Top all-time · #1583
Paul Kinlan
Personal blog · paul.kinlan.me · on HN as kinlanwebprogrammingai
Paul Kinlan writes Modern Web Development with Chrome, a personal blog at paul.kinlan.me about web, programming and ai. Since 2010, 46 different Hacker News readers have linked it 81 times, most often “Use Bookmarklets on Chrome on Android (2020)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-07-05, 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 Paul Kinlan's posts on web platform features, bookmarklets, browser compatibility, and Android sharing and deep linking. One commenter calls his serverless sync tutorial good.
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.
Paul is a Developer Advocate for Chrome and the Open Web at Google and loves to help make web development easier.
Most-linked posts?
- Use Bookmarklets on Chrome on Android (2020)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2022-02-05
- Will we care about frameworks in the future?3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-11-15
- Rise of the meta-platforms and the new 'web browser'3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-10-01
- Serverless Sync in Web Apps Using Bit Torrent3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-06-14
- Web Intents - the future of web apps2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-07-02
- IndexedDB as a Vector Database2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-12-15
- The Future of Communications Apps Is on the Web2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-01-22
- Adding ActivityPub to your static site2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-01-31
- Challenges for web developers2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-02-01
- Sorry Safari Team2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-11-15
What Hacker News says?
I lead the DevRel team for Web and Chrome so please take anything I say with a hint of bias.... I've found it pretty easy to use so far - https://paul.kinlan.me/chrome-on-home/ and got it deployed in a number of environments including AppEngine. We are planning on getting this deployed in our [WebFundamentals]( https://github.com/google/WebFundamentals/blob/master/.travi... ) Travis script to run automated testing o…
Comment linking /chrome-on-home/
on “Getting Started with Headless Chrome”Submitted Serverless Sync in Web Apps Using Bit Torrent as a story · 256 points
HN discussionSoftware companies are not infallible, and I've received updates in the past that have broken things. Enterprises don't get compensated for lost productivity when an auto-updating app results in broken workflows. Also, we recently got hit with a bug in a new auto-updated version. [0] It's great that this was finally fixed but silently rolling out updates like this make it harder to catch these issues before they are…
Comment linking /correct-image-orientation-for-images-chrome-81/
on “Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it”Submitted Sorry Safari Team as a story · 207 points
HN discussionAre you sure you're looking at the native share sheet? It scrolls vertically, at least on Pixel on Android 11. There's some intent: links on https://paul.kinlan.me/sharing-natively-on-android-from-the-... that you can use to trigger it. The first one there doesn't work for me, but the second one does. intent:#Intent;action=android.intent.action.SEND;type=text/plain;end
Comment linking /sharing-natively-on-android-from-the-web/
on “Whatever Happened to UI Affordances?”Submitted Web Intents - the future of web apps as a story · 200 points
HN discussionThat is a common misconception, CSS support in Safari is as good as Firefox, and just a hair worser than Chrome's. (latest webcompat test results were 96/92/92 for Chrome/Firefox/Safari https://paul.kinlan.me/sorry-safari-team/ )
Comment linking /sorry-safari-team/
on “If Apple keeps letting its software slip, the next big thing won’t matter”Submitted The headless web as a story · 91 points
HN discussionYup, that page links to http://paul.kinlan.me/web-intents-a-fresh-look
Comment linking /web-intents-a-fresh-look
on “Open Web Device”Submitted I spent an evening on a fictitious web as a story · 74 points
HN discussionThere's another way! Instructions: https://paul.kinlan.me/use-bookmarklets-on-chrome-on-android... Summary: 1. bookmark any page 2. change the url to your code 3. give it a title like !script 4. to activate, tap the address bar and type !script Works on Android Chrome and Firefox, and probably other browsers too. More people ought to know about mobile bookmarklets.
Comment linking /use-bookmarklets-on-chrome-on-android/
on “A bookmarklet to kill sticky headers (2013)”Submitted We need to kill off the localStorage API as a story · 68 points
HN discussionThere are a number of ports powered by Emscripten ( https://github.com/Kagami/ffmpeg.js ) I wrote about some stuff here https://paul.kinlan.me/ffmpeg-ideas/ when building https://paulkinlan.github.io/deviceframe.es/ (I do a lot of screencasts and need a simple way to scale this out to other people that doesn't involve installing ffmpeg and scripting) EDIT and Note: Also I just saw your comment about videoconvert.js
Comment linking /ffmpeg-ideas/
on “A Simple Explanation: VLC.js”Submitted Use Bookmarklets on Chrome on Android (2020) as a story · 38 points
HN discussionHow do we refer to the type of architecture without server-side component proper[0][1][2] though? Makes it surprisingly hard to find material and research on those topics. Recently I was looking for one insightful talk (with a PoC) where websites run completely on users’ machines. It’s been a couple of years since I saw that talk for the first time, “cloud” was the term of choice to refer to what’s “serverless” now.…
Comment linking /serverless-sync-in-web-apps/
on “Show HN: Using Google Sheets to create a survey chat bot without a server”Submitted Hackathons don't win you customers as a story · 26 points
HN discussionFwiw - I'm hoping it can break out too. But one of the biggest challenges is that last bit "asking it to use vanilla JS" - unsee this all the time in developer relations: getting developers to ask for a specific thing or even have it on their mind to think about using it is one of the biggest hurdles. My actual long term hope is that in the future we won't need to think about frameworks at all: https://paul.kinlan.m…
Comment linking /will-we-care-about-frameworks-in-the-future/
on “Dead Framework Theory”Submitted Rise of the meta-platforms and the new 'web browser' as a story · 21 points
HN discussionAuthor here. Fwiw this is my hope too. I wrote about something similar in the past https://paul.kinlan.me/will-we-care-about-frameworks-in-the-...
Comment linking /will-we-care-about-frameworks-in-the-future/
on “Dead Framework Theory”Submitted IndexedDB as a Vector Database as a story · 13 points
HN discussionShameless plug: I've been using it to get Chrome on Google home - https://paul.kinlan.me/chrome-on-home/ (Disclosure: I'm a developer advocate for chrome so I'm heavily biased, but I love everything people are doing g with browsers on the server https://paul.kinlan.me/the-headless-web/ )
Comment linking /the-headless-web/
on “PhantomJS 2.5.0 beta”Submitted Detecting injected content from third-parties on your site as a story · 8 points
HN discussionThe Richardson 'REST API maturity model' describes how people commonly exchange HTTP payloads, how those systems can be augmented to get closer and closer to the ideas behind REST. Most people are perfectly happy with staying at levels 0 through 2, because HATEOAS is hard in the sense that you actually have to think about stuff like link relations, hypermedia mediatypes, and the semantic web. This is something most…
Comment linking /rise-of-the-meta-platforms/
on “The headless web”Submitted What Happened to Web Intents? as a story · 8 points
HN discussionThe site is currently down https://paul.kinlan.me/serverless-sync-in-web-apps/ but there was a good tutorial here on how to build a serverless message app.
Comment linking /serverless-sync-in-web-apps/
on “Supreme Court to hear petition seeking ban on WhatsApp”Submitted Living With Web Apps as a story · 7 points
HN discussionthis isn't new at all, ten years ago I used it to open an Android app without a user gesture https://paul.kinlan.me/deep-app-linking-on-android-and-chrom...
Comment linking /deep-app-linking-on-android-and-chrome/
on “Say Bye with JavaScript Beacon”Submitted Top web developer pain points in 2021 as a story · 5 points
HN discussionPlease don't use local storage. It's synchronous and will hang the entire browser or tab while the script is loading: http://paul.kinlan.me/we-need-to-kill-off-the-localstorage-a...
Comment linking /we-need-to-kill-off-the-localstorage-api
on “Basket.js: A simple script loader that caches scripts with localStorage”Submitted Full RSS Feed as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
