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Show HN: My side project, Instant Visual Search for Etsy.

18 points by dabent ↗ HN
I was inspired by Feross Aboukhadijeh's instant search for YouTube, so I took the latest Etsy API and built an instant search for them. I'd love it if you'd try it out and let me know what you think. It is at http://www.glancely.com/

I really hope it doesn't need an explanation, but start typing what you're looking for. I used tags on the listings (among other things) to fuel my suggestions. Click a color to filter on those listings, click to sort on price. Click again to deselect.

I've tested on the latest Firefox, Chrome and IE on Windows and Safari on an iPad. You will need JavaScript to run this as it is. I plan to build a no script (and non-instant) version later.

If I have a tl;dr from all this, it's "use jQuery" I've rolled AJAX/JavaScript apps by hand before and was really amazed at what jQuery enabled me to do so rapidly.

20 comments

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allenp
Did you pre-analyze the images to do the color filters?
singer
"We use the Etsy API to get the latest listings from Etsy multiple times a day. We then take the listings, index them by their titles, tags, materials, colors and price."
jfarmer
The Etsy API returns the primary color of an image.
code_duck
Very, very poorly. A large percentage of images are labeled #ffffff, others are simply wrong. They've known for years; no improvements.
mironlulic
Nice work
dabent
Thanks!
BenS
This is really neat! I've been trying to implement a visual search for my startup. Would you be up for chatting sometime about what you learned?
dabent
I'm not sure how much I've "learned" but I can talk. You wouldn't be going to Startup School, would you?
BenS
I might be at some of the events afterward. Maybe we can coordinate by email? My address is in my profile.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
ydant
I'd suggest putting something letting the user know what it does (beyond the little label beside the search box). It's a pretty handy tool, but it doesn't make it clear what it does - which is going to make sharing it a lot harder.
dabent
Thanks for the feedback. I'll have to work on that. I thought about putting a little graphic below on startup that explains the site more.
PixelJ
Really great: I like its speed and layout. The color search is a nice touch. My only complaint is about the quality/quantity of results. When I searched for "pulp art" I only see _3_ results whereas Etsy itself finds 531. http://www.etsy.com/search_results.php?search_query=pulp+art
dabent
Thanks! I appreciate the kind words.

The results: I'm working on that. This is more like the "MVSP" version as in Minimum Viable Side Project.

imwilsonxu
cool, that is fast! And i like that color filter, also.

two things after playing around: 1. it's a little inconvenient to hover on the pics to checkout the price every time. 2. where's the navigation, sth like 'next page'?

dabent
Thanks. I may have to experiment with the price/hover, but the navigation features are definitely on my mind for the future releases.