HN Explorer

74 comments

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looki
Neat, but shouldn't it show the commits first to last?
artemave
It is a git log viewer. So it follows `git log` behaviour.
Scriptor
I'd still like a way to see it first-to-last, if only to get the combined nostalgia from seeing those first commits and from the music.
artemave
A lot of people requested it. Hence `reverse` option is on my todo list.
masukomi
They don't seem to actually get any smaller (faux perspective) as they scroll up, they just scroll up and fade out... :/
kaoD
I definitely see the letters getting smaller. Chrome Stable here.
jaredmcateer
Chrome Version 27.0.1453.12 dev Ubuntu 12.04 also not seeing the effect, though I did on my windows machine (running latest stable)
ajanuary
It uses css 3d transforms. Maybe your browser doesn't support that?
grimman
Performs as expected in Firefox release channel (20.0.1).
aidenn0
I don't either (Chromium 25)
seivan
Surprisingly funny. :) I wish the url changed so one could link someone. Solved now, but it should be added.
artemave
Just changed it so you can specify user/repo in hashtag: http://starlogs.net/#rails/rails
mmahemoff
Nice, but please consider switching to HTML5 history (pushState). It's just as easy and a lot cleaner. Especially that you can use popstate to let people switch the URL.

It's amazing anyway.

mcrittenden
If he were to use pushState for this, wouldn't he need a .htaccess (or other means) to point all requests to index.html? Meaning it's not just as easy?
mmahemoff
Yes, it is a bit more config on the server. The site can still be a FD at JS client though, you just need to make sure all paths link to it.
Tobu
It's also easy to get broken behaviour (on one site I use the url is updated without a new history entry, and even on GitHub the page sometimes gets desynced).
spuz
It would be great if this worked on private repos.
aroman
Well then it wouldn't be very private, would it? I mean if you're trusting this website with your commit logs, presumably they would also have access to all of your source code...

I guess it depends on your needs for privacy.

mschuster91
You'd have to grant starlog read-access to your repos for that.
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muan
AWESOME. I am surprised that I found this funny, though it doesn't seem to work with user url, does it?
honigbeutler
it does you have to kill the spaces between name / repo to name/repo
rhapsodyv
Great!!! Now I can convince my boss to change from svn to git! :D
antimora
except that it does not work on private repos =(
mschuster91
I literally fell from the chair due to laughter. Brilliant.
JiPi
Hahaha, awesome! Made me laugh out loud, alone, in my home office! :)
codecurve
From now, every time I create a new repo, the first commit message is going to be "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away".
jaredmcateer
Unfortunately it seem to scroll from newest to oldest
NickNameNick
Continually rebasing a shared repos to keep the 'A long time ago ...' message at the top would probably be a bad idea
tterrace
This is very cool. I also just noticed a neat quirk - if you switch tabs (I'm on chrome) the animations pause but the timer to show the text keeps ticking. So all the text bunches up at the bottom until you switch back at which point the text blob starts to fade out all together.

The page visibility api: http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-page-visibility-20110602/ might be able to help with that.

kpreid
Not a bad idea to respond to visibility, but to solve the blob problem it would be better to explicitly synchronize text creation and text position. This is basic in game/simulation programming: you don't want the rules of the game to change depending on the performance of the computer — it may be slower, but it should be internally consistent.

For example, have a single, explicit 'scroll position' or 'time' variable (they're equivalent in this case), increment it on a timer, and insert new text when (time mod N) rolls over.

alan_cx
I was hoping I could bung in any url and see the text scrolling, like a BBC.co.uk news item, or something. Was looking forward to reading the news in that format. Especially with the music. It kinda seemed appropriate for a certain huge UK story...
graywh
I don't like how it joins the summary line and the explanatory text with just a space. I'd recommend preserving blank lines in the commit message as line breaks.
autotravis
This is awesome! Is the entry box for the repo supposed to go away once it finds it? It stayed there, covering the text in Chrome 27 dev on Arch... It would be cool if it disappeared.
artemave
It does on Chrome 26.0.1410.65 (osx) or Firefox or Safari

Perhaps it is because of switch to blink? Anyway, forewarned - forearmed. Thanks!

BHSPitMonkey
I had that problem on Chrome 26.0.1410.63 as well. If you refresh the page (or just go directly to the URL that gets produced after you specify a repo), it won't be there.
UncleBill
I was so excited when the music began!!!
cheshire137
Tried giving it both my Github user name as well as the URL to my Github profile. It "couldn't find the repo" in both cases. :/
rkuykendall-com
It wants it in the format username/repo, not just username. So for example, rkuykendall/Simplici7y or moneypenny/GithubFacebook
pkamb
I took that to mean "username or repo".
tobych
Yeah, that happened to me on the first couple of tries. I parsed the '/' as meaning 'or', but of course it means a slash, here.
wubbfindel
This would be a great way to read headings from an RSS feed!

Wonder if the feedly guys would consider it as a hidden view?