A better way to read HN on the iPad - Happy Thanksgiving From Onswipe

http://blog.onswipe.com/news/a-better-way-to-read-hacker-news-on-the-ipad-happy-thanksgiving-from-onswipe

by mgrouchy • 15 years ago

45 57 15 years ago

blog.onswipe.com

Direct link when on iPad: http://onswipe.com/hackernews

Let me pre-empty where I know there's going to be some dislike as a lot of the HN crowd just wants the normal non-swipeable web. Most of that frustration comes from a > year old version powering Wordpress.com (which we're upgrading). Would love to hear feedback on this specific version of our platform. Most articles in this version should render well, except those that aren't really news or blog content (ie- direct link to webpages).

kgermino• 15 years ago

Is there a way to see comments or is this articles only?

Thanks!

jasonlbaptiste6• 15 years ago

Just articles since this is focused more on reading, sorry :/. That kind of sucks though, since the big value of HN happens to be the discussion. In reality this is meant to be: you want to read all the awesome content making the HN front page without clutter and in one place for your iPad, go to this url.

wiredfool• 15 years ago

I'm one of those people who hates the wordpress one. I clicked on the link, and had the same "Oh crap, not this" reaction I have with the wordpress theme.

Specifics:

1) There were a couple flashes of differently styled content, one on the blog post, then one with a column of text and an image, and then the page.

2) It was slow as hell (several seconds per flash), and I wanted out by the time I saw the first flash of content. Which brings us to the

3) Back button. On an ipad 1, I can't mash the back button fast enough, so I get caught in a redirect hell and have to close out the tab and go back to hacker news some other way.

4) Going to the direct link crashes Safari.

I was going to take a video, but I've got kids screaming for breakfast.

tzs3• 15 years ago

You always say you are upgrading the version on Wordpress.com. When is that ACTUALLY going to happen?

lazugod• 15 years ago

The idea of pre-emptying a future discussion queue makes for an interesting pun, but the word is preempt.

jen_h• 15 years ago

It looks pretty, but I'm having trouble loading any article sans seppuku (3 out of 4 taps crash Safari when browsing onswipe/hackernews). If I can get an article to load without the kernel assassinating Safari for memory pigginess, attempting to swipe or move around the page will crash it, too. :( No other memory issues browsing other non-Onswipe web sites or using other apps; I'm on a 1st gen iPad running 5.0.1.

If you guys aren't stress-testing this on a 1st gen iPad with a goodly number of apps resident in the background, I'd really recommend adding this to your test matrix...

bwsd• 15 years ago

OnSwipe is a solution looking for a problem to solve and does not bring any additional functionality to a website using it.

There are lots of creative and attractive themes out there. Unfortunately, OnSwipe replaces that creativity with a renderer that makes every page look the same (i.e. boring).

One of the biggest advantages of the iPad is its full-featured web support on a mobile platform; OnSwipe wipes out this advantage. It removes built-in iPad features (e.g. scrolling, page zoom, etc.) making reading pages awkward and unnatural. And it introduces a cheesy, unnecessary bouncing effect.

For this and other reasons I find OnSwipe to be useless and a bane to my web browsing experience.

falling2• 15 years ago

Here's some feedback on this specific version: let me opt out of it globally, on every single website on the Internet. Thank you.

shinratdr7• 15 years ago

You've offered no specific replies to the multitude of problems in this thread so I figured I might just ask point blank:

Is crashing out after a couple swipes on a first generation iPad accepted and not a problem in your eyes? Because EVERYONE with a first gen iPad is having that exact problem, and you've chosen to completely ignore them.

Crashing is ALWAYS a bad experience, regardless of what preceded it. It's not subjective, or ambiguous, or possibly the users fault. It's 100% the fault of your memory intensive page, something that you refuse to take responsibility for or acknowledge is a problem.

From that, I can only assume this crap is geared towards iPad 2 owners only, giving me a bunch of extra reasons to hate it. Not only are you going to code a convoluted solution to something that isn't a problem for 2% of the web, you're also going to cut that in half to 1% by ignoring original iPads.

So frustrating.

sgdesign2• 15 years ago

I have to say that I'm a little bit baffled by things like this or recent updates to Flipboard that introduce "features" that I can't imagine anybody asking for.

Why show articles in a grid instead of a list? A list makes the hierarchy clear, and is easy to parse.

Why have articles text on multiple columns instead of one? Multiple columns are a left-over from print newspaper who had to use them for practical reasons. I personally find them less readable than a single column (except maybe for very short articles).

Why prevent me from zooming in or out to adjust the font size? This is actually one of the coolest thing about browsing the web on the iPad, and you break it.

I think it's a shame, because I really like some of the other features, like the preloading of the content, and stripping away the ads and distractions.

jasonlbaptiste6• 15 years ago

Hey, so this was just one of many layouts and it seemed to be the "cleanest". There's a straight up list layout that we have that would have worked as well, which I almost went with.

We've thought about font resizing, but do you think that's needed when everything is "in focus". ie- no need to zoom in away from ads or to see the rest of the article.

jacquesgt3• 15 years ago

Yes, it's needed. People with less than perfect vision appreciate being able to zoom in on small text to make it more readable.

A few other things that are needed (and work in the non-Onswipe version of pages):

1. Rotating the iPad to landscapes houldn't trigger a choppy relayout that takes five seconds. It should show the exact same content as in portrait mode, zoomed to fill the width of the screen. Users can then decide whether to zoom out and show more content, or stay zoomed in to take advantage of the increased horizontal resolution.

2. The back button should work. Pro tip: If I tap the back button 20 times, and nothing happens until the 20th time, the back button is broken.

michaelschade• 15 years ago

Zoom is absolutely needed.

I'm glad that OnSwipe is experimenting with different ways to view articles on the iPad, but when I find anything that disables pinch to zoom–one of my favorite features on the iPad–I get frustrated and leave.

shawnc2• 15 years ago

I like thin reading columns myself - as I understood there were not created for practical reasons, but to make things easier to read. And I think they do just that - it's far easy to skip to the next line and know which line you're on when the reading column is thinner.

sgdesign2• 15 years ago

The width of the column and the number of columns are two completely independent things.

You can have a single, thin (the ideal size is about 10-12 words) column sitting in the center of the page. You don't need to stick another column next to it just to fill the space (which, unlike a print newspaper, we have plenty of).

dogas• 15 years ago

It took me > 60 seconds to figure out how to turn the page. My feedback is this: I hate it. When I'm using my ipad, every blog that has onswipe enabled leaves me frustrated. The UX feels slow, choppy, and unnecessary.

I don't understand what problem is trying to be solved. Browsing web pages on the ipad is a pleasant experience. I can scroll with my finger. With onswipe, I can no longer scroll with my finger. Why was that a problem? that's not a problem. It doesn't need solving. Please tell us explicitly the value you are trying to add, because I cannot see it.

ChrisLTD• 15 years ago

"The UX feels slow, choppy, and unnecessary."

While I am glad people are experimenting with new UI metaphors and reading experiences, every product I've seen from Onswipe has been, as you say, slow and choppy. And not just a little slow or a little choppy, I'm talking unusably so, often to the point where it crashes my browser.

I get the impression they aren't testing this stuff at all on the first generation iPad.

drewvolpe• 15 years ago

Yeh, this. If you want to give me a gift, add a feature to allow me to turn off OnSwipe across every site so they just render normally.

gojomo• 15 years ago

Protip: Often on sites using OnSwipe (or similarly intrusive mobile views that don't really help), it's hard to find the option to turn it off, or the option when chosen doesn't persist.

So, I usually switch to browsing such sites inside the excellent iCab Mobile browser, with its User-Agent changed to indicate desktop Safari. Usually works – though there is a report in sibling thread that OnSwipe, in its quest to infuriate, sometimes uses some other iPad-detection mechanism.

js2• 15 years ago

Takes over 20 seconds to load, then crashes safari on a first gen iPad. I loathe on swipe. It is not the way I want to experience the web.

fara• 15 years ago

Why would you forbid other clients than iPad to browse into your site? I think you should warn the user that it may not be optimized but let the user in. It's irritating, the web should be open.

jasonlbaptiste6• 15 years ago

The tech is made specifically for touch enabled devices right now. Other tablets don't have market share, so we're focusing on the sector of the market that's 97% of readers. Once we nail that, we'll spend time on another tablet browser when it gains market share.

kittxkat• 15 years ago

Yeah, that seems perfectly reasonable for me. But once again, you could just state that it may break and is not made for your browser, but there is no reason to not show the content, and more drastically, even forbid entrance.

alexwolfe• 15 years ago

Visually it looks very interesting (similar to flipboard) however it sounds like from the ultra negative comments that the experience may not be ideal. Changing it to a scrolling version of the same layout opposed to swiping could probably alleviate a lot of the pain felt here.

I'm interested in what technology you used to scrape the articles from Hacker News? There is no official api so it would be interesting to hear the process you used, Thanks!

lt• 15 years ago

http://www.hnsearch.com/api

schrototo• 15 years ago

Have you guys not noticed that every time someone posts a link to an onswiped article, half the comments are about how shitty onswipe is?

jasonlbaptiste6• 15 years ago

You either love it or hate it. The tech crowd seems to be more towards a hate level due to certain expectations. Overall, >95% of readers using an Onswipe experience opt to keep it the default.

jacquesgt3• 15 years ago

No, 5% are opting to remove it. You have no idea how many are leaving in frustration, and how many don't know how to turn this thing off. I can assure you 95% of people aren't "opting" to keep it.

shinratdr7• 15 years ago

> certain expectations

Right, over the top expectations like caring more about the content of the site then choppy, unsatisfying animations. No wonder all these crappy iPad sites have been popping up if this is the attitude devs take. As an iPad owner, I hate them. Your desktop site rendered better and faster on an iPad then your iPad optimized version ever did.

tzs3• 15 years ago

I've not encountered a single blog owner at Wordpress.com who opted to keep it once they found out it had been forced on them and checked out the user experience it provides.

As far as certain expectations, I admit to that: I expect to read small blogs without my browser crashing and without jerky scrolling. If you think those expectations are only of the tech crowd, you are delusional.

If 95% of the readers on Wordpress.com opt to keep it that is most likely due to the fact that you don't provide an opt out. All you provide is the ability to temporarily turn it off for that one session, and that is at the bottom of the page, so if you can reach that without a crashing there is not much point to turn it off. Also, if you are in landscape mode the opt out is often not clickable because your software scrolls back to move it off the page, and clicks are not recognizes during that auto scrolling. Put an to out at the top, with an option to permanently opt out, and let's see if that claimed 95% holds up.

Months ago, you said several times that you would be fixing these problems with the Wordpress.com version of OnSwipe. We are still waiting.

falling2• 15 years ago

Except there is NO way for readers to opt out. Please, you promised this five months ago: give us a global cookie to opt out of it everywhere.

Failing that, the minimum barely acceptable option would be to remember when I turn it off on each website.

rythie• 15 years ago

The main problem with most sites on the iPad and even more so on the iPhone/other phones is that with font is too small and the text doesn't use the full browser width. (Zooming means you have to constantly swipe left and right). [FYI I have perfect eyesight AFAIK]

I don't want a new UI, just people to fix their sites for the above.

nickpp• 15 years ago

onswipe - the iPad's Flash

steipete• 15 years ago

Onswipe is horrible. Either use native scrolling or web-scrolling. Don't fake it. It doesn't work, fails in the most crappy ways. Just stop.

jimfl• 15 years ago

I have found Flipboard + the @newsyc20 Twitter feed to be an ideal way to read Hacker News.

JofArnold2• 15 years ago

I've sent so many complaints to onswipe-powered sites I've lost count. The iPad lets me view HN perfectly well - not only can it render large sections of text just fine but it can zoom and pan intuitively enough for even my mum to feel at home. And if I really tire of the cruft there's always the built-in Reader function.

Tl;dr Dislike.

shinratdr7• 15 years ago

On top of all that, it's FAST. There is nothing futuristic or complimentary about waiting a full five seconds for an action or animation to complete.

shinratdr7• 15 years ago

You know, just because I own a first generation iPad doesn't make me not worth supporting. I hate this attitude that devs are taking. Oh, I'm serving content to an iPad, well then let me grind the hell out of that CPU/GPU with this overly intensive site.

I like HN on an iPad as it is. It DOESN'T serve me some choppy, overly animated version of the site. HN loads on an iPad 1 in a split second. I have the Safari Reader feature if I don't like the article layout. I'll never use this. Furthermore, it's projects like this that give web apps a bad name in general.

tzs3• 15 years ago

I sent feedback to Apple, noting how some sights use user agents to recognize iPads and give a degraded experience, even though one of the points of iPad is that it provides the real web, and asking for some kind of user agent setting option so we could tell those sites we are on a desktop.

DenisM• 15 years ago

I'm sure there is a custom web browser in the app store, which is a webkit but with a variable user agent.

JofArnold2• 15 years ago

I haven't had chance to double check this, but my experience has been they find ways around user agent. Eg spoofing desktop Safari in iCab didn't help. YMMV.

iantimothy• 15 years ago

From my experience landing on sites that have Onswipe turned on, a fair number of these sites don't have content that look good with the Onswipe theme. The reason seems that when the owner of the site is preparing the content, they use the normal theme to see how everything looks, and it probably looks good. They can't ensure that everything looks nice with Onswipe on because most people are probably preparing content on a non touch screen browser and aren't taking the time to use an iPad to verify the content they just posted looks nice with Onswipe.

Is there a way for content owners to know how things will look on an iPad without one?

dyc• 15 years ago

There are times when you believe in your product and know what's best for the customer. This shouldn't be one of those times. Don't ship junk.

keeptrying• 15 years ago

If you look at my previous comments, you'll see that in all my years at HN have never written a negative rant on a product. Till today.

Onswipe is so bad. It makes me want to throw my iPad against the wall. Even the "Show original article " link takes 30 taps to work. Arrrgh. Slowest, nastiest, crashing thing I have to encounter. It hurts that magazines like slate use it because it means I can't read the article.

One interesting thing is that swipe will increase pageviews but lowers the experience because people like me will repeatedly load the page after it crashes and hit the "view original version".

Just writing this post has got me in hives. Please just destroy this software, it would make the world a better place.

metafour• 15 years ago

On my iPad 1 when I rotate to change the display orientation it crashes Safari. Even going landscape to landscape crashes Safari.

alexweber• 15 years ago

http://ihackernews.com is a bit nicer

Frozzare• 15 years ago

I think the Hacker News HD application is great.

A better way to read HN on the iPad - Happy Thanksgiving From Onswipe

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