HackerWeb
A simply readable Hacker News web app. http://hackerwebapp.com/
About
This project started as one of my silly mini-projects. I create this initially to try out iOS 5+ Mobile Safari's new -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch
CSS support. I need some sort of content for scrolling, so why not Hacker News' stories? I'm also trying something called Fake it 'til you make it which I make the web app looks (and feels) like a native mobile app. In this case, like a native iOS app. If the web app is loaded on non-iOS devices, it'll switch to the 'web' theme which is like a generic theme for other browsers and platforms.
Read my two-part blog post on how I built this web app:
- How I built the Hacker News mobile web app (HN thread)
- How I built the Hacker News mobile web app, Part 2 (HN thread)
Technical stuff
This web app works best on iOS 5+ Mobile Safari (iOS theme) and other modern browsers (web theme). It uses these wonderful scripts:
- Hogan.js - logic-less templating
- Amplify.Store - client-side storage
- ruto.js -
location.hash
router - iOS
- Web
- ibento.js - simple event delegation
- classList.js - shim for
element.classList
- Vanilla JavaScript - everything else
Also uses the unofficial Hacker News API.
Some of the cutting-edge web technologies used:
- localStorage & sessionStorage
- CORS
- Application Cache
- CSS Animation
- CSS Media Queries
- Flexible Box Layout (old spec)
- requestAnimationFrame
- Web Workers
More technical stuff
Running a local server
git clone [email protected]:cheeaun/hackerweb.git
cd hackerweb
node server.js -noappcache
The -noappcache
argument is to prevent browsers from caching everything in the Application Cache.
Changes to scripts
If there are changes in the /js
folder, run this to regenerate the static JavaScript files (skip the npm install if uglify-js
is already installed):
npm install uglify-js
node make-scripts.js
The static JS files are defined by scripts.json
which specifies which files are combined and minified into smaller individual files.
Changes to templates
If there are changes in the /templates
folder, run this to regenerate js/templates.js
(skip the npm install if uglify-js
is already installed; do not use npm install hogan.js
as the current NPM version โ 2.0.0 โ is not compatible):
npm install uglify-js
npm install git://github.com/twitter/hogan.js.git
node make-templates.js
Contributing and Feedback
Feel free to fork, file some issues or tweet your feedback to me.
Do check out these awesome contributions as well:
- Bookmarklet to switch between HackerNews and HackerWeb by duncansmart
- HNmobile Bookmarklet by neocoder
- Hacker News Menu Tab (GitHub) by Guilherme Defreitas
Other platforms?
I have plans to make this app look native on other mobile platforms once I fork our some money and get my hands on other mobile devices (Android, Windows Phone, etc) for development and testing. Contact me if you feel generous enough to donate some devices to me :)
License
Licensed under the MIT License.
Other similar apps
This is the not the first third-party app for Hacker News. Others have tried doing the same thing, despite some slight differences. I've compiled a list of apps here.