Awesome
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)
Also read my introductory post, Introducing HackerWeb.
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.
Development stuff
Prerequisites
git clone git://github.com/cheeaun/hackerweb.git
cd hackerweb/
npm install
Grunt tasks
-
grunt templates
- Compile templates intemplates/*
to generateassets/js/templates.js
-
grunt uglify
- Concat and minify JavaScript files inassets/js/*
to generatejs/*
-
grunt watch
- Watch the templates and scripts, runtemplates
anduglify
tasks when they're changed -
grunt embedImage
- Embed images into CSS files. This will parse CSS files inassets/css/*
and change this (any lines withurl()
):background-image: url(PATH); /* embedImages:url(PATH) */
... into this:
background-image: url(data:DATAURI); /* embedImages:url(PATH) */
-
grunt connect
- Run a local dev server. Arguments:--port=XX
- specify a custom port number
-
grunt server
- Run bothwatch
andconnect
tasks at the same time
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
License
MIT.
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.