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Comment by chadillac | Hacker News Reader

I post a 1 line solution that lets you manage complex application state changes in responsive layouts and deal with gui conflicts across responsive designs using pure CSS/LESS and don't get a single upvote.

This guy posts that HTML is fluid by default with a couple lines of CSS and gets 20 votes.

HN, I really don't understand what the hell is going on here anymore.

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Your post probably wasn't noticed by the right eyes. There's a lot of content being posted to HN these days.

It's not a personal attack. HN doesn't have a campaign against you (or if there is one, I wasn't invited).

Nah I don't assume anyone is avoiding upvoting out of spite or anything, but I just thought HN as a whole was technically more advanced than most other communities because of the user base and niche ... so it leaves me scratching my head.

I've actually been surprised by this assumption - while the community in general sways to the heavily technical side of things; there are plenty of entrepreneurs, idea men, new developers etc - which is great, but definitely something to keep in mind with regard to what the community might find interesting.

I've noticed a definite upswing in nontechnical (management, strategy, gossip/politics, worldnews) articles during weekdays in the last couple of years. There are also many more 'redditlike' comments in the last 6 months to 1 year- jokers, puns, easily googlable questions etc. HN community is just changing in that direction as the audience grows.

Are you talking about AFF.js? Because the link on that post is 404.

https://github.com/chadillac/MoshPit.js

I thought it might be that one instead, but I wasn't sure.

So why did Fluidity get more upvotes? Here's my opinion:

1. Fluidity had a better subject line - I knew immediately what it was about and I was very curious. Linkbait? Sure, but it worked.

2. Fluidity demonstrated the concept immediately on click through - I didn't need to muddle through a clever metaphor to figure out the concept. I saw it immediately.

3. Fluidity used a kitten. People like kittens unless they are bad people. - it may sound like I'm making a joke but I'm not. "Kittens" are any facial image that triggers what Konrad Lorenz referred to as Kindchenschema. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuteness It is a common trick in advertising and marketing. Fluidity uses it perfectly.

By contrast, MoshPit's README is complicated.

The density of the text alone is likely to be off putting to 90% of the intended audience. I gave it a serious read myself because I was curious about your question. I am still wondering what it is for.

To provide a bit more context, I have been a developer for more than 30 years. More of a hobbyist the last 10, but I regularly pick up new frameworks for fun. Last summer I ran through all the latest js frameworks (ember, angular, backbone, etc), so I'd say MoshPit is something I should be interested in but I'm not entirely sure why it matters to me.

Please know that this is not a reflection on you personally or on the project itself. I am just providing an opinion based on my impressions upon entering the page and trying to decipher what you were trying to accomplish.

I hope this helps.

I understand and I agree, I tried to spell it out as simply as possible and put the demos at the forefront for the project, but it's hard explaining a new approach to solve and old problem in a simple way without getting verbose.

I think I need a prettier demo with "tips" and "hints" about what exactly is different... 90% of people will click through the demo, see nothing they haven't seen before and move on, which is a shame.

Yep, taking the complex and making it simple is never easy.

Sometimes it's about dialing back on features. Sometimes it's about kittens.

Don't get frustrated though. Take each opportunity as a chance to learn and experiment.

I've often wondered what would happen if someone launched three identical projects on github with totally different approaches to marketing. I suppose one could compliance this with multiple versions of the README, but I'd go as far as testing different names too.

I suspect some may see this as a heretical approach to open source development, but it's naive to think that any group of people are somehow resistant to marketing techniques.

Anyway, the key is having a great product. Keep at it and eventually you'll be able to explain it in a single sentence that makes the concept instantly clear.

In this example, I'd say his title was more compelling, and more applicable to more people. Try reposting your link with a title that will appeal to more people? (read: link bait)

There's a lot of randomness. Don't take it personally.

i posted where scientists created "artificial hell" and not a single vote either... not tech, but still cmon

Same here, I posted the cure for Cancer ... But since it`s not a responsive web app ...

So, instead of just complaining, why not write a comparison here in this thread, and then we can give you the upvotes you think you deserve?

(and then we'll all be better off too!)

points = content quality + luck + being in the HN "in crowd" + cartel-like behavior of certain HN cliques (see previous term)

I'm highly interested, can you please post a link here? Thanks!

https://github.com/chadillac/MoshPit.js

Thanks! I'm checking it out.

I've come to a similar conclusion that using @media incantations only covers the basic cases, so any advanced web layout would need a mix of CSS and JS anyway (so we might as well have a solid JS toolkit help us keep things flexible and tidy).

Exactly, the problem becomes managing view logic in conjunction with @media queries. If you app fundamentally changes how it works and how it looks, you're stuck managing that logic in 2 places. You don't want to manage the view logic in JS and you can't manage the application logic in CSS without some kind of standard system. That was the goal for MoshPit, to integrate easily and allow management of both at the CSS layer.

You don't have to

     if (window.is_mobile() && this.$left_thing.css('display') == 'block') {
          this.$left_thing.hide();
          this.$right_thing.show();
     } else if (window.is_tablet() && this.$left_thing.css('display' == 'block') {
          this.$left_thing.css('left','-100px');
          this.$right_thing.show().css('left','0');
     } else if (i_hate_my_life) ...

Because managing it in the code, through QA, and receiving the email subject line:

"We're adding a new component to the application, it will only be shown like this when this thing is happening and on mobile it will be able to show here, but not here, only if this thing is shown, and since it' launches from this we'll need these things to do this."

Doesn't cause more nested if else switch case statements to further complicate the code.

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