I worked on Wave (and loved it) and I am similarly falling in love with the real-time thrill of this. (And the anonymous nature... finally, all my true feelings can come out).
I tried to create a fluin called (lisp programming) and it attempted it but then subsequently died as obviously the parens aren't welcomed in the subdomain. Maybe make it clear that the name must be a valid subdomain name or put an input filter/mask on the text box?
Interesting; kinda threaded live chat. Hard to know where to look for new messages, with them appearing arbitrarily in middle locations.
Perhaps all new messages could appear at top or bottom, with really long background thread-lines tracing them back to their antecedents?
And some sort of quick expand/collapse, or focus/defocus, for narrowing in on just one thread?
Or maybe even: the thread you're 'watching' if left-justified in a generously-sized font, and everything else is right-justified in a very compact font – making it possible to focus on one thread, but maintaining peripheral awareness of (and one-click-focusability) on all others?
Added: I see that there is some sort of click-to-focus, but thus far the logic of its effect eludes me.
It does. If you look closely, you'll see that HN's URL parser ignored the ] at the end of the URL. If you click on the URL and then add a ] to the end of it, your JSON will be valid and you'll see two alert boxes.
Edit: But yeah, my bad for not noticing that earlier. I've swapped it out for a bit.ly link now, so it works properly. I'm headed to sleep. :)
I would argue "a large percentage of Windows users" do not have Helvetica installed as a system font (CS fonts are not used for web rendering unless you also install them as system fonts), and I would argue Arial looks bad no matter which platform it is rendered on :).
"I wish I could anchor the page to one comment, prevent it from scrolling." - anon
If the mouse has focus on a post, it should stop the scrolling. (roll over or input selected)
Also, I think there should be a timer to auto hide comments from a root node, so only recent posts show the nested trail. This will stop the page from getting giganto
love the idea. lots of fun. a few usability ideas:
-make hyperlinks clickable.
-the top menu bar is hard to click -- make the surrounding whitespace clickable as well.
-on http://metal.fluin.com/, if I click the black large font text on a list item, it should expand the thread all ajaxy.
-give anonymous users names like "user14232" or gravatars so we can see conversation threads/replies. no-register account! track them with cookies, it's ok. some people will get riled up, but not your users, because they'll think it's fun.
41 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 87.2 ms ] threadPerhaps all new messages could appear at top or bottom, with really long background thread-lines tracing them back to their antecedents?
And some sort of quick expand/collapse, or focus/defocus, for narrowing in on just one thread?
Or maybe even: the thread you're 'watching' if left-justified in a generously-sized font, and everything else is right-justified in a very compact font – making it possible to focus on one thread, but maintaining peripheral awareness of (and one-click-focusability) on all others?
Added: I see that there is some sort of click-to-focus, but thus far the logic of its effect eludes me.
A little security flaw ;)
http://bit.ly/eN40yI
Edit: Using a bit.ly link, since HN's URL parser is leaving out the closing ].
Edit: But yeah, my bad for not noticing that earlier. I've swapped it out for a bit.ly link now, so it works properly. I'm headed to sleep. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_scripting
http://fluin.com/?search=Search%22%20onclick=alert%28documen...
Since you're using PHP, I recommend you use a function like htmlspecialchars here rather than whatever kind of filtering you're doing.
Other than that, super cool concept!
If the mouse has focus on a post, it should stop the scrolling. (roll over or input selected)
Also, I think there should be a timer to auto hide comments from a root node, so only recent posts show the nested trail. This will stop the page from getting giganto
-make hyperlinks clickable.
-the top menu bar is hard to click -- make the surrounding whitespace clickable as well.
-on http://metal.fluin.com/, if I click the black large font text on a list item, it should expand the thread all ajaxy.
-give anonymous users names like "user14232" or gravatars so we can see conversation threads/replies. no-register account! track them with cookies, it's ok. some people will get riled up, but not your users, because they'll think it's fun.
[Also take into consideration any comments on gender, location, time, etc.]