I received the following email last week:

I am a fellow hacker-news reader, and just wanted to share with you this weekend project i did a few weeks back: hntrends.timepurge.com

This is basically a javascript (Raphaeljs) port of the flash frontend you have at hntrends.com.This was done as a personal learning exercise for Raphaeljs JavaScript library. There is a little python code at hntrends.timepurge.com/fetchdata that fetches your json data (Not set as a cron job. Just to create local snapshot manually).

Hope you like it.

My best wishes to you for the success of Preceden.
-Fenin.

With his permission, I’m posting it here for you all to check out. View it at hntrends.timepurge.com. To view the original version, visit hntrends.com.

It’s amazing how closely it resembles the original version. When I first loaded it I immediately right clicked the graph to ensure that I was actually looking at JavaScript and not Flash. I was showing off his version last night to a few folks at a Philadelphia Hackathon meetup and actually mixed up my site with his a few times because they look so similar.

A side by side comparison (click to view full image):

(With libraries like RaphaelJS and the advent of HTML5, you’ve got to wonder what the state of Flash is going to be in a few years. Outlook doesn’t look so good.)

Fenin, well done sir.

Comments on HackerNews here.