Show HN: Orange Juice – Small UX improvements that make HN easier to read
oj-hn.com

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39 points

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latchkey

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3 hours ago

52 comments

satvikpendem ・ an hour ago

"Tested, not vibe coded" yet you mention the AI has written all the tests. This extension may not be vibe coded but it's close to that, it seems. Regardless it seems to work well, I replaced the older Refined Hacker News extension with this, which seems like where you initially sourced the code from as the features are very similar, 1:1 even for some.

I also use this extension HNRelevant (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hnrelevant) which shows a list of similar posts, you might want to add that as an optional feature as well.

What's the tech stack, pure TS? You also might want to migrate from Biome to oxc, I did recently and it plays well with Vite+ (or just move to Vite+) directly.

Noticed a bug, once I edit my own comment and go back to the main post, I show up as [op] not you. Also I should be able to edit my post inline not be moved to a separate page.

  • latchkey ・ an hour ago

    It is heavily coded with AI, but I'm also a 30+ year web developer. I'm not just one shotting all of the code, I'm reading it too. I'm feeling like it is giving me super powers.

    See the thread below about refined, which hasn't received an update in 4 years.

    I have HNRelevant on my list of features that I've been collecting.

    I tried oxc and didn't like it as much as biome. They admittedly aren't as good at formatting yet. The real winner here is ultracite.

    • satvikpendem ・ 37 minutes ago

      Sounds good. Another bug or quirk, with Refined, I was able to reply and then tab once to the reply button and hit enter. Now with the "HN's approach to comments and site guidelines." text I can't do that, "comments" and "guidelines" are links so I have to tab three times to get to the reply button which is annoying. Omit that text or change the tab order (this is possible in HTML with the tabindex attribute, just make the reply button higher priority).

      Also add ctrl/cmd-enter support to submit the reply.

      Also this orange border when clicking a comment or link on the front page is a bit annoying, especially when it doesn't seem to actually do anything (it's not a tab select style, that shows up as the browser's normal style), and it seems to persist.

      • latchkey ・ 20 minutes ago

        The orange box is to mark where you are currently focused. If you use the keyboard navigation (keys: j/k), it really helps.

      • latchkey ・ 21 minutes ago

        Great suggestion! I literally took your comment, passed it into AI. At first it tried to remove the text as well as set tabIndex to -1 in code, but I think now I've got something I like.

        This has been fixed and is making its way out now.

odysseus ・ 19 minutes ago

How about a Safari/Mobile Safari extension so iPhone users can use it?

cobbman ・ an hour ago

I want hacker news UX to stay as it is, mostly, but these are features I'd welcome.

  • dang ・ 2 minutes ago

    What features would you welcome?

  • latchkey ・ an hour ago

    Thanks. My feeling as well.

ipsum2 ・ an hour ago

It looks pretty good! I'm using it now and its a meaningful improvement to the existing site.

Out of curiosity, why did you make a new Github account for the extension instead of developing it on your own account?

  • latchkey ・ an hour ago

    Thanks!

    Because I see this becoming bigger than me and a separate organization made sense. There is a super thin backend component right now too. There is the potential to also add in some extra features that require a server/db. I'm kind of inspired by the atuin model of things.

    I've got a LONG list of features I'd like to implement over time.

altairprime ・ an hour ago

Latchkey, would you be comfortable with HN adopting your dark mode styling as a user choice someday, if they came around to liking it? I really like it and I think it’s in the spirit of the site.

  • satvikpendem ・ an hour ago

    I'm pretty sure that will never happen, as it would've happened already by now. People can and do already use custom CSS or Dark Reader for dark mode.

    • dang ・ 2 minutes ago

      Some things have taken us 15 years and then pow they happened

    • latchkey ・ 44 minutes ago

      Or you can just use my extension, heh.

  • tomComb ・ an hour ago

    That would be great! Please do.

  • latchkey ・ an hour ago

    Thanks! A lot of it is AI with my own input, but I think it did a great job.

    The code is all open source and people can do with it what they want. It is GPLv3, but I'd special license it to them as MIT without question.

ramon156 ・ an hour ago

> Why Install Orange Juice?

> Because Hacker News is great, but repetitive UI friction adds up. Orange Juice keeps the original feel while removing the things that cost you time every day.

That does not convince me to use your app? This is like calling someone's Kia shit and instead telling them to buy a Tesla, but just stating that it's better.

I'll stick to HN, thanks.

  • satvikpendem ・ 43 minutes ago

    To me, that doesn't sound like your analogy at all. It'd be true if the extension for example redirected an HN thread to a reddit thread of the same posted URL, ie a replacement of the original, but the extension simply adds features to the existing site. There have been extensions like this available for years, like Refined HN which this is based off, as well as many third party HN clients. Therefore I think you should try it before judging so harshly.

  • latchkey ・ an hour ago

    Sure. What language would convince you?

    UPDATE: I've changed the copy, it is pushing right now.

wesz ・ an hour ago

The improvements are nice, that's for sure. But i checked out github and it looks like overengineered ai slop, you could implement all the features with 1/10 of the code. But again, nobody cares nowadays which makes me sad. You even generated chrome/firefox logos using ai...

  • latchkey ・ an hour ago

    How is it over-engineered slop? Happy to improve things, but I thought it was pretty clean.

    • wesz ・ 24 minutes ago

      You claim to have 30+ years of webdev experience and yet 2 MEGABYTES of javascript only for those features doesn't feel/look wrong to you?

      • latchkey ・ 16 minutes ago

        You're not really answering the question.

        That's the bundle size, not the amount of code in the project.

        I've done nothing to try to optimize the bundle size, but I suspect that a lot of it has to do with some of the third party dependencies like mermaid.

greenpizza13 ・ an hour ago

I can't figure out how to toggle to Light Mode (maybe it uses the system setting?). HN is something I prefer to be in Light Mode but everything else in dark. Gonna remove until this is configurable.

  • latchkey ・ an hour ago

    Defaults to system. The toggle is in the top right corner of the navbar next to your karma.

Imustaskforhelp ・ 2 hours ago

I use refined Hacker news Extension.

https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news#highlights

It might be beneficial to tell me what the difference between these two can be? A lot of the features from my first glance (I can be totally wrong though) are within HN refined.

I would really appreciate a short summary of differences. Personally I am really happy by HN refined though so kudos to @plibither8

  • latchkey ・ an hour ago

    Refined hasn't received an update in 4 years.

    https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news/issues/135...

    I used refined for years as well. Great product, but the underlying code was meh, and the author abandoned it. If you're using refined today, you're experiencing a lot of bugs as the HN DOM has changed over time.

    I maintained my own fork for a long time but finally motivated myself to try out AI assisted coding and this is what came out of it. It isn't a port, it is a clean rewrite from the ground up.

    I took every feature that I enjoyed from refined, re-implemented it from scratch, with a totally different architecture that allows much more control over the DOM and runs a whole lot faster.

    I had AI write hundreds of of unit tests, so that we can make sure that bugs don't appear in the future. I also fixed a whole ton of edge cases along the way.

    The entire deployment, all the way to the browser stores, is fully automated with CI/CD, so that we know that the supply chain is safe.

    In other words, you might as well migrate. If there is something missing that you enjoyed, file an issue, or even better... a PR.

xydac ・ an hour ago

its funny how us developers build varied UX, but nothing beats the simplicity of HN's default experience. quick and bloat free.

  • latchkey ・ an hour ago

    That's the beauty of this extension, it keeps things simple.

Novosell ・ an hour ago

Did you ai generate the Chrome and Firefox logo? That isn't what they look like, or have ever looked like, from what I know.

  • latchkey ・ an hour ago

    Yes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    • DrBenCarson ・ an hour ago

      …why?

      • latchkey ・ an hour ago
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        I'd rather focus on building features vs. caring about logos.

        Update: I'm having AI fix this since you guys want to focus so hard on it. Of all things... lol.

        FIXED!

        • semolino ・ an hour ago

          Taking shortcuts with design tends to result in users trusting your project less.

        • 59nadir ・ an hour ago

          Why not just use the actual logos? It's not as if you *have* to generate them.

        • dartharva ・ an hour ago
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          You need AI to just replace the svg?

          • satvikpendem ・ 42 minutes ago

            These days, everyone is using AI for even small things, because honestly it's easier to say to an AI to use original SVGs and have it go out and find the correct ones with a web search tool call than to do it myself, it's simply a waste of my time for small tasks like that.

          • latchkey ・ 41 minutes ago
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            Of course I don't, but if it helps me do trivial tasks so that I can focus on other things, I might as well use it.

            • Fraterkes ・ 17 minutes ago

              I think it's fine if you find the design of the site a trivial thing that others shouldn't focus on, but it kinda begs the question why you didn't just have the ai generate a much simpler page. Why have the ai generate all this fluff when you just want to show of what you've made? You (rightfully!) care about not wasting your own time, why waste ours?

Klonoar ・ an hour ago

What on earth is that Firefox logo...?