Top all-time · #5413
Alex Kirk
Personal blog · alexander.kirk.atprogrammingweb
Alex Kirk's personal blog at alexander.kirk.at covers programming and web. Since 2008, 14 different Hacker News readers have linked it 30 times, most often “Bookmarklet: Reddit-like Collapsible Threads for Hacker News”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (14) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog's post on collapsible comment threads, which describes a bookmarklet and Greasemonkey script that let Hacker News comments be folded. It is linked as a workaround because HN lacks collapsible comments.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 14 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Bookmarklet: Reddit-like Collapsible Threads for Hacker News9 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2010-02-16
- /js/hackernews-collapsible-threads.js2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-02-16
- We're all using RSS Readers all the time2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-04-28
What Hacker News says?
Here you go: http://alexander.kirk.at/2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-...
Comment linking /2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-hacker-news/
on “FBI seized PokerStars.com, FullTiltPoker.com, UB.com,... domain names”Submitted Bookmarklet: Reddit-like Collapsible Threads for Hacker News as a story · 81 points
HN discussionPeople, if you install a comment collapser like the greasemonkey script on this page, you can hide the above post. http://alexander.kirk.at/2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-...
Comment linking /2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-hacker-news/
on “Python is now the most popular introductory language at top U.S. universities”Submitted We're all using RSS Readers all the time as a story · 4 points
HN discussionHere's a sort of solution, a bookmarklet: https://gist.github.com/maxerickson/8456792 It turns the timestamps into collapse buttons. It's sort of adapted from here: http://alexander.kirk.at/js/hackernews-collapsible-threads.j... I have another gist there with a bookmarklet that turns the timestamp into a button that hides comments of that age or older.
Comment linking /js/hackernews-collapsible-threads.js
on “Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments”Submitted We’re all using RSS Readers all the time as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI've been actually building something like this on the side with the Friends plugin for WordPress: https://wordpress.org/plugins/friends/ (source at https://github.com/akirk/friends ) It's based on the idea that you'd publish to your personal website either publicly or privately. The private posts can only be read by your friends (who own personal websites themselves and have established a friendship connection usin…
Comment linking /2018/11/08/wordpress-meetup-presentation-decentralized-social-networking-with-wordpress/
on “We should replace Facebook with personal websites”Submitted Collapsible comment threads for HN as a story · 2 points
HN discussionHere's a bookmarklet that turns each timestamp into a comment tree folder (collapsing that branch): https://gist.github.com/maxerickson/8456792 Credit to http://alexander.kirk.at/js/hackernews-collapsible-threads-v... which I referenced for dealing with the structure.
Comment linking /js/hackernews-collapsible-threads-v4.js
on “Tell HN: Server Status”Submitted Possible reason for the iOS alarm clock bug as a story · 2 points
HN discussionTry this: http://alexander.kirk.at/2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-...
Comment linking /2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-hacker-news/
on “Ask PG: Is there any chance of getting points displayed again”Submitted New Feature for HN Collapsible Threads: Collapse Whole Thread as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI believe that there should be a higher burden for beginners to ask their question, before it can go live. New users need to prove that they have done research, this can be done with a few questions like "name the three google search terms that you have used to find a solution", "how much time did you spend on researching?" (easily faked, but maybe it gives people a hint to step back and try harder). There could als…
Comment linking /2014/04/26/stack-overflow-ways-out-of-the-negativity/
on “Why is Stack Overflow so negative of late?”Submitted HN Collapsible Threads now supports NinjaKit: Greasemonkey for Chrome/Safari as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThis fixes a few issues with the script by Alexander Kirk [1], like collapsed child comments expanding when the parent is expanded. In addition to these this script will work in the threads page of hacker news. Also this bookmarklet will load faster than the script by Alexander since there is no call to any external JS file from my server. The only file you have to load is the latest jQuery from the jQuery website a…
Comment linking /2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-hacker-news/
on “Collapsible comments for Hacker News”Submitted Title Junk: Solve it with Javascript as a story · 1 points
HN discussionFor your convenience, here is the source code: http://alexander.kirk.at/js/hackernews-collapsible-threads.j... The bookmarklet first loads jQuery from the Google Ajax libraries, then that script. Both should be cached by the browser so that upon the next use of the bookmarklet it should not need to ask a server.
Comment linking /js/hackernews-collapsible-threads.js
on “Bookmarklet: Reddit-like Collapsible Threads for Hacker News”If you like this, check also out mine: http://alexander.kirk.at/2011/12/06/new-feature-for-hn-colla... It's been round for a while :) My bookmarklet has also been included in this very nice browser extension: http://hckrnews.com/about.html
Comment linking /2011/12/06/new-feature-for-hn-collapsible-threads/
on “Collapsible comments for Hacker News”And there's also a browser-agnostic bookmarklet https://alexander.kirk.at/2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for...
Comment linking /2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-hacker-news/
on “Ask HN: Why are comment trees not collapsible yet?”https://alexander.kirk.at/2011/12/06/new-feature-for-hn-coll...
Comment linking /2011/12/06/new-feature-for-hn-collapsible-threads/
on “Another Unsolicited HN Redesign”Very nice. If it had a key handler to collapse the current comment with all replies[1], then I think it would be heaven. (Helps with long tangent threads at the top of the comment page.) I know, this should be a pull request... Edit: BTW, I just saw '(-1 unread)' which I'm guessing has something to do with showdead being on. [1] http://alexander.kirk.at/2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-...
Comment linking /2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-hacker-news/
on “Show HN: Hacked Hacker News - new comment highlighting and keyboard navigation”I do too. BTW If you didn't know already, this is a nice tool to solve this problem: http://alexander.kirk.at/2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-... I really hope pg would add this to the site (given that how easy it is to add the code).
Comment linking /2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-hacker-news/
on “It’s Time To Disqus (YC S07) Our Community”http://www.blummy.com/ "The bookmarklet management bookmarklet" Sorry for the plug, but it fits well :) Since I wrote Blummy, I have not changed it much, but IMO it is still useful. The database contains 400 bookmarklets to add to your own blummy. Also see http://alexander.kirk.at/2006/08/02/unknown-blummy-treasures...
Comment linking /2006/08/02/unknown-blummy-treasures/
on “Ask HN: Most Useful Bookmarklet?”I like the combination of Xdebug and MacGDBp on OS X quite a bit, as I blogged here: http://alexander.kirk.at/2008/12/26/debugging-php-on-mac-os-...
Comment linking /2008/12/26/debugging-php-on-mac-os-x/
on “Debug PHP Using Firefox with FirePHP”There are a few different thread-folding addons and scripts. Here are a few. ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-collap... ) ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1540722 ) ( http://alexander.kirk.at/2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-... ) etc etc. EDIT: I would like a nice way to see "SHOW HN" posts, because these are often interesting and fun bits of stuff. I usually upvote these because I li…
Comment linking /2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-hacker-news/
on “Tell HN: We separate the wheat from the chaff”I've found this bookmarklet, which threads comments, to be extremely useful: http://alexander.kirk.at/2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-...
Comment linking /2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-hacker-news/
on “HN Crunch: Greasemonkey script for Hacker News”Here's a gist I might be posting too often: https://gist.github.com/maxerickson/8456792 I always make sure to point out that I cribbed from here a bit: http://alexander.kirk.at/js/hackernews-collapsible-threads.j... So it's just a little awkward.
Comment linking /js/hackernews-collapsible-threads.js
on “Ask HN: Why doesn't HN have collapsible comments?”pg doesn't seem to be interested in doing that. I created a script ( http://alexander.kirk.at/2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-... ) and sent him something to cut and paste in order to add it to HN. Would have been minimal effort but apparently not going to happen.
Comment linking /2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-hacker-news/
on “Ask PG: Please revert the change to break up discussions in multiple pages?”Collapsible threads: http://alexander.kirk.at/2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-...
Comment linking /2010/02/16/collapsible-threads-for-hacker-news/
on “Tell HN: Don't just downvote - flag it.”
