[HN Gopher] Show HN: Hacker XP - Hacker News styled as a Windows... ___________________________________________________________________ Show HN: Hacker XP - Hacker News styled as a Windows XP Outlook email client Hello HN, sharing my weekend project. I'm a fan of retro GUIs and fan of HN, so I built an alternative HN front end that resembles a Window XP desktop with an old Outlook email client. Archive and github links if you get 500 errors: https://web.archive.org/web/20220122190454/https://hackerxp.... https://github.com/assemblylanguage/hacker-xp Author : assemblylang Score : 88 points Date : 2022-01-22 18:58 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (hackerxp.com) (TXT) w3m dump (hackerxp.com) | akoster wrote: | I'm excited to try it but getting " 500 Internal Server Error." | right now. Will check back later- looking forward to it! | mulmen wrote: | Missed opportunity to style the 500 page as a BSOD. | assemblylang wrote: | haha yeah that's a good idea, something to add in the future | for sure | otagekki wrote: | I keep having 500 errors... Denial of service? | | As said elsewhere, server errors should look have a BSoD-like | appearance ;) | bitigchi wrote: | Reminded me of how Safari for Windows actually had a native | Windows UI. | ZoomZoomZoom wrote: | I just realized I'd be much more surprised and exited to see this | as an actual desktop application made with something like | Lazarus, than imitation of such a program with web tech. Strange | times. | hdjjhhvvhga wrote: | I hope some picks up the challenge. | badsectoracula wrote: | You can get most of the functionality in the page (which isn't | much) by setting up Thunderbird (which with the classic layout | looks very similar to Outlook Express) as an RSS reader for | Hacker News' RSS feed. | joering2 wrote: | Thanks, looks cool once I had a chance to load it. | | Out of curiosity - can I ask you what infrastructure this is | running on? Is this some dedicated bare metal or a basic $5 VPS? | I am curious as of what it actually takes to give your site a "HN | hug of death" once you reach first page. | | Thanks. | assemblylang wrote: | Working on getting the website back up now, got the so called "HN | hug of death" from the traffic | assemblylang wrote: | back up, but expect some 500 errors | walrus01 wrote: | the interface reminds me a little bit of progress quest | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_Quest | qbasic_forever wrote: | Uh oh, do we need to be careful of posts going 'viral' again? :) | | The last time I used Outlook express on Win XP were the glory | days of attachment and automatic preview worm emails. Back then | we thought sending a bit of jscript or vbscript to an email | client should of course be automatically executed and run when | received or clicked to preview the contents. _shudder_ | barelysapient wrote: | Disappointed the 500 error I got wasn't a blue screen of death. | ThinkBeat wrote: | This seems like it would be a good candidate for a static site | responding to all the requests in an efficient manner. | | Then have a server process somewhere that generates scheduled | updates of the site on a scheduled basis. | | I would think the site does not have to be real time, | curiousfab wrote: | Thanks for making this (despite the hiccups and error 500s). I | _love_ the aesthetics of that era so much: Efficient usage of | screen space, clear borders between different elements - brings | back happy memories! | badsectoracula wrote: | FWIW this is basically how my Thunderbird (91) looks (with a | different UI theme of course) and i don't think i've made any | special customizations :-P. If anything Thunderbird uses less | vertical space due to not having all the big icons. | | Fortunately Thunderbird (and Firefox) uses Gtk theming for the | most part and i've used a Motif-y theme for Gtk3, so it picks | up most things. | assemblylang wrote: | >I love the aesthetics of that era so much: Efficient usage of | screen space, clear borders between different elements - brings | back happy memories! | | the GUI design of this era was really something else, its hard | to describe but the UIs felt so discoverable, the basic core | features were presented up front and easy to use, intermediate | features could be found in widgets surrounding the core UI, and | a whole set of advanced features within the menus once you've | mastered your surroundings. It's as if the UIs of the time were | designed to create an efficient learning path, at the expense | of some information overload when first using the application. | francoismassot wrote: | thank you for this hilarious moment, the internal server error | was just too good | lostgame wrote: | This is adorable. A little broken on my iPhone 8, but that's to | be expected; it's meant to emulate a desktop experience. | Multicomp wrote: | This is amazing. But I think I somewhat helped the HN hug of | death hence getting intermittent 500s. | | For folks passing through, the image is of a virtual Windows XP | desktop complete with Bliss background, taskbar, and Outlook | Express showing emails, where each email is an HN link. I may | just need to set this as my new HN bookmark! | Retr0id wrote: | I didn't know it was possible to make an HN post with both text, | _and_ an URL. Is this a new feature? | sm4rk0 wrote: | I just tried filling both fields, but text ended up as a | comment (and I can't delete a post): | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30040573 | dang wrote: | Yes, as of a few days ago. | Retr0id wrote: | Does this apply to all types of post, or just Show HN? | dang wrote: | Currently just Show HN. We don't do it for other kinds of | posts for reasons explained in the FAQ | (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html): | | Q: _How do I make a link in a text submission?_ | | A: _You can 't. This is to prevent people from submitting a | link with their comments in a privileged position at the | top of the page. If you want to submit a link with | comments, just submit it, then add a regular comment._ | | The difference with Show HNs is that when it's the project | creator sharing their own work, it's ok for their link and | text to be in a privileged position. Hopefully people won't | start abusing that, but if they do, we can roll back the | change. | masswerk wrote: | I love the attention to detail regarding a culture of | fair discussion. | | Thank you! | 4cao wrote: | I think it's always been possible for "Show HN" (and not for | "Ask HN"). | nik736 wrote: | Why is the 500 error page not a blue screen. | [deleted] | solmag wrote: | "500 internal error" and audible laughter sorry | only4here wrote: | currently getting an internal server error on your website, but I | can't blame you for being on the front page! | password4321 wrote: | Nice re-skin. Suggestions vs. the 500's: | | * Show the rest of the page if the HN content isn't loadable. | | The server doesn't seem to have any problem delivering the static | assets, which are the majority of the work. Server-side rendering | is awesome, but there's got to be a way to not lose the whole | layout on server error? | | * Load the HN content from somewhere else client-side rather than | proxying through your server. | | I don't have experience to share the ideal source, but I do know | HN has an official API. Implementing caching may be enough to | allow the server to handle it. | | Congrats on your project getting so much traffic! | assemblylang wrote: | good points, yes I definitely should have implemented some | caching logic, the 500s are due to rate limiting on the HN side | I think. Wasn't expecting this much traffic! good lessons for | next time and something to consider for future projects | gred wrote: | This plus full screen (F11)! _chef 's kiss_ | btdmaster wrote: | https://web.archive.org/web/20220122190454/https://hackerxp.... | jbverschoor wrote: | Ahhh.. looks like good old NNTP. Time to get | https://www.forteinc.com/agent/ again? | zozbot234 wrote: | NNTP is a fairly clunky protocol by modern standards. It would | be nice to get an Agent-style application for 'Fediverse' | (ActivityStreams/ActivityPub based) endpoints. | miles wrote: | Had a brief, glorious glimpse amidst a host of "500 Internal | Server Error"s: https://imgur.com/a/y3896NY | | EDIT: Did not know that links and text could be combined in a | single submission, nor that the submission could be edited for so | long (the archive.org and github.com links were recently added | apparently). | notRobot wrote: | I love how it looks! Can't wait for the website to be up again | so that I can experience it first-hand ;) | ik8s wrote: | Missed opportunity to have a blue screen as well! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-22 23:00 UTC)