HN Explorer

46 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 99.9 ms ] thread
afry1
So cool! What a fantastically well presented piece. The simple step-by-step explanations of how to interact with and control the various function inputs left me feeling like I actually knew how to do something with it, which is a far cry from most interactive software playgrounds.

Well done.

couchand
This is really neat! Also, please don't hijack the back button if you're not going to do anything useful with it!
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
xhrpost
I really like these super simple but creative ideas. Lists.sh a few weeks ago landed there for me as well.
dylan604
does the binary one going from left to right feel odd to anyone else?
rickdeveloper
Here's one that goes from right to left:

  (2**(64 - i)) & (t*10)
dylan604
Nicely done! My OCD says things are back to normal now.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
oneeyedpigeon
As someone's whose math(s) isn't up to scratch, I find the HTML sliders aspect of this the least interesting. But I love the demonstration of what you can do with a simple equation — it reminds me of some of the things I've seen people do with pico-8, for example. This demo right here absolutely destroys my cpu, tho...
toqy
it also uses canvas, not actual html sliders
oneeyedpigeon
Oh yes — I see this comment in the source:

> in case you're wondering, i use a canvas instead of HTML sliders for consistent display across browsers

which makes the emphasis on sliders even stranger, to me.

a9h74j
Darn, I thought this was going to be my solution to outliers in scientific data plots.
squarefoot
Nice demo, but it pushes CPU usage from 1% to 17-20%, and could encourage the use of the wrong control for a given task. As an example, I've often seen on web pages check boxes (an input widget) used to represent read only boolean values where check marks would have been the correct choice.
have_faith
I think there's little risk of someone thinking this is a recommendation for a proper animation engine.
panzerboiler
Relax. It's a web toy inspired by another web toy. Nothing serious and nothing to be worried about. If you want to change the world for the better, fight against google, twitter, facebook, and their tracking ads networks. Those are the places where a serious amount of CPU cycles are wasted every second producing toxic matter. We need more creative (mis)uses of the web, not less.
squarefoot
I wasn't bashing the creativity, however it should be noted somewhere that it's not the optimal way to use those controls. Although it seem obvious to most of us, people looking for programming examples might take it more seriously. I recall a colleague back in the day (late 90s to early 2k, VB or possibly Delphi) telling me: "heh, I didn't know where to find a sorting function for this and that, so I dragged on the app form a visual component (grid, list etc) having a similar method, made it invisible, then copied data back and forth using its cell/list/array sorting method: problem solved". Different context as my colleague knew it wasn't an optimal solution, but you get the point. I'd also encourage more creative (mis)uses of the web, but possibly with some warnings attached just in case.
sph
This is not an app, it's not encouraging anything. Art isn't as interesting if you only do things the optimal way.
shdon
What controls? Those aren't sliders... it's an HTML Canvas. The only control there is a textarea to get the input formula.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
Squarex
Nice reference to the Slint's Spiderland.
brikelly
Guess the creator was a big Slint fan :)
dillondoyle
So cool. I like how didn't try to style slider input, it's hellish to get it to look nice across browsers.
chaosprint
This is really cool. Is the music video related to the slider or it's just visualization? Would be cool to convert the func into sound like this:

https://glicol.org/tour#meta1

Will look into the source code tomorrow.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
slightknack
I had a little too much fun...

    x>0.2-abs(sin(t*2))*0.05&&x<0.8+abs(sin(t*2))*0.05?(i%2?(min((x-sin(t%1.57)*0.3-0.5)*tan(-t%1.57)+cos(t%1.57)*0.3+0.5,(x-sin(t%1.57-1.57)*0.3-0.5)*tan(-t%1.57-1.57)+cos(t%1.57-1.57)*0.3+0.5)*0.4+0.5):(1-(min((-x-sin(t%1.57)*0.3+0.5)*tan(-t%1.57)+cos(t%1.57)*0.3+0.5,(-x-sin(t%1.57-1.57)*0.3+0.5)*tan(-t%1.57-1.57)+cos(t%1.57-1.57)*0.3+0.5)*0.4+0.5))):0.5
https://sliderland.blinry.org/#x%3E0.2-abs%28sin%28t*2%29%29...
sgtnoodle
log(tx)/2sin(x*t)/4+0.5

Has some pleasant aliasing effects.