A Really Cool Style of Commenting | Hacker News Reader

A Really Cool Style of Commenting

djangobook.com

27 pointsjamiequint19 comments

I would like it better if the "Comments" box didn't obscure the content. Even on my 1680 by 1050 monitor, with the browser window scaled to full width, I cannot move the comments completely out of the way. If the main content area was aligned to the left side of the page, rather than having equal horizontal margins, I could easily fit the comments into the margin.

[Edit: it seems that I cannot type Unicode characters into a comment here...]

I like the immediate connection to context, but it has some sore-thumb-sticking-out flaws.

-As already mentioned, the expanded comment itself obscures the very context a system like this is designed to provide.

-It also obscures the comment unless you click on it, and provides very little reference for finding a comment you've already looked at, and that you want to see again. Telling your users too little about what they're clicking on and what they've already clicked on is breaking one of the most basic commandments of good web U.I. design.

Cool but it offers awful usability.

I agree, for reading comments its not very nice, but still the beginnings of something that could be really cool.

And it doesn't support IE7, and probably not IE6.

This comment system is inspired by a post on Jack Slocum's blog, entitled "WordPress Comments System built with Yahoo! UI" http://www.jackslocum.com/blog/2006/10/09/my-wordpress-comme...

Related: Commentpress (built as a theme for Wordpress) http://www.futureofthebook.org/commentpress/

So I've just been getting into Django and came across this. I can't recall seeing context based commenting like this anywhere before, pretty cool.

Patri Friedman's Seasteading (http://seastead.org/commented/paper/intro.html) has the same system. Much uglier, but the same idea.

Those comments don't show up in IE, just an FYI

They break after a while in Opera.

Django doesn't want feedback from IE users. Show me an IE user with something intelligent to say!

That might explain why Ruby on Rails is kicking Django's behind despite the fact that more people code in Python than Ruby

Have you seen trends? My echo chamber makes it seem like Django is growing quickly -- faster than RoR.

Are there good resources tracking this?

I'd be more interested in counting active developers than deployed sites. Trends on mailing list usage might be a good measure.

Oh come on let's get off our high horse and accept the fact that there will be people who are going to use IE no matter what. I believe it is our job as web developers ergo Hackers to try very very hard to make our software easy to use as much as possible and make it work on the widest variety of browsers as much as possible. Which means staying up late at night to find a way for our apps work on all major browsers including IE. When I develop I have four browsers open at the same time (FF, IE7, Opera and Safari). Yeah I know it pisses us off to no end when IE doesn't play nice (which will always do in some point). But I can't just go to sleep when I find a bug in my software...no matter how small or big it is.

"when I find a bug in my software"

Hrmm... for me, mostly it's a case of finding bugs in IE, and creating work-arounds in my own code.

dude, he was joking.

very interesting concept for embedded comments(check out viddler.com for some idea only with video) though agreed the usability could be improved. maybe list comments in a left column?

seen this used before for another project but for the life of me can't remember where... they standardized this comment system into an install even...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com