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Show HN: Orange Juice – Small UX improvements that make HN easier to read

118 points - yesterday at 6:08 PM

Source
  • wackget

    today at 2:16 AM

    Lots of nice tweaks, but the most important is missing: the ability to move the collapse comment buttons (`[-]`) to the left of commenters' usernames. Doing this makes the collapse buttons all aligned with each other, making them far easier to click in succession. "Comments Owl for Hacker News" extension does this I believe.

      • oersted

        today at 8:15 AM

        The grey bar on the left that the extension adds also collapses the comments. They are aligned vertically and they have a bigger clickable area than [-].

    • altairprime

      yesterday at 7:22 PM

      Latchkey, would you be comfortable with HN adopting your dark mode styling as a user choice someday, if they came around to liking it? I really like it and I think it’s in the spirit of the site.

        • andrecarini

          yesterday at 11:49 PM

          For those that prefer userstyles, I made a dark theme a while ago https://github.com/andrecarini/hn-dark-mode/blob/main/hn-dar...

          Tom (the moderator) said he was looking into getting it appended to the HN's CSS. I haven't asked them about it since ages ago, wonder if they dropped the idea.

          • satvikpendem

            yesterday at 7:43 PM

            I'm pretty sure that will never happen, as it would've happened already by now. People can and do already use custom CSS or Dark Reader for dark mode.

              • dang

                yesterday at 8:38 PM

                Some things have taken us 15 years and then pow they happened

                  • keizo

                    today at 5:06 AM

                    dang, i pitched this on reddit like 20 years ago. I've always wanted to know what putting the new page on the front page would do to content quality. Something like this https://keizo.github.io/hackernews/

                    • Imustaskforhelp

                      yesterday at 9:10 PM

                      Dang your comment excites me to think that Hackernews can have dark mode in future.

                      Aside from all of this AI hype, This is the feature I am most excited about xD!

                      Dang, genuine question but when you moderate/view Hackernews yourself, I suppose that you must yourself be using dark mode too correct? or do you view hackernews in light-mode?

                        • dang

                          today at 4:40 AM

                          Although I did just confess* to enjoying accoutrements which for years have been selfishly withheld from others (bare-bones UI for thee but not for me), dark mode is not one of them.

                          * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47696183

                          • robin_reala

                            yesterday at 9:46 PM

                            Out of interest, why do you suppose that?

                              • today at 4:42 AM

                    • rcarmo

                      today at 6:57 AM

                      It does not work in embedded browsers inside RSS readers

                      • QQ00

                        yesterday at 10:26 PM

                        custom CSS is the way. I don't believe HN will ever adopt dark mode. But the site is so stripped down it's easy to write custom dark mode for it.

                      • latchkey

                        yesterday at 7:56 PM

                        Or you can just use my extension, heh.

                    • tomComb

                      yesterday at 7:39 PM

                      That would be great! Please do.

                      • latchkey

                        yesterday at 7:35 PM

                        Thanks! A lot of it is AI with my own input, but I think it did a great job.

                        The code is all open source and people can do with it what they want. It is GPLv3, but I'd special license it to them as MIT without question.

                          • altairprime

                            yesterday at 7:47 PM

                            Ah, oh well. Thanks!

                            • zvr

                              yesterday at 9:27 PM

                              Well, if it's AI-generated, it's not really copyrighted by you and you cannot license it under GPL, since you did not write it.

                              Nice work, nevertheless, and useful!

                                • spiderice

                                  today at 2:59 AM

                                  I mean, it's a color scheme. With like 5 colors. So good luck getting it copyrighted anyway.

                                  • latchkey

                                    yesterday at 9:31 PM

                                    It is AI assisted. I still wrote code and designed the core architecture of how it works.

                        • sgbeal

                          today at 8:15 AM

                          This is pretty darn cool. i've not yet seen any mention of one particular quirk so will point it out: on Firefox it flashes between "normal" and "upgraded" mode pretty starkly (A) when switching pages and (B) when tapping "add comment" (which is apparently done via page reload rather than the HN API). i've no clue whether an extension/app has any influence over the timing of that so cannot suggest how it might be resolved, but will say that it's particularly jarring.

                          • redlewel

                            yesterday at 11:28 PM

                            Not bad I do like the transparency on AI usage. So many projects omit this completely and its difficult not to assume someone just claude coded it in an evening to farm clicks. But this looks nice I'll probably check it out

                              • latchkey

                                yesterday at 11:52 PM

                                All day long, I read about people vibe coding, so I decided to open my mind and try it out myself and see if I could do some sort of mix between my own skills as a life long web developer and whatever the kids are doing these days. Mostly because I have a strong belief that AI itself won't take our jobs away, but people who know AI will.

                                What I found out is that I'm never going back to a world where I don't integrate AI into my entire coding workflow. All the way from writing documentation to committing code. It makes things way more enjoyable.

                                I truly enjoyed creating this whole project, it scratches my itch, and I hope that it continues to grow and be maintained over many years. I have another web project that's going on 7 years now and gets 88k downloads a month [0]. This is my passion, I'm here until I die, and even that project is now benefitting from AI.

                                [0] https://github.com/lookfirst/mui-rff

                                  • scratchyone

                                    today at 4:07 AM

                                    This is super nice, thank you for including an AI disclosure. I would probably normally avoid something like this bc I would be considered by how much code oversight there is. Very nice to know that it's overseen properly by a human. Installed it and it's quite nice!!! great work :)

                                    It would also be nice to be able to hide the checkbox it adds to the homepage. also disabling show focus box doesnt actually seem to work?

                            • cobbman

                              yesterday at 7:19 PM

                              I want hacker news UX to stay as it is, mostly, but these are features I'd welcome.

                                • dang

                                  yesterday at 8:38 PM

                                  What features would you welcome?

                                    • minouye

                                      yesterday at 10:39 PM

                                      It would be nice to flag who the OP is in the story comments. Provides helpful context, esp. if they posted their own project.

                                      Here's one potential implementation:

                                      https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hn-maker-badge/khod...

                                        • latchkey

                                          yesterday at 11:15 PM

                                          Implemented.

                                      • sgbeal

                                        today at 8:12 AM

                                        > What features would you welcome?

                                        1. Dark mode

                                        2. (Now that i'm seeing it in action for the first time) inline responding. That said: this increases the weight of the page considerably (in JS code), so delegating it to the various third-party apps is arguably the better approach for this specific platform. (But now that i've seen it in use here i'll have to add this to the Fossil SCM's forum at some point, as this is sooooo much more comfortable.)

                                        • niyazpk

                                          yesterday at 10:57 PM

                                          - Better formatting for text: (1) bullet points (2) markdown-like links (3) Slightly different background for code.

                                          - More "sub-reddits". We already have Ask/Show HN. We probably can add a couple more to keep everything organized.

                                          - Option to auto-collapse comments threads deeper than X levels by default. When they are all open by default like today, only the top comment and its children get more of the eyeballs.

                                          • prawn

                                            today at 4:28 AM

                                            I like how on Reddit you can click to the right of a comment header (username, timestamp, etc) to collapse that subthread. Gives you a much bigger hit target than just [-]. Also saves putting [-] over near the up/down arrows for consistency of positioning, a decision which could otherwise just create trouble on mobile.

                                              • insin

                                                today at 6:22 AM

                                                Ooh, I'm having that feature for the next version of Comments Owl for Hacker News (which already moves the [-] to the left and increases the size of it on mobile), but does that not lead to accidental collapsing while scrolling on mobile?

                                                I've already added using a confirm() for flagging and hiding in list pages on mobile to it because it's so easy to accidentally hit while scrolling.

                                            • riidom

                                              yesterday at 9:04 PM

                                              Also "unread comment highlighting" would be so good to have.

                                                • robin_reala

                                                  yesterday at 9:48 PM

                                                  That’s coming to stock HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47670008

                                                  • latchkey

                                                    yesterday at 9:17 PM

                                                    That was actually kind of a pain to implement. Refined didn't do it fully, mine covers a lot more edge cases.

                                                      • riidom

                                                        yesterday at 9:21 PM

                                                        Can imagine!

                                                • latchkey

                                                  yesterday at 8:44 PM

                                                  All the features I've added to this extension.

                                                  But if you want to pick one: Inline replies.

                                                  Right now, I have to do a ton of magic to make that happen in order to work around your auth flow. Namely, pulling the auth token out of the other page and then having to keep track of it in session storage.

                                                  I could delete a whole lot of code if that was just built in.

                                                    • dang

                                                      yesterday at 8:59 PM

                                                      By inline replies do you mean you click 'reply' and then a textbox opens in place?

                                                      The browser extension I wrote years ago, and which tomhow and I use for moderation, does this. I feel guilty about not having shared it a long time ago, but there just has never been time. Now that LLMs are starting to let me do things I've wanted to do for years, there's a chance I'll actually get to it before the sun dies.

                                                        • latchkey

                                                          yesterday at 9:03 PM

                                                          Yes. Here is the implementation I've got... note that I also added links to the rules/guidelines in an attempt to help with that issue too, heh.

                                                          And yes... AI enables so many things.

                                                          https://oj-hn.com/assets/inline-reply-light.png

                                              • latchkey

                                                yesterday at 7:26 PM

                                                Thanks. My feeling as well.

                                            • darepublic

                                              yesterday at 10:44 PM

                                              I would like to see users clustered by their political and programming axes of belief

                                                • tptacek

                                                  today at 3:27 AM

                                                  When someone who programs mostly in Rust responds to someone who programs mostly in Go I would like an animated bouncing icon that says "fight! fight! fight!" and when I press it it should leave a comment that instigates a fight, like "Serde is not really all that good".

                                                    • xpe

                                                      today at 3:39 AM

                                                      What is the correct pronunciation of serde? Fight amongst yourselves. /s

                                                  • ggm

                                                    yesterday at 11:27 PM

                                                    I would like to see this projected into a "lawful-neutral" meme template

                                                • mhitza

                                                  today at 12:06 AM

                                                  Pretty cool. This is the glitchy userscript I use on Firefox mobile[1] (with screenshot) to make tap targets bigger and move navigation at the bottom of the page + collapsed.

                                                  [1] https://gist.github.com/mhitza/0956d7e2c11d3102cbd4cba7f6d06...

                                                  • ipsum2

                                                    yesterday at 7:25 PM

                                                    It looks pretty good! I'm using it now and its a meaningful improvement to the existing site.

                                                    Out of curiosity, why did you make a new Github account for the extension instead of developing it on your own account?

                                                      • latchkey

                                                        yesterday at 7:28 PM

                                                        Thanks!

                                                        Because I see this becoming bigger than me and a separate organization made sense. There is a super thin backend component right now too. There is the potential to also add in some extra features that require a server/db. I'm kind of inspired by the atuin model of things.

                                                        I've got a LONG list of features I'd like to implement over time.

                                                    • notatoad

                                                      today at 12:11 AM

                                                      i like some of the things this does, but pretty much all of this is not UX improvements, it's UX opinions.

                                                      as a personal project to make HN better for you, i guess it's cool. but making every link open in a new tab so my back button never works is definitely not for me.

                                                    • greenpizza13

                                                      yesterday at 7:30 PM

                                                      I can't figure out how to toggle to Light Mode (maybe it uses the system setting?). HN is something I prefer to be in Light Mode but everything else in dark. Gonna remove until this is configurable.

                                                        • latchkey

                                                          yesterday at 7:37 PM

                                                          Defaults to system. The toggle is in the top right corner of the navbar next to your karma.

                                                      • satvikpendem

                                                        yesterday at 7:46 PM

                                                        "Tested, not vibe coded" yet you mention the AI has written all the tests. This extension may not be vibe coded but it's close to that, it seems. Regardless it seems to work well, I replaced the older Refined Hacker News extension with this, which seems like where you initially sourced the code from as the features are very similar, 1:1 even for some.

                                                        I also use this extension HNRelevant (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hnrelevant) which shows a list of similar posts, you might want to add that as an optional feature as well.

                                                        What's the tech stack, pure TS? You also might want to migrate from Biome to oxc, I did recently and it plays well with Vite+ (or just move to Vite+) directly.

                                                        Noticed a bug, once I edit my own comment and go back to the main post, I show up as [op] not you. Also I should be able to edit my post inline not be moved to a separate page.

                                                          • latchkey

                                                            yesterday at 7:55 PM

                                                            It is heavily coded with AI, but I'm also a 30+ year web developer. I'm not just one shotting all of the code, I'm reading it too. I'm feeling like it is giving me super powers.

                                                            See the thread below about refined, which hasn't received an update in 4 years.

                                                            I have HNRelevant on my list of features that I've been collecting.

                                                            I tried oxc and didn't like it as much as biome. They admittedly aren't as good at formatting yet. The real winner here is ultracite.

                                                              • satvikpendem

                                                                yesterday at 8:03 PM

                                                                Sounds good. Another bug or quirk, with Refined, I was able to reply and then tab once to the reply button and hit enter. Now with the "HN's approach to comments and site guidelines." text I can't do that, "comments" and "guidelines" are links so I have to tab three times to get to the reply button which is annoying. Omit that text or change the tab order (this is possible in HTML with the tabindex attribute, just make the reply button higher priority).

                                                                Also add ctrl/cmd-enter support to submit the reply.

                                                                Also this orange border when clicking a comment or link on the front page is a bit annoying, especially when it doesn't seem to actually do anything (it's not a tab select style, that shows up as the browser's normal style), and it seems to persist.

                                                                  • latchkey

                                                                    yesterday at 8:20 PM

                                                                    The orange box is to mark where you are currently focused. If you use the keyboard navigation (keys: j/k), it really helps.

                                                                      • satvikpendem

                                                                        yesterday at 8:52 PM

                                                                        It's distracting for those who don't use hjkl so might be good to have it as an option.

                                                                  • latchkey

                                                                    yesterday at 8:19 PM

                                                                    Great suggestion! I literally took your comment, passed it into AI. At first it tried to remove the text as well as set tabIndex to -1 in code, but I think now I've got something I like.

                                                                    This has been fixed and is making its way out now.

                                                            • etothet

                                                              yesterday at 10:15 PM

                                                              I noticed this as well and came here to comment about it. The term "vibe coding" is becoming quite overloaded.

                                                          • yesterday at 7:12 PM

                                                            • beatrice111

                                                              today at 6:16 AM

                                                              omg this is amazing, finally there is someone noticing that the ux of hn needs to be improved...

                                                              • maxloh

                                                                yesterday at 7:21 PM

                                                                I built a Stylus theme to make Hacker News' UI more modern.

                                                                Some screenshots:

                                                                https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mon-jai/modern-hacker-news...

                                                                https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mon-jai/modern-hacker-news...

                                                                https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mon-jai/modern-hacker-news...

                                                                Repo:

                                                                https://github.com/mon-jai/modern-hacker-news

                                                                  • latchkey

                                                                    yesterday at 7:25 PM

                                                                    This is exactly what I don't want my extension to become. I don't want a new UX, I want the existing UX to be enhanced.

                                                                • Imustaskforhelp

                                                                  yesterday at 6:31 PM

                                                                  I use refined Hacker news Extension.

                                                                  https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news#highlights

                                                                  It might be beneficial to tell me what the difference between these two can be? A lot of the features from my first glance (I can be totally wrong though) are within HN refined.

                                                                  I would really appreciate a short summary of differences. Personally I am really happy by HN refined though so kudos to @plibither8

                                                                    • latchkey

                                                                      yesterday at 7:24 PM

                                                                      Refined hasn't received an update in 4 years.

                                                                      https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news/issues/135...

                                                                      I used refined for years as well. Great product, but the underlying code was meh, and the author abandoned it. If you're using refined today, you're experiencing a lot of bugs as the HN DOM has changed over time.

                                                                      I maintained my own fork for a long time but finally motivated myself to try out AI assisted coding and this is what came out of it. It isn't a port, it is a clean rewrite from the ground up.

                                                                      I took every feature that I enjoyed from refined, re-implemented it from scratch, with a totally different architecture that allows much more control over the DOM and runs a whole lot faster.

                                                                      I had AI write hundreds of of unit tests, so that we can make sure that bugs don't appear in the future. I also fixed a whole ton of edge cases along the way.

                                                                      The entire deployment, all the way to the browser stores, is fully automated with CI/CD, so that we know that the supply chain is safe.

                                                                      In other words, you might as well migrate. If there is something missing that you enjoyed, file an issue, or even better... a PR.

                                                                • rcarmo

                                                                  today at 6:56 AM

                                                                  Dark mode!

                                                                  • nikolay

                                                                    today at 12:39 AM

                                                                    So many extensions and services, because YCombinator cannot have a part-time employee working on such an important community:

                                                                    * https://hncompanion.com/

                                                                    * http://oj-hn.com/

                                                                    * https://hnrelevant.imadij.com/

                                                                    * https://hnreplies.com/

                                                                      • tomhow

                                                                        today at 1:06 AM

                                                                        Dan and I are full time YC employees and other engineers at YC do plenty to keep HN running. HN’s software is continually developed to handle growth in traffic, along with abuse, spam, and (particularly recently) bots and generated content. The lack of new UI features is not due to lack of resources/investment but because it’s always been the HN way to maintain a minimalist design and for the content and discussions to be the primary feature.

                                                                          • paddim8

                                                                            today at 6:47 AM

                                                                            I think the minimalist design is good. But hasn't the font size decreased over time in practice? When HN was first created, the average monitor had a much lower resolution, which made text appear larger. Now I think it's quite difficult to read compared to other websites. Obviously it's easily solved by zooming, but I think it would make sense to adjust for the change in resolutions over the years

                                                                            • nikolay

                                                                              today at 1:12 AM

                                                                              "Minimalist" in 2026 is different than what it used to be in the '90s.

                                                                                • tomhow

                                                                                  today at 1:18 AM

                                                                                  Of course, and part of my reason for being brought onto the team full time is to explore ways we can develop HN for the future. That doesn't mean that every 3rd-party HN project represents a feature that should be added to the core HN UI.

                                                                                    • nikolay

                                                                                      today at 6:05 AM

                                                                                      I didn't know, and I thought only @dang was working on HN. You must agree that at least some basic features, like a dark theme and indicators for new comments, could be easily handcrafted or implemented with coding agents!

                                                                          • eviks

                                                                            today at 7:01 AM

                                                                            That's not the reason, it's mainly because the current awful interface is a distinguished mark of pride, so there is a noticeable resistance to changing that, so it's easier to not change

                                                                            • swed420

                                                                              today at 1:14 AM

                                                                              Also, my favorite:

                                                                              https://hckrnews.com

                                                                              • latchkey

                                                                                today at 1:04 AM

                                                                                Why hire when you can get it for free?

                                                                                  • nikolay

                                                                                    today at 1:10 AM

                                                                                    Because it's a mess. So many extensions are fighting each other because HN has long stagnated. There are so many AI startups with YCombinator that can rewrite it in a modern language and make it a POSITIVE example.

                                                                                      • latchkey

                                                                                        today at 1:23 AM

                                                                                        I really like some of the hncompanion features a lot. I'm happy that people are trying different approaches and I agree with tom's response to you above.

                                                                            • librasteve

                                                                              yesterday at 9:08 PM

                                                                              dang.

                                                                              just shedding feedbin & reeder (paid)

                                                                              it's 'hide read stories' for me & darkmode

                                                                                • latchkey

                                                                                  yesterday at 9:14 PM

                                                                                  Thanks! How about inline replies? That's my favorite.

                                                                              • gitgud

                                                                                yesterday at 9:35 PM

                                                                                Another feature idea for you:

                                                                                There’s an extension that I loved called “Proven” (now archived) which uses keybase.io proofs to show other proven accounts next to hn users

                                                                                https://github.com/dschep/proven

                                                                                Also about this:

                                                                                > Mermaid Diagram Rendering

                                                                                Honest question, how often are people posting raw mermaid diagrams in comments here?… I’ve never seen one

                                                                                  • latchkey

                                                                                    yesterday at 9:44 PM

                                                                                    Is there something else that replaces keybase proofs? I still see a ton of people, including yourself with keybase in their profile, but is anyone still seeing that used?

                                                                                    Nobody uses it because it wasn't supported. I had started off doing images, but their CSP policies prevent an extension from embedding images into the dom. SVG is still game on though. That said, I've seen a bunch of people try to create their own ascii art diagrams and wouldn't it be nice to have them just rendered as svg?

                                                                                • yesterday at 7:00 PM

                                                                                  • Isolated_Routes

                                                                                    yesterday at 7:18 PM

                                                                                    This is helpful! Thank you

                                                                                      • latchkey

                                                                                        yesterday at 7:29 PM

                                                                                        :heart:

                                                                                    • xydac

                                                                                      yesterday at 7:25 PM

                                                                                      its funny how us developers build varied UX, but nothing beats the simplicity of HN's default experience. quick and bloat free.

                                                                                        • hyperhello

                                                                                          yesterday at 11:52 PM

                                                                                          I would actually like a setting for less. I don’t like upvote downvote social dynamics. How about giving me a mode for a simple conversation by time, without the hierarchy.

                                                                                          • latchkey

                                                                                            yesterday at 7:29 PM

                                                                                            That's the beauty of this extension, it keeps things simple.

                                                                                        • odysseus

                                                                                          yesterday at 8:21 PM

                                                                                          How about a Safari/Mobile Safari extension so iPhone users can use it?

                                                                                            • latchkey

                                                                                              yesterday at 8:27 PM

                                                                                              Agreed. Unfortunately, the browser extension tool that I use, wxt [0], doesn't support Safari yet. It seems there are some work arounds, but I haven't gotten to it yet. PR's welcome, of course. =)

                                                                                              [0] https://wxt.dev/guide/essentials/publishing.html#safari

                                                                                                • odysseus

                                                                                                  yesterday at 9:03 PM

                                                                                                  Is it just:

                                                                                                  pnpm wxt build -b safari xcrun safari-web-extension-converter .output/safari-mv2

                                                                                                  And that’s it? Or is there some hidden extra work involved.

                                                                                                    • latchkey

                                                                                                      yesterday at 9:16 PM

                                                                                                      I don't know. If it is that simple, that would be great. I'll have to dive into it. Part of it is also to ensure that it gets added into the CI/CD workflow and fully automated.

                                                                                                      Just doing that for Chrome and Firefox took a huge amount of effort to get fully set up and approved. Thankfully, it is now at the point where every PR goes live automatically.

                                                                                          • wesz

                                                                                            yesterday at 7:46 PM

                                                                                            The improvements are nice, that's for sure. But i checked out github and it looks like overengineered ai slop, you could implement all the features with 1/10 of the code. But again, nobody cares nowadays which makes me sad. You even generated chrome/firefox logos using ai...

                                                                                              • fooster

                                                                                                yesterday at 11:23 PM

                                                                                                Why don't you do that? Instead of doing that you unfairly critisize the guy that gave away his time and effort on something which no-one is forcing you to use. Shame.

                                                                                                  • wesz

                                                                                                    yesterday at 11:33 PM

                                                                                                    Oh man, he must have gave away so much time prompting ai agent. Shame on me:)

                                                                                                      • latchkey

                                                                                                        yesterday at 11:37 PM

                                                                                                        I wrote code. But, the whole point of this project for me was to experiment with how far I could take AI as an assistant to help me with coding. So far, I've been extremely impressed.

                                                                                                • latchkey

                                                                                                  yesterday at 7:47 PM

                                                                                                  How is it over-engineered slop? Happy to improve things, but I thought it was pretty clean.

                                                                                                    • wesz

                                                                                                      yesterday at 8:16 PM

                                                                                                      You claim to have 30+ years of webdev experience and yet 2 MEGABYTES of javascript only for those features doesn't feel/look wrong to you?

                                                                                                        • dang

                                                                                                          yesterday at 8:39 PM

                                                                                                          Hey please don't cross into personal attack. You can make your substantive points without that.

                                                                                                          https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

                                                                                                          • latchkey

                                                                                                            yesterday at 8:24 PM

                                                                                                            You're not really answering the question.

                                                                                                            That's the bundle size, not the amount of code in the project.

                                                                                                            I've done nothing to try to optimize the bundle size, but I suspect that a lot of it has to do with some of the third party dependencies like mermaid.

                                                                                                              • wesz

                                                                                                                yesterday at 8:49 PM

                                                                                                                Well, i downloaded firefox extension and checked the size of only *.js files without any additional assests - and it's 2 megabytes. Mermaid is around 800kb, so it still leaves over 1 megabyte of javascript.

                                                                                                                The amount of abstraction alone for the project of this scope makes me cringe. You introduce unnecessary complexity.

                                                                                                                  • 59nadir

                                                                                                                    yesterday at 9:35 PM

                                                                                                                    In all fairness, 30+ years of web development is exactly what would convince you that shipping 1+ MB of JS is fine, no? I'm not really kidding... Web development is where all of the worst practices in programming thrive and come from. Some of them are spending minutes (sometimes 10+ minutes) compiling/"building" web pages before they "deploy" them, and so on.

                                                                                                                    30+ years in web development is what you say at the support group to explain why you're there, not to convince people you've developed good taste and reasonable sensibilities.

                                                                                                                    Edit: Zed Shaw didn't know it at the time, but "Rails is a ghetto" wasn't describing even a local minimum in web development, it was the start of an incredible valley we've yet to see the bottom of. A sea of unskilled morons unable and unwilling to learn even the basics of just about everything came in droves and never left. Now they have bullshit generators that'll generate the shit code they probably were going to ship anyway, except faster.

                                                                                                                      • wesz

                                                                                                                        yesterday at 11:15 PM

                                                                                                                        Yeah, i'm also webdev with a couple of decades under my belt and i cry from time to time seeing what happened to it in the past 10+ years.

                                                                                                                        Webdevs nowadays blindly follow "trends" that phase out every couple of years, without really bringing anything of the value to the ecosystem.

                                                                                                                          • latchkey

                                                                                                                            yesterday at 11:26 PM

                                                                                                                            I'm curious, what value have you brought to the ecosystem? What's your github? Is this it? https://github.com/wesz

                                                                                                                              • wesz

                                                                                                                                yesterday at 11:47 PM

                                                                                                                                Yes, it is. I'm not really active on github (other than some toys i want to share with friends), i didn't even update portfolio on my website in over 10 years.

                                                                                                                                I'm happy to share my projects and contributions privately, if you're interested.

                                                                                                                                  • latchkey

                                                                                                                                    today at 12:18 AM

                                                                                                                                    Please share. You've said some nasty things in this thread about me personally as well as my hard work. Stuff that even got reprimanded by dang.

                                                                                                                                    Now, you're talking about bringing value to the ecosystem, and I'm not sure how 10 year old github accounts, and private repositories fulfill that.

                                                                                                                                    Let's see what you've got that is so amazing.

                                                                                                                                      • wesz

                                                                                                                                        today at 1:29 AM

                                                                                                                                        I didn't say anything nasty, now you're just delusional. I had a feeling you were butthurt when you dug my profile:) Relax, calm down and then we can talk.

                                                                                                                        • latchkey

                                                                                                                          yesterday at 9:39 PM

                                                                                                                          [deleted] apparently not ai generated. still sounds weird.

                                                                                                                            • 59nadir

                                                                                                                              yesterday at 9:48 PM

                                                                                                                              I can assure that it's not. What makes you think I'd waste my time writing HackerNews comments using LLMs? Take a look at my post history and tell me honestly that you believe that to be the case.

                                                                                                                              No, I just used a phrasing that reminded you of LLMs and that's it. Funnily enough it also has no real bearing on my argument; your 30+ years of web development didn't stop you from shipping more than a MB of JS to add some basic features to HackerNews [because LLMs wrote everything for you].

                                                                                                                              "Every accusation is a confession" and all that...

                                                                                                                      • latchkey

                                                                                                                        yesterday at 8:56 PM

                                                                                                                        Thanks for the feedback!

                                                                                                    • Novosell

                                                                                                      yesterday at 7:23 PM

                                                                                                      Did you ai generate the Chrome and Firefox logo? That isn't what they look like, or have ever looked like, from what I know.

                                                                                                        • latchkey

                                                                                                          yesterday at 7:25 PM

                                                                                                          Yes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

                                                                                                            • DrBenCarson

                                                                                                              yesterday at 7:30 PM

                                                                                                              …why?

                                                                                                                • latchkey

                                                                                                                  yesterday at 7:34 PM

                                                                                                                  [flagged]

                                                                                                                    • semolino

                                                                                                                      yesterday at 7:40 PM

                                                                                                                      Taking shortcuts with design tends to result in users trusting your project less.

                                                                                                                      • 59nadir

                                                                                                                        yesterday at 7:38 PM

                                                                                                                        Why not just use the actual logos? It's not as if you *have* to generate them.

                                                                                                                        • dartharva

                                                                                                                          yesterday at 7:53 PM

                                                                                                                          You need AI to just replace the svg?

                                                                                                                            • satvikpendem

                                                                                                                              yesterday at 7:59 PM

                                                                                                                              These days, everyone is using AI for even small things, because honestly it's easier to say to an AI to use original SVGs and have it go out and find the correct ones with a web search tool call than to do it myself, it's simply a waste of my time for small tasks like that.

                                                                                                                              • latchkey

                                                                                                                                yesterday at 7:59 PM

                                                                                                                                Of course I don't, but if it helps me do trivial tasks so that I can focus on other things, I might as well use it.

                                                                                                                                  • Fraterkes

                                                                                                                                    yesterday at 8:23 PM

                                                                                                                                    I think it's fine if you find the design of the site a trivial thing that others shouldn't focus on, but it kinda begs the question why you didn't just have the ai generate a much simpler page. Why have the ai generate all this fluff when you just want to show of what you've made? You (rightfully!) care about not wasting your own time, why waste ours?

                                                                                                                                      • satvikpendem

                                                                                                                                        yesterday at 9:16 PM

                                                                                                                                        What simpler page would it be? It just shows off the features with screenshots, not sure what else could be made simpler.

                                                                                                                                        • latchkey

                                                                                                                                          yesterday at 8:40 PM

                                                                                                                                          Sorry for wasting your time.

                                                                                                              • Klonoar

                                                                                                                yesterday at 7:36 PM

                                                                                                                What on earth is that Firefox logo...?

                                                                                                                  • latchkey

                                                                                                                    yesterday at 7:51 PM

                                                                                                                    FIXED

                                                                                                                • mailcraftai

                                                                                                                  today at 1:35 AM

                                                                                                                  [dead]

                                                                                                                  • ramon156

                                                                                                                    yesterday at 7:41 PM

                                                                                                                    > Why Install Orange Juice?

                                                                                                                    > Because Hacker News is great, but repetitive UI friction adds up. Orange Juice keeps the original feel while removing the things that cost you time every day.

                                                                                                                    That does not convince me to use your app? This is like calling someone's Kia shit and instead telling them to buy a Tesla, but just stating that it's better.

                                                                                                                    I'll stick to HN, thanks.

                                                                                                                      • satvikpendem

                                                                                                                        yesterday at 7:57 PM

                                                                                                                        To me, that doesn't sound like your analogy at all. It'd be true if the extension for example redirected an HN thread to a reddit thread of the same posted URL, ie a replacement of the original, but the extension simply adds features to the existing site. There have been extensions like this available for years, like Refined HN which this is based off, as well as many third party HN clients. Therefore I think you should try it before judging so harshly.

                                                                                                                        • yesterday at 7:42 PM

                                                                                                                          • latchkey

                                                                                                                            yesterday at 7:46 PM

                                                                                                                            Sure. What language would convince you?

                                                                                                                            UPDATE: I've changed the copy, it is pushing right now.