I primarily use http://hckrnews.com to browse HN submissions ( <-- this site is great. If you don't use it, you're missing a lot IMO ) and its extensions for Safari: http://hckrnews.com/about.html
Both have great ideas, and I think pg should adopt one of them (though I know he won't). I hate it when I use my iPad for browsing HN. Comments are small, up/down-vote arrows are minuscule, and you can't use these highly-useful plugins. And I've tried about a dozen different clients so far. None of them offer anything like http://hckrnews.com (a chronological timeline of submissions), so I keep coming back to Safari... :(
I always wonder why Hacker News is not developed as an open source project. This seems like a natural approach for such community, especially taking into account that pg has no time/interest to drive it himself.
Though, I doubt pg accepts "pull requests" or anything. He likes the site the way it is, apparently (I don't like HN to have a million share buttons either, but I do want a few things added that would make life for thousands of HN visitors much easier).
I really doubt pg likes the fact that HN is so painful to use on mobile, and this is just one example. I understand that he doesn't have time to work on the site himself, but he should at least consider appointing some "community committee" consisting of trusted users who are willing to help. Sometimes letting go is best.
I'd also recommend handling the onclick event of your outbound links and sending a custom event up to Google Analytics. That way you can get a rough approximation of how many people are clicking through to other sites.
I think my Hacker Newsletter (http://hackernewsletter.com) project can help with that for a lot of people (as well as this great extension), but yeah, anytime HN is involved there is a good chance time is going to go out the window. :)
Thanks for a great extension (that I have been using!) and I noticed the new changes going live.
Does this fix the bug (which I assume was caused by this) where if a story was marked as read then it sometimes loaded the comments page without the main story link?
Also, the "Follow Comments" functionality wasn't obvious to me until I read this blog post - perhaps a rewording?
I've never been able to reproduce that bug; the code has changed enough with this new version and I never noticed that happening again. If you notice that again, please let me know.
For the rewording of "follow comments", if you have any suggestions you're welcome.
I second this. It seems to make it easier for me to follow conversations if I can collapse threads I've already read as well as threads that don't look like they interest me.
In case there is any confusion, Autobahn for Hacker News launched on July 4th with hundreds of unique daily users using the slogan "Save Time on Hacker News", so I ask this author to come up with another tagline to avoid confusion.
With Autobahn, you truly save time: you can ban stories by domain name, see full story domain names, and view user profiles in an overlay with a twitter button and picture, so you don't have to click the back button; also, profile links and e-mails are clickable as well, so you don't have to copy-paste!
This project was clearly around before Autobahn (May 27 blog post vs June 8 start date) and according to the Chrome Web Store it has more users (785 vs 409).
In case there is any confusion, as somebody else already noticed, Mark All Read was published already in may, and the announcement was titled "save time on hacker news":
I didn't realize you used the exact same slogan previously!
While there are many other Chrome extensions on Hacker News, I spent three weeks perfecting the three main features (banning domains, user profile overlay, subdomains) as well as allowing the users to disable any of them.
As anyone on Hacker News who's ever released a product can relate, I was confused that 1) someone used mine for many months, and then uninstalled it without realizing they could disable a feature, and 2) the same person who used mine for many months didn't know the difference between my plugin and yours, and then 3) they posted on my favorite tech site about it. :)
Looks like they remembered the slogan from my web site, "Save Time on Hacker News", but not the web site url, or the screenshot showing that you can go the standard Chrome Options to disable a feature. Given that I only submitted Autobahn once to the Chrome Store and Hacker News and haven't had a bug to force releasing a new update since launch, I guess I have to start writing blog posts, marketing, and work up the branding a bit when I release version 2. :)
Both of us obviously developed and use our own plugin for our own needs, and I hope we continue to share our improvements to the site with the Hacker News crowd! :)
Finally, I also want to thank Alex for making me consider adding a specific icon to the username for loading the user profile normally, and will follow-up with him about why he didn't like the feature after using it for many months.
I actually just uninstalled this the other day. It annoyed me that clicking on someone's username wouldn't take me to their profile page, and not only that but there was no longer any way to get there.
I've been using this extension for awhile, and I can't duplicate your results - clicking on your username with the extension installed is taking me right to your profile page. What happens when you do it?
> It annoyed me that clicking on someone's username wouldn't take me to their profile page
Thanks for using my Autobahn for Hacker News plugin for the past few months! I thought I should let you know that you can disable the Profile Overlay in the options panel. I love it because I can see the user's twitter name, image, and follow button, as well as clickable links and e-mail addresses, all without having to click the 'Back' button. What don't you like about that feature?
Autobahn for Hacker News has always allowed you to disable or enable any feature separately, including the User Profile overlay, as the launch video, official page, and this screen shot shows since July 4th.
Autobahn also has hundreds of daily unique users and launched on July 4th with the headline "Save Time on Hacker News." If you want to ban stories and see full subdomain names, get it today! http://vlad.github.com/autobahn/
(author here) First, thanks for trying Autobahn! I wanted to mention that Autobahn has always allowed you to enable/disable any of the three features in the Options panel. I'm also curious about what you didn't like about the Profile Overlay? It shows the user profile in an overlay so you don't have to click the back button, as well as the user's twitter handle, picture, and profile image. On top of that, it makes links and emails clickable. Thanks!
I primarily use http://hckrnews.com to browse HN submissions ( <-- this site is great. If you don't use it, you're missing a lot IMO ) and its extensions for Safari: http://hckrnews.com/about.html
Both have great ideas, and I think pg should adopt one of them (though I know he won't). I hate it when I use my iPad for browsing HN. Comments are small, up/down-vote arrows are minuscule, and you can't use these highly-useful plugins. And I've tried about a dozen different clients so far. None of them offer anything like http://hckrnews.com (a chronological timeline of submissions), so I keep coming back to Safari... :(