HN Explorer

22 comments

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stochastimus
I like this resource for learning about the elements, esp. the drill-down, which makes it fast to go back-and-forth. Also the "Wide" view is cool - I don't remember how long it took me initially to realize that the lanthanide / actinide rows actually belong in the middle of the other ones. :)
gulabjamyn
I've been using it for over a year. Great resource.
tempodox
Very nice. This is how a cheat sheet, er, reference should be.
quickthrower2
Good old useful page with a single banner ad. Takes me back.
Lucent
Actually a point of pride for me that I've never attempted to put more than a single ad, never allowed pop-unders, fly-outs, etc., and don't bother or block ad-blockers.
alexkearns
This one is much prettier and no ads: http://www.rsc.org/periodic-table
raxxorrax
These are both very nice. I like the "visual elements"-option to help remembering the elements and their occurrences.

The other version has a 3D-model and localization instead. Also neat.

Lucent
Be sure to try out Ptable's other tabs. One allows visualizing trends in 20 properties, another does the same for 4000 isotopes, and the final allows mixing of elements to discover 40,000 compounds.
zmk_
It is also much less useful, requiring you to hover over an element to get any information, including the name of the element.
master-litty
I took a chemistry class back in 2012 or 2013 and used this a lot :) It's been around for longer than 2017, as the title may imply.
zhirzh
I saw this first back in school in 2013 and was instantly blown away. It was like the perodic table came to life. Perhaps this is one of the influences that eventually led me to become a software dev
tempguy9999
and not a chemist? :)
zhirzh
I was awestruck by the tool web "app" and not the stuff that it covered. I am just as impressed today as I was years ago by looking at the different interactions.
Lucent
This brings me a lot of joy. Despite it being poorly-organized function soup, I hope being able to view a framework-free source was valuable to you. I learned most of what I knew from viewing source way back in the mid-nineties and that's a lot of the reason I chose not to obfuscate it in production so others could do the same.
Lucent
I'm currently rebuilding this from the ground up mostly to replace my handmade animations with CSS transitions. Both the old and new were built with no JS frameworks or libraries and the one you're looking at does well in IE6, to give you an idea of how long ago it was refreshed.
ranger207
Thanks for making this! It was widely recommended in my chemistry class last year, and the orbitals table especially came in handy.
andy_ppp
There are a couple of very strange usability problems with the overlay, it seems to fade out while dragging the edges and clicking on the things inside the iframe leave you floating in a wikipedia page that you can't go back to the original content from easily. Also dragging the overlay in circle maximises it which was a surprise!

Good luck redoing this in CSS!

BalinKing
Nice resource, I personally found it very handy during Gen Chem (especially the orbital listings for each element)!
[dead] joyjoyjoy
Well, soso. But great that you can Lanthanoids and Actinoids how they should be. You should make that view default.
nsajko
I prefer this more regular style of presenting the periodic table:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Extended_periodic_tab...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Periodic_table_blocks_spd...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Periodic_table_(metals%E2...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:32-column_periodic_table-...

This one is even more different:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Periodic_table_(left_...

Lucent
The first link is available by clicking Wide in the top right on Ptable. The second is available by clicking the Orbitals tab on Ptable.