Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderWould love to have had the Open Look and Athena scrollbars. Open Look was super cool looking, but awful to use. Athena was (is?) awful looking and lacked any affordances for beginners, but was terrific for expert use. I am fond of Open Look, and keep a copy of the Open Look GUI Functional Specification (Addison-Wesley, 1989) on my shelf, much as some people venerate the Apple HIG, except that mine is much less useful. Here's a nice post that…
Not shown here, the Open Look scrollbars, defined in the 1980s, had the arrow buttons attached to the position indicator. It was probably best that died, but it was distinctive. Also not shown here, the Motif scrollbars of the same era had the arrow buttons on opposite ends of the widget (like on the Macintosh), but the position indicator was dynamically sized to also indicate the percentage of the scrolled world currently visible in the viewport. This is now ordinary…
TIL Windows 1.01 had a great scrollbar
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 186
- Total comments
- 153
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-10-25 | Evolution of the Scrollbar | jchw | 7 | 1 |
| 2019-10-29 | Evolution of the Scrollbar | robin_reala | 2 | 0 |
| 2019-11-02 | Evolution of the Scrollbar | djsumdog | 2 | 0 |
| 2019-11-02 | Evolution of the ScrollbarFirst breakout · Best thread | bookofjoe | 125 | 79 |
| 2021-02-03 | Evolution of the Scrollbar | Breadmaker | 1 | 0 |
| 2023-06-13 | Evolution of the ScrollbarLatest 20+ point return | promiseofbeans | 49 | 73 |