1. If you name your script with the extension .user.js it is easier to click on to automatically install at least with tampermonkey.
2. When I went to this link from the main page, on mobile I had to scroll to the right to see the (-) to minimize because the sidebar was too large: https://elizabethtai.com/2026/06/10/substack-writers-you-nee... It may make some sense to start minimized so I can read the article first, but I can easily modify the script to do that.
is this better than using a chrome extension? i guess people need to have tampermonkey installed and so thats a slightly higher barrier to entry? i wonder if chrome would be interested in "sherlocking" userscripts so that we can distribute non security nightmare code easier.
Mostly transparency. Since this runs across pages you visit (with the sites controlled by the @include/@exclude rules at the top of the script), I like that the entire source is right there and easy to inspect before installing it.
A userscript also let me iterate quickly without dealing with extension packaging and permissions, but being able to see and tweak the code was a big part of the appeal.
Tampermonkey isn't better than using a Chrome extension, but it's less friction for a developer to build and distribute a cross browser script. If they build it as an extension, they need to target multiple browsers and get it deployed to the Firefox/Chrome web store.
If you can read JS and the user script is not huge, I think it makes a huge difference.
Apart from that, there are APIs exclusive to extensions, e.g. instrumenting client-side communication among tabs with different origins, listing all tabs, basically accessing a special API that sits on a higher-level context, and, while gating certain functionality behind user approval, and forbidding other functionality completely (at least in Manifest 3.0), extensions with the corresponding permissions can do more than a script running in the page context. They can inject these as well, though, even overriding CSP sometimes, as far as I know?
The main problem with these permissions, and WebExtension 3.0 partly was an attempt to improve this, or at least claims it: most people give a second of doubt at best when installing an extension, as long as they think it comes from a trusted source.
I'd improve it by counting top level comments next to items but that would slow it down. Still need to make some slight changes like closing sidebar by re-clicking orange.
Firefox has a new Split View that's useful for this, but you still have to left click and select open in split view (M) then click the link. You also used to be able on some browsers to craft a link that was href="tab1.html|tab2.html", no idea if that's still a thing or if it was limited to "home page" setting.
Vivaldi has included split view for years (called tiles). You can also right click a link and choose open in follower tab. This lets all links clicked in one tile open in another tile. I use this regularly on HN.
Open to it. For now I’m going to keep it as a userscript and build out some of the interesting ideas people have suggested here. If it keeps growing, a proper extension would definitely make sense.
I normalize the URL and use HN's Algolia search API to find an existing story with a matching URL. I don't currently handle multiple HN submissions of the same article; I just use the matching story I find.
That being said, I could see creating a historical snapshot of all the times an article has been submitted and building a blended comments section in the future.
1. If you name your script with the extension .user.js it is easier to click on to automatically install at least with tampermonkey. 2. When I went to this link from the main page, on mobile I had to scroll to the right to see the (-) to minimize because the sidebar was too large: https://elizabethtai.com/2026/06/10/substack-writers-you-nee... It may make some sense to start minimized so I can read the article first, but I can easily modify the script to do that.
A userscript also let me iterate quickly without dealing with extension packaging and permissions, but being able to see and tweak the code was a big part of the appeal.
Apart from that, there are APIs exclusive to extensions, e.g. instrumenting client-side communication among tabs with different origins, listing all tabs, basically accessing a special API that sits on a higher-level context, and, while gating certain functionality behind user approval, and forbidding other functionality completely (at least in Manifest 3.0), extensions with the corresponding permissions can do more than a script running in the page context. They can inject these as well, though, even overriding CSP sometimes, as far as I know?
The main problem with these permissions, and WebExtension 3.0 partly was an attempt to improve this, or at least claims it: most people give a second of doubt at best when installing an extension, as long as they think it comes from a trusted source.
thought I realize "if it works it works", https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey
https://greasyfork.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/sokzpb2ztmatlh... (screenshot)
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/588721-hacker-news-comment...
I'd improve it by counting top level comments next to items but that would slow it down. Still need to make some slight changes like closing sidebar by re-clicking orange.
It's very fast and speeds up thinking overall.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/split-view-firefox
What I do now is open the HN comments, and then when I'm ready to look at the link + comments, right-click on the title and Open in Split View.
Would you be interested in making one?
I normalize the URL and use HN's Algolia search API to find an existing story with a matching URL. I don't currently handle multiple HN submissions of the same article; I just use the matching story I find.
That being said, I could see creating a historical snapshot of all the times an article has been submitted and building a blended comments section in the future.
This shouldn't be a script (no offense, great job!). It should be built into the browsers!