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Comment by svnsch | Hacker News Reader

Hey HN!

Over the past few months I've been coding my first side project (Nuxt Frontend, Django Backend). It's been quite a learning experience tumbling down the rabbit hole of web development, as a data scientist. Nomad Visa is a database of tourist visas and visas suitable for digital nomads, remote workers, founders and expats.

More and more countries issue special visas for digital nomads to stay in their country for an extended period of time though they often come with high income requirements or high fees. Therefore, Nomad Visa allows you to compare all types of visas that are eligible for remote workers.

Let me know what you think.

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I get the intention of the website. I also do like your design. I just don't think the information is helpful as it is represented right now as others has also commented already.

You are supposed to start by selecting a country. Let's say "Australia". Your website tells me: Tourist Visa: Tourist Visa. With a general link to https://nomadvisa.io/australia Working Holiday Visa: Working Holiday Visa. Besides these two visas the whole Australia is filled with information that doesn't concern Visas at all, but the country itself.

Either I have not understood what information the website shows or the information isn't there. You state I "can compare all types of visas" - what comparison can I do by knowing "Tourist Visa" and "Working Holiday Visa". Can I compare these somehow to different countries?

In a recent Firefox on Windows there's no text visible. None at all. As if its color was set to 'transparent'.

The culprit appears to be "Atkinson-Hyperlegible" in font-family. If it is commented out, text becomes visible. The TTF [1] is recognized and rendered by Windows Font Viewer just fine (though in a dear need of hinting), though I'm not sure if Firefox uses Windows native font rendering engine or has its own.

[1] https://nomadvisa.io/_nuxt/fonts/Atkinson-Hyperlegible-Regul...

Oh damn, thx. Found this font on a website of a nuxt-package and it's supposed to be a well readable font even for people with limited eyesight. Guess not if it's not shown at all... Suggestion? Use a regular font or adjust browser-specific?

Doesn't seem like there's any compelling reason to use a webfont at all for this; the default sans-serif would be fine.

Or you could use a font-family list that includes a few specific Windows and Mac fonts that you like, with the generic sans-serif as a fallback in case none of them are present.

It's 6 hours later and the issue is still there.

Should be done! Thanks for your hint.

Feedback: This looks very interesting but it's unclear what the site is really listing. For example I select Germany. How does it know whether I need a visa or not to work in Germany, it hasn't even asked for my country of origin?

I love the site!

Not sure if this is the feedback you were looking for but I noticed its a bit slow though. I would look at the GET to https://api.visum.so/api/country_data/

It returns all countries data which is slow and uncompressed. Either hit it once and keep it in memory so you can switch countries easily, or better yet break it up to api/country_data/<country> and just send back the info for that country

I would also get rid of stripe if you're not using it yet.

Yes, great feedback, thx! I really need to adjust the API, calls and cache. As this is the first website i have ever built, i still have a lot to learn.

That endpoint actually is already being properly cached at Cloudfront's edge and is compressed so it could be a lot worse

edit: Just noticed this gives a Server Error btw: https://nomadvisa.io/betteruptime

This is still pretty good and incredible considering its your first site. You have a great design sense and concept. The rest you'll get. There's more or less a right way to do the eng stuff which you'll figure out.

Huh, something is blocked on my browser (even using incognito mode with no ad-blocking extensions) that all I see are empty rectangles, the text are all invisible...

It should work fine even though the traffic is high currently

Very bad UX. Site is constantly (slowly) reloading on mobile and instead of showing the details always somehow brings you back to start screen.

It would benefit greatly by using js more sparingly

Cool site!

Out of curiosity, where's your personal favorite places to be a digital nomad in? Also do you list places with a specific digital nomad visa like the new one in Costa Rica which lets you stay for an entire year? (Didn't see this yet!)

https://nomadvisa.io/france centers the map on the French Caribbean rather than the main landmass in Western Europe

Why are tourist visas shown for people who want to work in another country?

Depending on the country, you may be able to work remotely while on a tourist visa. This is true, for example, in Mexico. The tourist visa allows you to stay in the country for up to six months and you aren't allowed to work for a Mexican company but they have no issues with you working for a company in another country.

Many times they're actually "temporary visitor" visas or something like that. Which, as you say, typically prohibits working for a local company, otherwise use local resources, etc. But I've attended business events all over the world. With just a few exceptions, e.g. China, there's never been any question of getting some special visa--which usually requires letters of introduction and so forth--to do whatever combination of business and pleasure I'm there for.

That said, I'll note that e.g. Indonesia 30 day visa-on-arrival seems to theoretically be only for non-business purposes but when I've gone there's never been any question of using anything else.

Some tourist visas allow you to stay quite long in a country. Of course it's illegal to work in a foreign country on a tourist visa. I added a note in the bottom of the filter section on remote work with a tourist visa. Maybe make in more prominent? The issue is also mentioned in the FAQs.

My initial suggestion would be to at least list it below work visas - it caught me off guard to see it at the top on a website about working :)

I really like the site design, by the way! Did you use anything to achieve the consistent look?

Thank you! You are right and I adjusted it. I use Vuetify which is a great design framework for Nuxt/Vue.

When looking at United States EB-5 Visa I get "ReferenceError: chosenVisa is not defined"

this should have the UK Tech Nation visa. https://technation.io/visa/

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