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Life & fun · January 18, 2011

SA

Surfboard - A flippable way to experience the web in HTML5/CSS3

I love to use Flipboard on my iPad, but I was bummed that the experience couldn't follow me to the phone or desktop, so I decided to do something about it... I built http://ridesurfboard.com over the winter holiday and just finished it up last night, so I wanted to share it with the HN community first. The app turns any website with an RSS feed into a more human, flippable format. It's all HTML5/CSS3/JS and works best in either desktop Safari or on an iOS device, although you can use Chrome if you enable the experimental GPU Accelerated Compositing flag (a how-to is on the Surfboard blog).…

Surfboard - A flippable way to experience the web in HTML5/CSS3 launched on January 18, 2011 with 18 votes, #27 of 127 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 15 years on.

Visit ridesurfboard.com ↗Alternativestop 21% of January 2011

In plain words

Surfboard transforms any website with an RSS feed into a flippable, magazine-style reading experience using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. Designed for users who want Flipboard-like functionality across devices, it works best on desktop Safari and iOS, though Chrome requires enabling GPU acceleration. The app presents web content in an interactive, tactile format that mimics physical page-turning.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

In the maker’s words, at launch

I love to use Flipboard on my iPad, but I was bummed that the experience couldn't follow me to the phone or desktop, so I decided to do something about it... I built http://ridesurfboard.com over the winter holiday and just finished it up last night, so I wanted to share it with the HN community first. The app turns…

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    Although the page itself is more just fun to have made and look at (I like the flip sound), the fun part is how I made it to verify the (and I hate to say it) vibe host service I've been working on. The recent flip board back and forth's on Twitter (X) are what inspired me. The idea here is that people (like me or you) can create something neat like this, and others can remix it, change it and publish their own version. This is that all in action and it worked great. I wrote a blog about it (the blog is dogfooding, it's just an app hosted on quickish that uses the built in db lib). For the…

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