Show HN: Browse Hacker News from the Comfort of Your Terminal

Show HN: Browse Hacker News from the Comfort of Your Terminal(github.com)

83 points by rafael-rinaldi 10 years ago | 35 comments

WA 10 years ago |

Looks good from the screenshot, but for me, votes and comments is way more important than who submitted it. And: What happens to titles which are too long?

jakub_g 10 years ago | |

Yep, domain is also quite often very important, often the title does not mean much without the domain.

I think though two lines per item would be needed to display all that info

oneeyedpigeon 10 years ago | | |

Well, it does depend on the width of your terminal, of course, but the title could be abbreviated, there's no need to repeat "ago" in the time column and, as others have pointed out, the submitter's name is pretty irrelevant. I'd go title, domain, votes, comments and try to fit that on one line. In fact, now I compare that to the actual web home page where it's impossible to easily compare things like comments or age, I just want to redesign that ...

rafael-rinaldi 10 years ago | |

Didn't really noticed any issues in that matter so far. But if you find one, please, feel free to report on the issue tracker.

Derpdiherp 10 years ago |

Hmm. If you're wanting to browse websites from the terminal, why not just use something like Lynx?

marchelzo 10 years ago | |

Presumably for the same reason that people prefer native applications on iOS / Android to using web applications in mobile browsers.

This approach allows you to tailor the controls and the display to the specific application, thus creating a more pleasant experience.

Have you tried using HN in lynx?

Derpdiherp 10 years ago | | |

Sure - I tried it out just now, it's fine.

Like any feature rich application, it takes a little time to learn the ins and outs, time saving features and such - but it's very usable for a site like hacker news, you can even navigate via the numbered links on the site.

http://brainstormsandraves.com/reference/lynx/lynxhelpforbeg...

blippe 10 years ago | | |

I use links all the time for HN. It works extremely well.

Touche 10 years ago | | |

I've tried with elinks and it works very well.

mbrock 10 years ago | |

Have you tried using any of those browsers? I don't think they're very convenient for frequent use. In Lynx, it takes 10 keystrokes to navigate to link #1 on Hacker News. 11 if you count accepting the cookie, which you have to do every time you open it, since it doesn't persist your choice. In my terminal, Lynx fits 5 stories at a time and navigating from one to the other takes 5 key strokes.

basscomm 10 years ago | | |

I use Lynx frequently. You can, for example, press > to go to the next link in the 'same column', which cuts down the keystrokes to go to the next story to two keystrokes.

coroxout 10 years ago | | |

If I'm browsing a site with a top menu in lynx I press the delete key to scroll down past the menu so I don't have to press down repeatedly. Then capital V at the cookie prompt rejects it "foreVer" (for the rest of the session).

My version does, however, default to nntp for news.* subdomains unless you supply the protocol, so that's annoying.

Or you can use elinks and click on the links with the mouse...

Derpdiherp 10 years ago | | |

You can save your cookie options by setting an option in lynx:

http://lynx.invisible-island.net/current/README.cookies

As the poster below me points out, you can navigate links pretty fast in lynx when you get the hang of it and learn a few shortcuts.

I don't use it everyday, but do use it kind of frequently.

starquake 10 years ago |

Nice. Would be even cooler if you could view and add comments using the terminal.

rafael-rinaldi 10 years ago | |

Glad you liked! I honestly just wanted something really simple to peak at HN.

Feel free to open an issue, though! Contributions are welcome.

aprdm 10 years ago |

Great! Now I don't need to alt tab to the terminal to pretend to work when someone comes over my shoulder!

rafael-rinaldi 10 years ago | |

Haha well, that's an interesting use case!

cyphar 10 years ago |

You can also browser Hacker News in the comfort of your favourite editor (Vim): https://github.com/ryanss/vim-hackernews

wcummings 10 years ago | |

I've deliberately avoided doing IRC or HN or anything like that from my editor (emacs), too much of a distraction.

smartmic 10 years ago |

Want an alternative for some hacker hackers? Try HN for terminals written in assembly language: https://2ton.com.au/hnwatch/

matthijs_ 10 years ago |

I see these solutions a lot lately, HN browser, weather, etc, all in the terminal. Perhaps a silly question, but why the need for browsing it in the terminal instead of a browser like say, Chrome or Firefox?

mQu 10 years ago | |

Because it looks good on r/unixporn ;-)

But more to the point - it fits with many keyboard only work flows and/or tiling WMs (i3, awesome, etc). At least that's what it's good in it for me. One less context switch.

omaranto 10 years ago | | |

Don't those reasons also soy to browsers? My tiling window manager is perfectly capable of tiling browser windows. Browsers like Firefox and Chrome can be controlled fully by keyboard, even very comfortably with the right extension.

ant6n 10 years ago | | |

When work is in a terminal, and hacker news it's in a browser, it's probably a good thing that there's a context switch between them.

JD557 10 years ago | |

I've been reading HN on vim for a while.

Sometimes I just want to kill some time while code compiles/tests run. This way, HN is just on a different split pane, and I can stop browsing as soon as the other job is finished.

rafael-rinaldi 10 years ago | |

Besides learning purposes, I built it because I spend most of my time in a Terminal window.

rafaqueque 10 years ago |

Looks pretty cool. I often open the website, but since I work mainly from the terminal, this will be useful. Hope to see this project grow.

Offtopic: What's the font in the screenshot?

rafael-rinaldi 10 years ago | |

It's PragmataPro: http://www.fsd.it/shop/fonts/pragmatapro

mikemajzoub 10 years ago |

Cool Project! I use w3m for hn, but what you've looks a bit cleaner!

rafael-rinaldi 10 years ago | |

Thanks! Glad you like it.

nickysielicki 10 years ago |

I wish the whole making-cli-programs-in-node fad would die.

rafael-rinaldi 10 years ago | |

And I wish you all the best.

dmix 10 years ago |

I'd love something similar for Instapaper. For reading in the terminal with `less` or $EDITOR.