Show HN: A Handcrafted Web
scrollkit.com
scrollkit.com
- Thought I was saving the page from the Settings drop-down where it shows me the URL to my site and says "Update", rather than the "Done" button to the top right.
- Expected to be able to drag-and-drop the images to the canvas so I could do it en mass instead of click them, then have the clipart stick to my cursor until I dropped it/resized it before going back into the images panel.
- Not being able to see that the elements have styles attributed to them without clicking into them is kind of rough.
- Outlining an object by a bounding-box instead of the shape of the object can get confusing when you have multiple layers.
- In the layers drop-down, everything is listed as a "Text" element. Some without any description (shape preview would be nice). Should be able to delete the object after selecting it from within this panel too.
- I think the layout would be easier/more familiar for people if the top bar options were vertically-aligned to be a toolbar, and if the user actions bar at the bottom was up at the top right. Have a separate floating box or one that comes in from the right side for when you select an object that has attributes/FX to fiddle with.
- You can see the code but not edit it?
- Just realized where the background editor was. That should be a part of the primary toolbar.
Otherwise really interesting, would be great for creating quick instruction manuals and simple product pages. Like someone else mentioned, I am waiting on ReadyMag for this kind of publishing tool, but I like where things are headed here moreso than some other editors I've come across.
We did have the toolbar vertically-aligned before, but found that it got in people's way a lot more when they were trying to design the page.
Also, I'm kate@scrollkit.com if there's anything else you come across, this stuff is super helpful for us.
And then you say "use our stuff instead".
[Facebook part ] Hmm… ok…
[GO SLOWER ] Yeah!
|----- .... ---- | YEAh!
|.. ..... ------- .| YEAH!
[Make it meaningful] Yeah!
|.. ..... ---- .. .| YEAH!
[Join ] Wait… what? Join… your app?
FUCK.THAT.
I feel your message would be more honest if you went for an approach like WordPress did: with an open-source tool. You make money by providing a hosting platform for the less technically inclined.
And think about it. Wordpress actually did revolutionize publishing.
To clarify a bit: I am annoyed not by what the product is, but by the way it's marketed.
And I'm glad that you think its worth buying but we're not for sale.
"make them scroll" ... um, no. The increasing number of pages that are requiring vertical scroll to be useful loses the great usability/accessibility of the "above the fold" method of pages. Even with the improvements in scrolling over the past decade (scroll wheel mice and scrolling gestures), it's still a chore that makes the "cost" tradeoff of some sites (including, I'll admit, this one) to be "not worth the effort."
From the article you linked: "[P]eople used the scrollbar on 76% of the pages, with 22% being scrolled all the way to the bottom
That's a low enough conversion rate for certain page types that it may not always be worth the effort. If I want something, I'm happy to scroll, but if I'm browsing, there had better be a good value proposition in doing so.
"Another eye-tracking study conducted by CX Partners
confirms that people do scroll if certain design
guidelines are followed"
Jakob Neilsen (who was mentioned in the article you linked) also comments on why scrolling might be less of a good idea [1]:
"scrolling ... can be difficult for users with motor skill impairments."
"Low-literacy users can't easily reacquire their position in the text
after it moves.
"Elderly users often have trouble getting to the right spot in scrolling
menus and other small scrolling items.
Hmm. You might want to check the notions of:
1) opportunity cost 2) outlier
For them, they like good information (or entertainment) and they really like the personal touch to things. If the information is interesting, they like to know more about the individual behind these pages. and a lot of these people like the handcrafted touch of "older" websites, that do not look all alike (wp, svbtle, octopress, et al).
So maybe the product is interesting for some of the people, who are not skilled in designing individual pages, but want non the less to publish on the web.
Just my experience with the 99% of people, that are not hackers, professional bloggers or net-savvy-people. Me, I'm going to stay with nanoc [http://nanoc.stoneship.org/] and jekyll [https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll] and for the time being (until redesigns are finished) wordpress.
A lot of people and companies do make money on this, but I see the creation of rich structured data as good for everyone. We can better learn from and engage with well structured collective knowledge.
For one, the technology that allows this coupling of design and copy has been slowly maturing and at times has been very cumbersome. In the past, sites that tried to break the tabular, "only text" mold were often slow to load and broke without third party libraries.
As internet speeds improved so did third party support and the design process for this new technical media. The interoperability of the technologies could still lead to a lot of pain when developing for everyone and doing so in a fashionable way.
Now, we're at that fork where everything has matured enough that it's opened up the ability to infuse more character and creativity into our designs and the technology allows the feasibility. However, I think there's still a gap. There's a gap between the idea and the effort required in order to achieve it. There is still transition between the idea, the design and the realization and often we see a loss of inspiration as it comes to that fruition.
I think there is still headway to make on the fluidity and experience of the digital domain. That visceral reaction that many of us enjoy when rifling through the pages of a book or glancing through the glossy pages of a magazine have yet to be duplicated, even if this site makes a great stab at it. To remove the consciousness of the square portal of emitted light is going to be the next frontier though.
Yet still, might be quite attractive for hipster sapiens.
We could do with a return of the GeoCities self-made-page aesthetic (with improved aesthetic sense, of course) on a web where everything on the big sites is neatly templated and identical in layout. Amidst all the consistency, I've been missing the touches that used to make personal sites unique. All people do on their blogs now is throw on funny pictures; the format/layout is never broken, or it simply can't be.
This is a good reminder to us to break the mould whenever we feel it's appropriate (or whenever we feel like it).
For whatever reason, we keep having to relearn the "angry fruit salad" lesson over and over: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/A/angry-fruit-salad.html
I wonder how advertising would work on the web if you didn't have omni-present ads but instead sometimes the viewport contained no ads, sometimes it contains big huge ads that take up the entire viewport (like a full-page ad in a magazine). Would that make up for them not being visible at all times? Anyone tried this?
Similar, but not the same. That's more like sticking an ad on the cover of a magazine. If you are presented with content, then have to scroll past an ad I think the experience might be better. Currently we live with sidebars that contain omni-present ads.
Not trying to defend the practice of ads like they are today, but thinking twice brings one thought to my head:
Why recreate the style of an old medium in a new one. When the printing press was developed - for the first decades books just looked like before. looked like they were handwritten by scribes. Gradually books evolved into something more of their own.
So why build digital copies of magazine-layout? I really do not have a better solution - I am merely asking the question, that keeps bugging me all the time, when I think about the evolution of the web.
I'd like to play around with the app but the Team slide is causing my browser to hang.
Definitely hipster enough, but with a more professional European style than the NYU-Hipster Runoff style of ScrollKit. I personally prefer Readymag actually.
Originality is a rare occurrence these days. Why are you so surprised to find something similar to what you've built?
It does seem like many more people are building web design apps, that's all. I like it. This one seems like a decent start, i'll be keeping an eye on it.
I like what Edit Room tries to do but I think you need to look into finding a UX or UI person that understands web design/development because it is a little too geeky/subtle in implementation for the user that this is targeted for. However, I like how it focuses you in on the content and content-type before you get into designing around it.
One nice thing that's coming is being able to design for different screen widths with a built-in breakpoint tool that creates media queries for you from your design.
Isn't HN meant to be the kind of place to share this stuff? I love the philosophy behind it, I feel like these guys are having a serious crack at building something that ordinary designers can use to make really beautiful pages without needing to know how to code.
The design of that page is really compelling and tasteful. Neatly showcases what the platform can do while retaining your attention.
And as for the haters, all I can say is - if you made it to the bottom of the page then they are definitely doing something right. I'm sure if you were part of their target market the final flourish would work too and you would be keen to sign up.
It's sick
-- a twenty-something curmudgeon.
Throw me a bone: show me a bit -at least a video- of what you're offering before asking me to sign up.
Upon further investigation you can try the tool right on the page, I just didn't know this because there was no CTA for it, as there was no "See it in action!" CTA over the video. Startupers pitching your project to users: make it as simple as possible to see your value prop- don't make me work for it :)
There were probably similar things said about the shift from hand copied books to using printing presses.
Relying on the user scrolling I don't believe is a good idea, but the rest of it I definitely agree with.
Then again, I am very much at fault for talking too much and too quickly on twitter.
However, I'm not actually certain what your product does.
https://www.scrollkit.com/s/gBbcZ8v
(on an old version of Chromium, 6.0.472.63 - for some reason I am browsing on a stable Debian, but the rendering of css/tables on that version of Chromium seems pretty solid).
Aside from uncertainty, I did have a positive impression: these are pages that aren't instrumented with cruft around the edges, and that makes a huge difference.