Show HN: HackerNews as default tab (chrome extension)

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hackernews-default-tab/gofiefpdbkknjlkdhmlgnhloepilkmmp

by andreasklinger • 12 years ago

54 37 12 years ago

chrome.google.com

hey guys

"It's like Hackernews but for tabs"

As a friday afternoon hack i build a little extension that shows the latest of HN in your default tab of chrome. Hope you like it - it's a genius way to start procrastinating ;)

Let me know what you think!

Also if you are applying to the SummerBatch - all the best :)

tokenizerrr• 12 years ago

The permissions are too much.

mstroeck• 12 years ago

Love it! Much better than the default, especially in Chrome.

jkbr• 12 years ago

Nice hack, I really see the pro-procrastination potential ;)

I find even the default tab too distracting and so one of my favourite extensions is Empty New Tab Page:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/empty-new-tab-page...

Theodores• 12 years ago

Thanks for the tip!

A couple of months ago I looked for something similar as I really didn't like my most visited pages popping up on a new tab - non work things mixed in :-) I arrived at something showing those pointless 'apps for chrome' in big icons but completely blank is way better!

skagarroum• 12 years ago

Awesome! Installed.

dewey• 12 years ago

This just replaced Speed Dial 2 [0] for me. I realised I hardly use the shortcuts anyway. Thanks for sharing!

[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/speed-dial-2/jpfpe...

victormx• 12 years ago

Thank's to help procastination, loved the extension

frankwiles• 12 years ago

What a horrible idea for productivity! hahaha

yebyen• 12 years ago

I don't know, just think of how much time I'll save by not actually having to "go" to HackerNews explicitly in order to avoid whatever else I'm working on :)

HN: You're already there, now get back to work

A new spin on noprocrast!

nashashmi• 12 years ago

We rarely get work done as it is. I think the world will be a bit more productive without it.

darkstar999• 12 years ago

We? Speak for yourself.

stronglikedan• 12 years ago

Could it be made to dynamically load more stories as I scroll? You know, to completely kill my productivity. It's just suffering now with this extension, and I'd like to finish it off.

wcdolphin• 12 years ago

Sounds cool, but I simply cannot agree to the privacy implication: Access your data on all websites

Chrome's stupid privacy model for extensions ruins this otherwise cool project for me.

27182818284• 12 years ago

I don't think I've installed any Chrome extensions other than the one for LastPass because of the "access your data on all websites" and even LastPass' made me pretty nervous.

erichurkman• 12 years ago

I actually got rid of LastPass because of how poor the Chrome extension is. Between spamming the error console with errors, to injecting terrible HTML/CSS to pages for their little field 'star' icon, to terrible/broken notifications for innocuous things. (The yellow toolbar icon turning red could mean any number of things, from 'duplicate passwords detected' to 'please log into lastpass'.)

ry0ohki• 12 years ago

Yeah I swore off extensions after a simple "browser resize" extension started inserting affiliate links into Google searches.

rrhoover• 12 years ago

Love this Andreas! For those unaware, Andreas built a similar extension for Product Hunt: http://www.producthunt.co/posts/product-hunter

oneeyedpigeon• 12 years ago

I know this is just a joke, and I'm probably going to get shouted down for being too serious, but if Chrome really lacks a way of setting your default tab, surely an extension that lets you choose any URL, including the wonderful HN, would be preferable...

andreasklinger3• 12 years ago

nice idea

this is one of those ideas where you kinda just assume it already exists

55873445216111• 12 years ago

It does https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-tab-redirect/i...

lawl2• 12 years ago

I really liked the idea. So I wanted to make a generic website out of it you could just set as default URL for new tabs, for example in firefox.

Then I realized how much I hate and suck at CSS. So I'll just leave this here, should anyone want to pick up the mess I hacked together.

preview: http://dumbinter.net/hn.html (really lacks some css)

code: https://gist.github.com/lawl/9842357

intended to be run as cronjob and just spit the generated html into a file. I guess you could also do it completely client side with the JSONP API. But I like my sites static. Less clicks in NoScript.

By the way I'm not in any way affiliated with wimg.ca, the just seemed to do the job.

lziz• 12 years ago

Would you mind tossing it up on a repo? Or just mentioning what's in the jq file? Trying to reproduce to style it up a bit. Thanks!

lawl2• 12 years ago

Sorry, should have mentioned that.

It's a commandline JSON parser.

http://stedolan.github.io/jq/

nilkn• 12 years ago

How frequently does it update the sites it shows?

olalonde2• 12 years ago

Every 5 minutes it seems (https://gist.github.com/anonymous/9847044#file-gistfile1-js-...).

brickcap• 12 years ago

Question for the dev:

Where did you find PayMeForReviewsUser2041? I could use him on a couple of my own apps. Would you mind lending him to me?

Houshalter• 12 years ago

Anyway to use the cool interface without replacing my default tab? HN isn't the only website I visit.

Oculus• 12 years ago

Is there a warning label for complete and permanent destruction of one's productivity?

brunorsini• 12 years ago

Love it. One suggestion: I'd love to see options for setting custom story density.

austinl• 12 years ago

It's a tough choice for me between this and Currently (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/currently/ojhmphdk...) which shows the time and the weather with each tab.

caiob• 12 years ago

In the description, there's an interesting username: "★★★★ Love this app" – PayMeForReviewsUser2041

Care to explain this?

leoalves• 12 years ago

In the bottom of the page "Disclaimer: some of the reviews above are meant to be sarcastic and not by real people. Please Google don't ban this app. Kthxbye."

csallen• 12 years ago

Cool extension. I'd love it if you made the story names a little more bold. That's generally how I choose what I want to read.

olalonde2• 12 years ago

Does your extension really need all those permissions?

    "permissions": [
        "webRequest",
        "tabs",
        "http://*/*",
        "https://*/*",
        "storage"
    ]

Does your code really need to be minified? Why do you fetch the HN front page using an external API (http://producthunter.awesome.io/hn.json) when you could easily scrape HN's front page directly?

Finally, you should probably disclose that you are tracking people who use your extension through Google Analytics (https://gist.github.com/anonymous/9847044#file-gistfile1-js-...).

Sorry for being a bit paranoid... Other than that, seems like a nice extension!

andreasklinger3• 12 years ago

thanks for reaching out

      Does your extension really need all those permissions?
        "permissions": [
            "webRequest",
            "tabs",
            "http://*/*",
            "https://*/*",
            "storage"
        ]

Good question - maybe you know ways to improve this

Storage is to cache results, webrequests to request the json, tabs to place the tab.

Im unsure if i access anything through http:// anymore - might just be a development relict.

I could limit to certain domains to avoid hacking vectors.

But that's a bit too much for an simple friday afternoon hack i guess.

    Does your code really need to be minified?

I used grunt / yeoman for chrome extensions. Minifactions came out of the box and i didn't see any reason not to minify. Eg i also minify all JS on my websites

    Why do you fetch the HN front page using an external API 
    when you could easily scrape HN's front page directly?

HN's html structure is quiet a pita so i wanted to keep this on the server site (updates through chrome app store can take days).

I could use inofficial HN JSON APIs but i needed to add my imgur links anyway and i don't know any safe way to make those on the client side without enabling people reusing my api keys.

    Finally, you should probably disclose that you are tracking 
    people who use your extension through Google Analytics

Good idea.

It didn't came to mind because most extensions like this use GA to track usage/events/etc - some even use JS error loggers.

Where would you communicate this? TBH i hardly ever communicate this on my website projects neither (apart of in the wall-of-text-TOS)

thanks for the feedback

Show HN: HackerNews as default tab (chrome extension)

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