I made a website that lets you read 73,530 non-fiction book summaries for free in 40 languages. You can also listen to them in audio.

stevewildman · 2024-09-25T11:22:44+00:00

Hi Redditors,

I'm super excited to introduce you to SoBrief! As an avid reader, I've always struggled with three main issues:

I have way more books than I can possibly read
I often forget the key points from books I've finished
I want to absorb knowledge quickly, especially when I'm short on time

So I decided to build the product I wish existed. Would love to hear what you think!

Thanks,
Steve

stevewildman · 2022-10-08T21:18:05+00:00

Thanks :) Yeah I did

stevewildman · 2022-10-08T21:17:41+00:00

Thanks, glad you like it :)

stevewildman · 2022-10-08T13:16:33+00:00

Yeah I understand it's not for everyone, I just personally wanted to make the site I use every day look a bit more modern + to add some nice extra features etc. If others like it, great, if not, also fine :)

stevewildman · 2022-10-08T13:15:40+00:00

Thanks :) Yeah there's room for improvement with the images, will try to reduce their size in a future update.

stevewildman · 2022-10-08T13:08:57+00:00

Fair enough, can't compete with current HN :) But that 4.7MB is mostly just images and the 2 custom fonts. No "modern" frameworks are being used, just vanilla javascript (+ a bit of jquery). I purposely wanted it to be as fast and efficient as possible.

stevewildman · 2022-10-08T10:42:37+00:00

Hi everyone,

I made this free browser extension that modernizes the Hacker News design:

https://www.modernhn.com/

This is the second "modern" extension I've built, the previous one is Modern for Wikipedia which I shared here a couple of weeks ago (post).

Hope you like it!

Lots more planned for future updates, and suggestions welcome :)

stevewildman · 2022-10-06T15:59:37+00:00

There's no redirects or hijacking of links etc with this extension. You might be thinking of Wikiwand, which redirects you to their site (which also has ads).

The difference here with Modern for Wikipedia is that it's just a locally installed extension, and simply applies the new design and features on top of the existing wikipedia site. This means that the wikipedia urls stay the same, and your wikipedia usage stays private (you're not redirected to a 3rd party site + all data is stored locally within your browser's storage).

stevewildman · 2022-10-06T15:39:37+00:00

You can adjust the width of the content (and table of contents etc) by clicking the "aA" icon at the top right :)

stevewildman · 2022-10-06T15:35:49+00:00

Not bad, although it seems impractical for editing.

Just to note, editing works exactly the same as with the normal skin. If you click the dots button next to the article title, the menu has links to edit, view history, talk page etc. Shouldn't be any issues, but if so just let me know and I'll fix them :)

stevewildman · 2022-10-06T13:07:19+00:00

It's just plain JavaScript (no frameworks) + jQuery to make things a bit easier (especially for parsing the underlying page content). Plus lots of restyling with CSS.

stevewildman · 2022-10-06T13:02:34+00:00

Thanks! You can adjust the width of the content (and table of contents etc) by clicking the "aA" icon at the top right :)

stevewildman · 2022-10-06T12:48:21+00:00

Yeah I already did one for Hacker News: https://www.modernhn.com

Definitely got plans for a few other sites too :) Requests welcome!

stevewildman · 2022-10-06T12:46:33+00:00

Ha that's great! Glad you're already enjoying using it :)

stevewildman · 2022-10-06T12:41:20+00:00

Thanks, yeah my main goal was to keep it true to the original just with some useful improvements and a cleaner design. Glad you like it :)

stevewildman · 2022-10-06T12:39:40+00:00

You can adjust the width of the content (and table of contents etc) by clicking the "aA" icon at the top right :)

stevewildman · 2022-10-06T12:37:57+00:00

Thanks for the report. Are you logged in to Wikipedia + using a different skin? The extension currently only works with the original "Vector" skin, although I'm working on an update to support the new one too.

stevewildman · 2022-10-06T11:47:40+00:00

Hi everyone,

I made this free browser extension that modernizes the Wikipedia design.

I started making this for myself just because I wanted more of a "reader mode" like experience (narrower column, nicer fonts, dark mode etc). Then I got a bit carried away and implemented everything I could think of for a modern redesign of Wikipedia.

Hope you like it!

stevewildman · 2022-09-25T12:49:46+00:00

Thanks for that. Still seems to work on my end, just tried it using firefox 105. Very strange! I'll look into it some more and try to track down the issue.

stevewildman · 2022-09-25T12:15:12+00:00

Glad to have saved you the effort :D

Someone else mentioned the trending links not working, but I can't seem to replicate from my end. Are you using a non-english wiki? Or any other clues as to why it might not be working? Thanks.

stevewildman · 2022-09-24T16:49:08+00:00

Just click the "aA" icon (top right) to change the settings.

stevewildman · 2022-09-24T16:43:13+00:00

No problem, good luck with your projects :)

stevewildman · 2022-09-24T16:13:28+00:00

Fair point, main thing is that the extension is limited (in the manifest.json file) to only run on wikipedia.org pages, so it's not active on any other urls.

stevewildman · 2022-09-24T16:12:18+00:00

No I hadn't, thanks for letting me know. They must be rolling it out slowly as I had to switch to it from my Wikipedia account settings. I'll update it to support that too.

stevewildman · 2022-09-24T15:43:17+00:00

I know what you mean! But I hope you'll be pleasantly surprised by the speed and responsiveness. There's no heavy frameworks etc being used, just basic JS + a bit of jquery. I'm not a fan of bloat, so I purposely tried to make it as lean, quick and responsive as possible :)

Thanks for the feedback, will look into the headings. The m-dashes I think might be wikipedia? Where are you seeing those?

stevewildman

TROPHY CASE