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Comment by cookingrobot | Hacker News Reader

In response to this thread about how hard it is to see content on the campers shoe site: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4032486

We're experimenting with UI for browsing huge sets of options like shoes. What do you think? Refreshing or overwhelming?

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Scrollbars really need work. Seems like a clunky way to navigate

Basically you are showing just the pure output of data, which is great, but you need to incorporate a way for users to choose to filter this data. Usecase: I'm trying to decide between two shoes, one is on the top of the page, the other is near the bottom and there is a huge mess of noise between those two items of interest. Maybe put in an area to drag shoes of interest into, not necessarily a shopping cart. This way you can weed through the data and compare the most interesting items before making a purchase.

A direct link to the prototype: http://www.shopobot.com/shop

big queries here.. takes a bit to load.

I think: noscript unfriendly.

Then, it seems crowded. But that's what physical shops are like. Not sure if it's good or not.

Thanks for the feedback! Since we were experimenting with density here, it is fairly extreme. The verdict is out on whether the extra density is valuable when user are in real shopping scenarios.. That's what we'll be testing with different categories and tweaks.

Also please excuse the 5 second loading time.. it's still a prototype.

Throwing 500 error..

Thanks Ben - looking into this, and it should be up again now.

Vertical scrolling of the page is interrupted by the horizontal scrolling of each row of shoes. I consider that broken.

How about having big left and right button either end of each row?

I love the concept and execution. Can't see the demo but the blog speaks for it.

Thanks Eric. We'll work on performance and caching of these big queries in our next update so it can handle the spike in traffic. (this proof of concept was mainly meant for 1:1 user testing, and looks like we still have some query issues to sort out)

I love it. No friction.

Thanks! Did you try it with a trackpad/touch or mouse? Did you discover left/right scrolling?

yep. on macbook pro side scrolling was great... although i imagine that might be a bit unpleasant on less advanced trackpads or desktops.

I think the thumbnails are too small. They should be the size of the larger pic, and the larger pic should be as wide as my browser window, ideally.

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