I put together a simple collapsible comment browser for HN earlier today, as I'd found long HN comment threads to be somewhat difficult to parse ("Wait, what is this guy replying to?")<p>It's written 100 lines of javascript + jQuery, and the more enterprising could probably turn the code a bookmarklet as it can run entirely on the client side. Also works fairly well on iOS.<p>Hat Tip: Built on the Hacker News API: http://api.ihackernews.com/. Great stuff, although if you click a link and nothing appears, it's probably because the API returned a server error.<p>http://hncomments.com/
Crashes a few times upon initial loading. Had to refresh. After it did load, I find the examples are much harder to read than helpful. There are a couple of Chrome plugins I currently use for hacker news for helping identify new comments as well as collapse comments that works out well without having to leave the actual hacker news site.<p>1] <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hockhafcdegocajmjhafgjncjpodihkd?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hockhafcdegocajmjh...</a><p>2] <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/imeeonmdbakdmilnnccaddiplgjjhbog?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/imeeonmdbakdmilnnc...</a><p>Those are the ones I use and they work fairly well. Of course that doesn't actually help stuff like iOS browsing but it doesn't bother me too much.