Introducing HackerWeb

old Hacker News web app icon and new HackerWeb icon on iOS

It started out as a simple testcase, on 16 October 2011. Few months later, it became a secret little fun project. I spilled the beans and publicly announced it on 16 February 2012. March was the month when my project got some huge attention from the Hacker News peeps. I received a lot of positive feedback and comments on how my app improved their productivity, while at work and on the move.

Around May, I started working on the iPad-optimized version and deployed it on 2 June 2012. The remaining months I spent mostly on polishing every single detail of the app without adding any new features or changing the UI at all. When iOS 6 is released on September, I updated the app with the new look. I've also splitted the files into two themes; 'ios' theme for iOS 5+ devices and 'web' theme for everything else including desktop browsers and mobile browsers. I figure out that even though this app is really meant for iOS, it's still a web page where it should work in as many modern browsers as possible.

I name it as 'Hacker News mobile web app'. For brevity sake, it's codenamed as 'HNmobile'. Now that the app works on more browsers and devices, there's no point having the word 'mobile' in the name anymore. Surprisingly, the app never has a official name for this long while. People keep saying 'Oh, that Hacker News app…' but I don't want them to be confused it being an official app. Honestly though I wish that it's recognised as an official app, yet sadly it's not.

I am hereby pleased to announce HackerWeb, the new name for my project. It has a new icon, a new URL to the app and a brand new homepage with a bunch of nice screenshots. The transition for existing users will be a smooth process, perhaps with very little hiccups. Those who are new, feel free to try it out and ping me if there are questions or problems.

Happy Hacker News reading to all.