A better Hackerbuddy | Hacker News Reader

A better Hackerbuddy

hackerbuddy.com

64 pointsilldave21 comments

I nominate myself for geekiest profile:

FYI, to get a monospace font, you have to wrap the entire thing in a <pre>. However, when displayed, line feed characters (\n) are converted to "\n<br>\n", which turns into three blank lines in a pre. So when editing, you need to make sure you use <br> and never any real \n's.

To start a line with spaces, you have to use " " when editing. You should also convert all double spaces " " to "  " if you want them to be displayed nicely.

That's how I lined things up in my profile.

The idea is that you select the PGP signed text, and then paste it into "gpg --verify". This works fine in Firefox and Chrome, but when you copy the data in IE, the clipboard version contains no \n chars. If I could have used <span> instead of <pre> this problem wouldn't have manifested. The profile editor wouldn't let me do that though.

I wish "copy" behaviour was consistant across browsers, when copying from a web page.

I am really impressed that you did that :)

I'll make sure when I'm updating the CSS to leave <pre> styled the same way it is - if I change anything that messes with your formatting, let me know - I don't want to break what you've done!

Thanks, but you shouldn't let one users profile dictate your sites styling. Feel free to break it. I'll just fix it if you do.

Hey, this is a great site. I hope it continues to gather a following.

I had an issue with the slider button (to help other hackers) it wouldn't let me move it to Yes. Tried on several machines/devices..hmm. I'll test it again at home.

It would be good to see a "live feed" of what people are searching for. It may help people to realise they have important skills they wouldn't have otherwise listed!

Thanks for the feedback - I know the slider doesn't work on the iPad, so it's definitely one to fix. Good idea about the live feed - I tried adding an auto-suggest bit but I couldn't get it to play nicely with the rest of the JavaScript, but it looks like it could be really useful, so I'll keep trying with it.

This is fantastic. Here is mine - http://hackerbuddy.com/users/2875

In fact, I'm adding it to my own laundry list of links on my blog and elsewhere. Really, great job and idea, and you implemented it well.

I love the very easy use of HTML editing on profiles, and I've already reserved my vanity url id (Dylan). Speaking which, it'd be fantastic if you could make the user profile url's /username (as others have commented). It would be more easily identifiable than a set of numbers, especially if you're building a network of hackers.

I also suggest adding even more social features. Not on par with a social network, but maybe forms for the typical information you'll find on a professional profile.

You did the back-end as well as the design, or it was a split effort with a hackerbuddy :p?

Thanks very much, glad you like it. I like the /username idea too so that's on my list of things to update (I'll make sure that everything redirects properly so you won't need to update your links if you don't want to).

I did the back-end as well as the front-end, although I cheated and based the design on a chopped-up Themeforest theme. I love Themeforest for things like this.

I think this is a really cool idea, especially as I am a remote worker. However, why the focus on startup hackers? Why can't any coder/designer get involved regardless of their workplace? This would be great for freelancers and small agency employees as well.

This is looking great Dave. I'm excited to see where it goes. Here's me: http://hackerbuddy.com/users/28

Thanks!

Cool idea, I hope it reaches some kind of critical mass!

One question though: what does the available/unavailable status mean? I'm unclear what the difference is, especially since anyone who would fill out a profile here is available in some form. You may want to add some clarification, I wasn't sure what to use that for.

Can you make searches return partial matches after exact matches? "General Advice" yields 49 results right now, while "Advice" yields only 3.

P.S. http://hackerbuddy.com/users/2863 here, if anyone needs help with CSS or marketing.

Nice idea, don't love the UI. I don't want to click on just thumbnails - some kind of one line pitch under each thumbnail would be nice.

Nice. Added me with details - http://hackerbuddy.com/users/2648

CakePHP? Is it scaling good for HN traffic?

It's running on Rails, and using Heroku - it looks like it's holding up fine (although if you have any issues or notice any errors or downtime, let me know)

You could make cooler routes like:

hackerbuddy.com/:user

/user/:user

Instead of using their user ID's.

But I god damn love this.

Ahha, thanks - and you're right, /:user would look cooler. I'll add it to my list of things to do.

I might add a quote from you to the homepage saying "I god damn love this", if that's ok?

Hahaha, do it!

It's basically an index of users against tags. I don't understand how this is helpful to me.

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