Show HN: Keyboard-first Hacker News client with a twist

https://www.orangecrumbs.com/hn/

by oyster143 • 17 days ago

2 1 17 days ago

Hi HN,

I built this because I noticed that when I use Hacker News, I mostly read the comments, however large threads can be hard to skim, especially when useful information is buried several levels deep.

This is a proof-of-concept HN reader focused on comment-heavy threads. It has keyboard-first navigation on desktop, makes large discussions easier to scan, and shows at a glance whether the submitted link has appeared on HN before.

It should work on mobile, but desktop is the main target for now. The app is still young and rough around the edges, so I’d appreciate feedback on the reading flow, keyboard navigation, etc.

Leftium• 17 days ago

Here is a good recent comment-heavy thread to stress-test: https://www.orangecrumbs.com/hn/?story=48736605&feed=top

Some things I noticed:

- The comments are not in HN order; "vibecoded prediction market–style" is at the top in OrangeCrumbs, but near the bottom on actual HN; actual top comment ("I'm struggling to understand why I'd ever use this instead") is buried in the middle on OrangeCrumbs.

- Other comment sort options are interesting

- It is difficult to read a deep thread. Requires clicking once for each level. (I just found keyboard shortcuts that kind of help, like [)

- The left and right sidebars are kind of distracting. So I find the mobile view easier to read. I do think sidebar can be better use of wide screens; perhaps try muting the sidebars and/or allow them to be toggled? I find the right sidebar more useful than the left one.

- Keyboard navigation: conflicts with Vimium. The only "natural" keyboard shortcuts I could discover were arrow keys + SPACE. (`?` was also natural, but unfortunately Vimium had priority.) Personally, I prefer skimming HN threads with the mouse scroll wheel and a few occasional clicks. (It seems it would require a lot of keyboard shortcut keys for a similar reading experience)

---

Here's my take on rendering comment-heavy HN threads: https://hn.leftium.com/i/48736605

- Render comments at 3 levels of detail: Full (top level), one-line excerpt (2nd level), grouped into single color strip (everything else)

- Make threads expandable at three levels of detail:

1. Expand all direct replies only

2. Ungroup: expand collapsed comments as one-line excerpts

3. Expand entire comment sub-tree.

This is the way I found myself wanting to read long threads: skim the top level or two for threads I found interesting. Keep recursively skimming like this for the interesting comment sub-threads.

Some other features I plan to add:

1. Expand/highlight all comments by specific user(s). Currently OP is highlighted. (But not auto-expanded, yet.)

2. Filter for certain words in thread: typing a query automatically expands matching comments; parent comments may be expanded as one-line summaries for context.

So my reading process is scroll with the mouse wheel until I find an interesting comment thread; occasionally click to toggle those threads between collapsed and higher levels of detail.

Show HN: Keyboard-first Hacker News client with a twist

Related Stories