug XD
My app MiniHack dose all.
Nested comments, collapsible comment thread, login to upvote, reply to comment, one tap to open story or comments. Share to Pocket, Instapaper, Pinboard, Evernote, etc. Search hacker news, view the best of pages, ask, new, jobs. Instapaper and Readability mobilizer support, and more.
And I am working on the new iOS 7 update right now, including UI redesign, a new slick dark theme, better sharing (pinboard tags, evernote auto complete), and more.
https://itunes.apple.com/hk/app/minihack-for-hacker-news/id6...
I love MiniHack. I tried at least half a dozen HN apps before finding it. It's by far my favorite. The collapsible threads feature can come in really handy when faced with a really long thread of comments that you're not interested in.
This was one of my favorites. Try out my comments system as well--I collapse everything by default, because I found it's easier to tap to expand than it is to scroll forever. It seems odd, but it works really well for me. appsto.re/i6xC4GD
I still have iOS 5.1 Will it work on my phone? For some reason I can't check before buying....
Does not seem to be the case:
"Compatibility: Requires iOS 6.0 or later."
aaah too bad. Thanks!
I'm still trying to figure out which Hacker News reader is a labor-of-love for the developer, as opposed to a coding exercise to see if they can make a few bucks which is abandoned quickly when the answer is "no".
Mine's definitely a labor of love - I use it daily, and hardly ever use the browser version unless I want to comment on something. I'm working on adding commenting/submitting/voting at the moment, and should have that done shortly. Personally, I think it's the most beautiful HN reader on the App Store, but I may be biased. It's free too.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/news-yc/id592893508?mt=8
EDIT: All of the production code is available on Github as well.
Thank you for your client. I also use it every day and have even contributed to it. I also never use the browser version on my phone anymore.
Thanks for your contribution, I'm glad you love it! I can't wait to get user management type stuff on there so I never have to open the browser version again.
Thank you so much for your reader AND especially for open sourcing your code (which I just found out from your comment). I use yours everyday and have occasionally found issues. Now with the code available, expect some pull requests :)
Cool that's awesome. Instapaper and/or Evernote support would be so great :)
Mine is free, and freshly rebuilt for iOS using Text Kit and background refresh. It's free and no in-apps: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pivit/id705715915
I like this one. I had never heard of you so I built Simple Hacker News (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/simple-hacker-news-simple/id...) last year.
The big feature I want is I want a way to see what I've already read. I think this is the first app (other than mine) that I know does this.
Haven't played around long but I like you can collapse and expand comments. Is there a way to default them all to be expanded?
EDIT: You need a way to refresh comments.
@Replies: I'm glad you guys like it. Looks like I'll renew my Developer Program membership then. It's due in less than a week.
This is pretty good. I wish there was a way to go directly to the comments on a post, but I don't know what UI would work for that.
A few other thoughts:
* Profile > Edit needs a cancel button. The only way to get out is to re-enter your username. Or maybe just make it go back to the old value if you enter blank.
* Long usernames tend to make the description line run off the screen and end with "...", which is a bit messy. Maybe a smarter truncation algorithm?
* Swiping left to right on a story seems to work inconsistently, but I'm not sure why.
* The comment view is just about perfect.
Yours is my favorite, btw. I added an interesting feature to go beyond seeing what you've read--it indicates what you've already decided NOT to read.
I often find I choose to ignore certain posts but they often stick around so I reread the headlines. Pivit shows an orange indicator on brand new posts.
Re comments, I could add a feature to expand all if I get enough requests, but after some use I've found this to be optimal.
I use the one written by you. Nothing to add to the conversation, just wanted to say that I like using it. Thanks.
Nice
I can't really figure out the functionality of this, so I'm not going to buy it to try it out. If you can't comment on it, then it's worth checking out http://hn.premii.com/ . It's a web, based app, but if you save it to your home screen it removes the Safari chrome and looks and works as a standalone app. You can look at its source here: https://github.com/premii/hn
If you can comment on this, it should be interesting. I really wish you showed more of the functionality of the app though.
Heyo, developer of the app here.
http://hn.premii.com is absolutely mind blowing — it's lightweight, web based and super fast.
The functionality of Hack Later is its speed and deep read later (currently Pocket only) integration. Comments are in the works, too! Also, I'm probably biased but I think it's pretty good looking :)
It does look nicer than most. For better or worse, though, I find the discussions to be more informative than most articles ;)
Thank you! I see. I agree with you. Definitely thinking about adding them ;)
Just got approval notice. hn.premii.com is available in app store. Going to submit new binary with share functionality tonight. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hacker-news-yc/id713733435?l...
Bug report for you, on the "Save to home page" version at least (I haven't tried the App Store version):
When you click a link from one of the app's inbuilt views to the story page or the Hacker News comment thread, you don't have a "back" button, and I can't find any way other than force-quit-and-restart to get out of it.
(It'd also be nice if, at least on iPhone, the app could produce the same effect as <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" /> when viewing external pages; as it is now, such viewing involves lots of tiny text and scrolling, without the Safari reader interface available to mitigate.)
Nice app; I look forward to using it, once the navigation's fixed.
Oh awesome! Are you just wrapping the mobile site and utilizing iOS APIs or are you doing anything more? with this version?
Wrapping the mobile site and using share/browser iOS API
Nice! Can you change the name as it appears on the home screen too? It's currently "hackerNews4"
I will. Thanks.
For a paid app, the lack of basic core features (i.e. to simply view comments) indicates a lot of work needs to be done. The existing free readers out there are a bit more capable.
I ended up buying it since I'm still looking for a good HN reader out there that does all of: indenting comment threads, gives you the choice of browsing directly to the story without going through comments, and displaying key story information beside the story, such as the number of votes.
Hey there, I'm the developer of the app.
Firstly, thanks for buying the app! I wasn't personally expecting this much response, it was meant to be a read-only app, but I personally ended up missing comments as well. I understand your concern. I've good news though : we started the work on implementing comments :)
I just bought it, because I like where you are going with the design.
However, I would echo the need for comment support.
Check out how http://hn.premii.com/ does comments, I find that quite readable compared to news:yc.
The ability to log in and reply to comments would round out the use case that I used to use other apps for.
You can try my app here http://hn.premii.com/
Or app store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hacker-news-yc/id713733435?l...
I just love http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/ on the iPhone.
Public service announcement - now updated for iOS 7! I stopped using it when I upgraded (moved to hn.premii.com) as it felt... "jarring".
Edit: sorry, I was wrong; the new look I saw is actually the web browser look (tested on Chrome/desktop), and it still looks the same on iOS.
Looks nice from what I can see but £1.49 is too much to buy just to try it out (at least for me).
The major pain point with the current viewer I use is difficult-to-read comment threads. I can't see any screenshots of comment threads in your app. Are they collapsible? Is the hierarchy clear?
Can you post comments yourself in-app? I remember seeing another app at the same price point that did that.
Good luck anyway!
Hey there, developer of the app here.
The app doesn't support comments for now, but we're working on implementing it. I wasn't personally expecting this much response, it was meant to be a read-only, simple app but I ended up missing comments in my own personal usage too. Don't worry, they're in the works! :)
Sorry for the confusion! If you don't want to wait, news:yc (http://newsyc.me/) is an awesome app that does comments already!
Hey Hacker News, developer of the app here.
Thanks for the awesome response! The most requested feature is comments by far, totally understand it. Comments are a planned feature, and we intend to implement them as soon as we can. For now though the app is focused deeply on saving posts and links, so Hack Later still might be worth checking out, if you haven't already.
Also, promo codes are fun.
W4LEYM7ENYLN AL43JW7JWJXY 6NM77R6X3KLF KTXTY46XRM7R 4Y63MWJMAMNT
Enjoy!
The last one was used and I've taken the second to last. Thanks!
You wouldn't have got me otherwise - I'll be honest, my thought pattern lies in the _davidsmith camp, and when I saw your app was £1.49 (more than £0), I moved my attention on.
Thanks! Pocket integration is definite enough for me to convert. I will wait for the update on comment feature.
Thanks! We love Pocket :)
it does not display comments. I bought it because i enjoyed the look, but looks like until they get comments, i doubt many will install.
Yeah I'm in the market for a new Hacker News reader because the one I was using before has broken since I installed IOS7 and no longer shows the full text of comments.
But this app doesn't show any comments yet so its still got some ways to go.
It does have pocket integration though. So in summary, a beautiful UI to read HN articles with pocket integration for read later, but no access to comments
This was the exact aim of the app when we started making it. But with all the requests about comments, we're definitely thinking it ;)
This app looks great, I've tried / bought just about every HN client looking to replace the one I was using for iOS 6 that hasn't updated, but they all look or function terribly. This one looks amazing, all it needs is comments. I've bought it and will happily use it while I wait for those features. Thanks for the work!
A shameless plug, but my app is brand new, free, and shows comments legibly. But the #1 feature: background refresh.
It uses new APIs in iOS 7 to preload the front page before you open it.
Hey, developer of the app here.
I tried out your app, looks awesome — congrats! Background refresh and comments are planned for Hack Later. Feature request for Pivit : I'd love if the web view had some controls (back, forward, refresh etc.) and the comments had some contrast, it's really hard to focus to a thread.
And yes, this is a shameless plug.
The app will not preload every time new items come in. This is a common misconception about iOS 7. iOS 7 schedules these apps to run very infrequently to save battery. Some times it will take many hours to do a background refresh.
I've got a few apps built using this API, so I can chime in. It is definitely based on usage patterns--the more you use a particular app, the more often it will refresh. It's also certainly based on battery life at the time, but also the requirements of the app.
With Pivit, since it's such a compact fetch, it'll happen more frequently than if you were, for instance, downloading photos. I check HN a lot, so for me, the app is always up to date. It does take a bit of learning time for the OS to know your patterns, but it is well worth it--it's really a great new API.
Oh wow. It's cool that the OS is actually smart to optimise it that way.
Or it may not even refresh at all. From the docs, it seems like it's a pretty intelligent API that optimises itself with usage.
It seems to be smartly batched with other network fetches. I did some tests using a local notification to let me know when it occurred, and it happened most often when sending an app into the background or finishing up another network task.
This is nice, but I wish the main post listing was a bit denser. It ends up with a lot of white space since it seems to be using fixed height cells which are sized for longer titles.
£1.49 for a very basic HN reader is a bit premature. I like that it is iOS7 designed though.
A couple of suggestions:
- Comments - Instapaper or similar
Hey, I noted your suggestions down. Thanks!
Comments are definitely something planned.
I just downloaded it, I really like the look and feel. Please add a search feature as well and you have the perfect HN reader ;-)
Woo, thanks for the nice words! Search as in filtering the hot feed or site wide?
Just like hnsearch.com
Instapaper would definitely be good
Shameless plug:
Hacker News for Windows Phone: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/hacker-news/a527...
I like it, unfortunately it's a little buggy scrolling up and down the feed. It's a shame it cost me a couple bucks to find that out but whatever I can do to support improvements!
Looks great!!
Thanks! I'm the designer of the app. We'd love to hear any feedback you have, and we're taking everything people say on board for future releases. desk@brushedtype.co for any feedback or support!
Since HN doesn't have a native API, it's real difficult to work on applications like this. Comments always seem to cause issues for apps, how do you handle them?
My app, https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/news-yc/id592893508?mt=8, does comments pretty darn well. Let me know what you think!
The app doesn't currently do comments. But you're right — scraping comments will be non-trivial for me. The current setup involves a simple scraper - caching layer, abstracted from the iOS app.
Now is the perfect time to launch this, because the other HN reader is having trouble displaying comments. But you need to show us how comments are handled in your app.
I'm using HackerNode for the iPhone, seems to be working.
Though I dislike the comment tiering (non-indentation / hard to track).
Any suggestions for iPhone?
On Android, Hacker News 2 has been wonkey with loading comments, but I love the comment layout.
Built by Matt Bishop: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=airlocksoftware
Comments aren't handled in this app. Try appsto.re/i6xC4GD -- best threading out there.
Hm, that's a nice-looking app, but news:yc's interface seems superior to me.
Which one?
news:yc
This app is terrible.
Load it up, blank screen.
Pull to refresh, says 'Error Loading'.
Try again, and then just crashes.
Have some respect for your customers and test properly before you release. What a waste of 1.99
Very cool idea Mert! I purchased without hesitating. Would you consider adding Instapaper integration for save list? -alp
Thanks for buying the app! We've got Instapaper support planned and hopefully coming soon!
Awesome. would really love to see instapaper
Looks really nice. Please open source it and let the community improve it! I would love to add simple comments :)
Hey, thanks! That's @edwellbrook rocking the design. We had a conversation about open sourcing it but we ended up choosing not to, dealing with bad, bad guys just cloning the repo & submitting to App Store looks hard. :(
Comments are planned though!
I want an app that will save posts/links. And let me comment.
Do any of them do that?
Currently the app doesn't support comments, although we have this planned and intend to implement them very soon. For now though the app is focused deeply on saving posts and links, so Hack Later still might be worth checking out, if you haven't already.
Comment are essential, would buy with comments.
Hey there, we're planning on adding comments in the near future.
Someone make exactly the same, for android.
Check out https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn , it's a fairly clean version for Android.
mertdumenci: what's the typeface, and were you influenced in choosing it by anything (Vesper?)
Hey, I'm the designer of Hack Later. The font we went with is Avenir, a font natively available on iOS. Other apps we intend to release under the BrushedType name will also use this font. We're both quite fond of it, and it's nice to stray from Helvetica once in a while.
Avenir is nice. I need to look more into how to use fonts other than Helvetica with Text Kit automatic font resizing. For Pivit that was one of the must-have features--the ability for those who like larger/smaller fonts to be able to change them system-wide. I just recently learned that this is also available with custom fonts.
Can you view comments with this app?
Not for now, sorry :( We're working on it, though!