Hacker News front page as a site

(thefrontpage.dev)

107 points | by thatxliner 5 hours ago ago

41 comments

  • jesse_dot_id 9 minutes ago

    Beautifully unusable

  • hspeiser 13 minutes ago

    The inception effect here is hilarious. Watching this get its own front page while the subtitle lags behind with the previous top posts is weirdly funny.

  • ammar_x 3 hours ago

    Cool, but body font size is too small for comfortable reading!

    • gblargg 29 minutes ago

      I whipped up a quick uBO rule to fix that (also makes meta-information lines readable):

          thefrontpage.dev##p.newspaper-copy:style(line-height: normal !important; font-size: 1rem !important;)
          thefrontpage.dev##p.article-meta:style(font-size: 1rem !important; font-weight: normal !important; letter-spacing: normal !important;)
      
      EDIT: changed to 1rem as someone else suggested
    • Wowfunhappy 3 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 2 hours ago

        Or have a button that makes the text left-aligned for easier reading.

        • Wowfunhappy 2 hours ago

          I think that very much defeats the point of making it look like a newspaper.

          • entropie 2 hours 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 2 hours ago

              This entire submission is styled to look like a newspaper. If you just want information that's available at news.ycombinator.com.

    • throwawayAAUGGH 2 hours 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 2 hours ago

        I did increase it in the meanwhile from when that comment was posted.

    • Retr0id 3 hours ago

      Sounds like an authentic HN experience to me!

    • daviding 2 hours ago

      An overridden `.newspaper-copy { font-size: 1rem; }` works well.

  • oefrha 2 hours 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 an hour 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 an hour ago

        Great idea, I'm trying this.

    • stagas an hour ago

      Made it 3, try again perhaps. Changing to text-align: left really destroys the aesthetic though.

  • chrisgen19 3 hours ago

    I like the concept, the grid and the design. but the small text description is hurting my eyes.

    • stagas 2 hours ago

      Just made it a bit bigger.

  • fumeux_fume an hour ago

    Nice! Happy to see the site appearing as itself on the front page doesn't cause some crazy recursive crash :)

  • revv00 2 hours ago

    Cool, seems need some deduplication. Maybe when you turn to the new page, some items fall back.

    • stagas 2 hours ago

      It is possible. Will look into it.

  • almyk an hour ago

    Nice design, gives a cozy feeling similar to reading a newspaper

  • BeetleB 2 hours ago

    Why is the text one long paragraph? Makes it very hard to read?

    • stagas 2 hours ago

      Because I'm telling the AI "summarize it to one paragraph".

  • bijowo1676 2 hours 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 2 hours ago

    Nice try at trying to get me to read the friendly articles ;)

  • clacker-o-matic 2 hours 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 2 hours ago

      Tricks of the trade :)

  • anonu 3 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 5 hours ago

    Would be cool to see different column layouts too!

    • irq-1 3 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 2 hours 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 5 hours ago

    hey that's pretty cool. I think I still prefer "distill HN" cleanliness though. What made you create this.

    • thatxliner 3 hours ago

      I didn’t make this lol; just something cool I’ve found

  • namrog84 2 hours ago

    Is it just me or is there something slightly weird about scrolling? Maybe font or color. Im on mobile.

  • SilentM68 3 hours ago

    Nice design, but I can't afford the $3.50 price of the cup of coffee, atm (◡︵◡)(◠‿◠)

  • sublinear 3 hours ago

    This page now contains itself.

  • delichon 5 hours ago

    Now do clay tablets.

  • himata4113 2 hours ago

    this is now my new default for hackernews.