Thanks mrsebastian for posting this and everyone else for the feedback.
I created this project several months ago as way to dive in and learn node.js. I found it useful and enjoyable to use for myself and decided to throw it on the web. For anyone interested, the code is available at https://github.com/jhuckabee/hn_reader. Pull requests welcome.
Unfortunately a lot of sites don't like to be framed which makes the interface annoying to use at times. Also, don't try to open it on a mobile device. It flat out doesn't work. I hope to fix that in a future version. Despite these annoyances, I still use it as my primary means of reading HN.
Nice. I was working on one for a while too. The iFrame problem is definitely the biggest hinderance. Comments also need styling: http://hn.thanithani.com/
Wow, it looks like a surprisingly large number of sites refuse to be framed. Shouldn't be too much of a surprise when you consider the threat of click-jacking, but interesting to see none-the-less.
Yes, I've written my own HN reader as well as other apps using iframes...and basically the situation sucks.
With a reader like this, you have two real options:
* Include regular iframes and risk an increasing number of sites opting out with JavaScript or (more politely) an X-Frame-Options header.
* Use <iframe sandbox> to prevent people busting out of it with JavaScript. But that stops all JavaScript, so apps and videos won't show up.
Pity. iFrames have so many great uses like this Reader. Browsers really need to deal with the clickjacking problem instead of forcing everyone to bust out of them and making sites like this unusable.
Yeah that's a real show stopper ... otherwise I'd use this all day.
Guess standalone app is the only route to avoid this? I think even Chrome extensions couldn't get around this since they dropped the experimental sidebar thing :/
It doesn't handle gracefully, sites which prevent themselves from being opened in frames by utilising the "frame-ancestors" option of Content-Security-Policy.
I created this project several months ago as way to dive in and learn node.js. I found it useful and enjoyable to use for myself and decided to throw it on the web. For anyone interested, the code is available at https://github.com/jhuckabee/hn_reader. Pull requests welcome.
Unfortunately a lot of sites don't like to be framed which makes the interface annoying to use at times. Also, don't try to open it on a mobile device. It flat out doesn't work. I hope to fix that in a future version. Despite these annoyances, I still use it as my primary means of reading HN.