Hacker News front page as a site

(thefrontpage.dev)

98 points | by thatxliner 4 hours ago

21 comments

  • debarshri 9 minutes ago
    I had built something like this in pre-AI era [1] inspired by semafor.

    [1] https://hackernews-semafor-duhw.vercel.app/

  • ammar_x 2 hours ago
    Cool, but body font size is too small for comfortable reading!
    • gblargg 1 minute ago
      I whipped up a quick uBO rule to fix that:

          thefrontpage.dev##p.newspaper-copy:style(line-height: normal !important; font-size: 1rem !important;)
      
      EDIT: changed to 1rem as someone else suggested
    • Wowfunhappy 2 hours ago
      I agree, but I think it's that small because otherwise, the justified text results in ridiculous spacing.

      OP, consider reducing the number of columns from 4 to 3 (at least below very wide viewports), increasing the font size, and then also allowing hyphenation. I think the last will help a lot with the justification problem.

      • iamalizard 1 hour ago
        Or have a button that makes the text left-aligned for easier reading.
        • Wowfunhappy 1 hour ago
          I think that very much defeats the point of making it look like a newspaper.
          • entropie 1 hour ago
            Which might be fine? Since web pages are not newspaper sites one might say its just not the ideal way of presenting information.
            • Wowfunhappy 1 hour ago
              This entire submission is styled to look like a newspaper. If you just want information that's available at news.ycombinator.com.
    • throwawayAAUGGH 1 hour ago
      OP, I love the font size as is, have multiple options if you're going to change things! Remember the users that loved things as they were!
      • stagas 1 hour ago
        I did increase it in the meanwhile from when that comment was posted.
    • Retr0id 2 hours ago
      Sounds like an authentic HN experience to me!
    • daviding 1 hour ago
      An overridden `.newspaper-copy { font-size: 1rem; }` works well.
  • oefrha 1 hour ago
    Using text-align: justify for questionable aesthetic purpose here really hurts readability, especially on a narrower viewport like the 1026px viewport of Safari with sidebar on an iPad Pro 12.9’’ (although it’s probably more of a problem of the four column layout on that specific narrow viewport; three should be better).
    • sheept 52 minutes ago
      It could probably be helped a bit by enabling auto hyphenation, but ultimately browsers aren't optimized for typesetting narrow columns of text
      • stagas 48 minutes ago
        Great idea, I'm trying this.
    • stagas 55 minutes ago
      Made it 3, try again perhaps. Changing to text-align: left really destroys the aesthetic though.
  • fumeux_fume 1 hour ago
    Nice! Happy to see the site appearing as itself on the front page doesn't cause some crazy recursive crash :)
  • chrisgen19 2 hours ago
    I like the concept, the grid and the design. but the small text description is hurting my eyes.
    • stagas 1 hour ago
      Just made it a bit bigger.
  • almyk 1 hour ago
    Nice design, gives a cozy feeling similar to reading a newspaper
  • revv00 1 hour ago
    Cool, seems need some deduplication. Maybe when you turn to the new page, some items fall back.
    • stagas 1 hour ago
      It is possible. Will look into it.
  • BeetleB 1 hour ago
    Why is the text one long paragraph? Makes it very hard to read?
    • stagas 1 hour ago
      Because I'm telling the AI "summarize it to one paragraph".
  • bijowo1676 1 hour ago
    looks lovely, but can you borrow text styling and typography from a modern media website like NYT WaPo or some other major news outlet?

    This would make it easier to read

  • insin 1 hour ago
    Nice try at trying to get me to read the friendly articles ;)
  • clacker-o-matic 1 hour ago
    oh this is sick; i wonder where the curly bits at the top and bottom came from; based on the svg artifacts it looks converted from a raster
    • stagas 1 hour ago
      Tricks of the trade :)
  • anonu 2 hours ago
    i love it. would be cool to get the date lookbacks too - like this https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2026-05-22
  • wanoir 4 hours ago
    Would be cool to see different column layouts too!
    • irq-1 2 hours ago
      Yea -- it could use votes to pick a hero article, or change summary length.
  • smartial_arts 2 hours ago
    Previews are v slow to load for some reason
    • stagas 1 hour ago
      Some of them are really large and I'm not resizing them or storing them, just proxying their og image directly. So they might be taking long to respond from the original source. Also getting hammerred by being in the front page.
  • galsapir 4 hours ago
    hey that's pretty cool. I think I still prefer "distill HN" cleanliness though. What made you create this.
    • thatxliner 2 hours ago
      I didn’t make this lol; just something cool I’ve found
  • namrog84 1 hour ago
    Is it just me or is there something slightly weird about scrolling? Maybe font or color. Im on mobile.
  • sublinear 2 hours ago
    This page now contains itself.
  • SilentM68 2 hours ago
    Nice design, but I can't afford the $3.50 price of the cup of coffee, atm (◡︵◡)(◠‿◠)
  • himata4113 1 hour ago
    this is now my new default for hackernews.
  • delichon 4 hours ago
    Now do clay tablets.