Item — HN Reader

> Yes :- ) Do you mean 1) for yourself only, or 2) for all site visitors (so those replies would be collapsed by default, for everyone) ?

Rather for myself, but as an account setting so that I don't have to collapse them manually for each thread. Actually it stems from something that bothers me with HN: when there are a lot of nested replies, I lose track of the which comment corresponds to which parent. For example, try reading this thread : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22705222, I find it difficult.

If there are 5 comments (level 0), that each has 10 replies (level 1) and each one of them has 10 replies (level 2), I wish I was able to collapse level n>0 replies to read the comments first, then be able to unfold level 1 replies for the first comment, while keeping level 2 hidden, and so on. This might not be the ideal solution, maybe simply the way you added arrows to replies would make the above thread easier to read.

> What things lag the most? (Some specific button(s) or animation or scrolling or ... ?)

I just found it's not specific to android (I'm using Android 10 on a recent galaxy smartphone). Mostly animations. On the desktop version, If I click on the plus button near 'Chat Channels', the login window is show progressively, and the background is dimmed in way that 'feels' slow. Also when I unfold a collapsed reply, the page moves slowly (is there a reason it moves ?). When I click reply, a window is shown, 'loading draft...' appears then disappears quickly and then the preview is highlighted, it somehow feels slow.

1 comments

> I lose track of the which comment corresponds to which parent

Me too, here at HN. When I'm reading on my phone, looking at reply R to a parent post P somewhere far above, and I want to re-read P — then I place my finger to the left on the screen, at the current indentation depth, and scroll up up up, past the even-more-indented-replies above ... until the indentation depth becomes 1 step less than my finger. Then I've found the parent comment :- )

Problem is, how do I find the reply R again. And, sometimes I accidentally move my finger, losing track of both R and P.

In Talkyard, one can instead click the arrows to jump to the parent, and the Back to jump back to the reply R — here's a demo about that: https://www.talkyard.io/-32/how-hacker-news-can-be-improved-...

If you want to try this yourself, go here: https://www.talkyard.io/-71#post-16 then click the long arrow to the left, then click Back at the bottom of the screen.

> unfold level 1 replies for the first comment, while keeping level 2 hidden

Something like that, yes. At the same time, since popular / "good" replies are sorted first, I think it can make sense to unfold a few of the level 2 replies, for the topmost level 1 replies — so one needs to click fewer times, to read the "most interesting" things. But these are minor details; I agree with the overall idea.

> Rather for myself, but as an account setting

Ok. There're also custom user groups — so a site admin could configure this setting for the Everyone group, and then one could override it, individually.

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>> what things lag the most

> Mostly animations [...]

Ok, thanks for the detailed feedback. I think the code is doing things too much sequentially — like, first loading any draft — an X * 100 ms round trip to the server. Then scrolling the post one replies to into view, Y * 100 ms, then scrolling the preview into view, Z * 100 ms (so both are visible at the same time, if possible). — If instead everything happened at once, it'd seem more instant.

(Also, there're editor Javascript:s that JIT-compiles and runs the first time one opens the editor.)