The Uncatchable | Hacker News Reader

The Uncatchable

bbc.co.uk

125 pointsAlexMuir27 comments

15 comments and no ones bothered to say anything about the content of the article. So let me be the first to say that I love this guy! He's what the public wanted Dillenger and Jesse James to be. He hasn't killed anyone in all these years and literally steals from the rich and gives to the poor. A+

Being from Greece, with roots in Kalambaka, which is where Palaiokostas still probably lives, the money he gives to the poor is an insurance policy and makes a nice story, but it is totally immaterial compared to what he stole from the rich. Also, he himself has not killed as far as we know, but his "associates" were quite ruthless, especially Rizai who was convicted for paid executions.

Don't forget that he even further destabilizes the economy and costs the people a lot of money through policing, federal insurance of banks (or whatever system Greece uses), etc.

After a few paragraphs I said to myself "this looks like a criminal hagiography." Seems like it worked.

I know. I've considered proposing (in as much as one can 'propose'; Ask HN, perhaps) a secondary 'meta' comment collection for each article for this reason.

I do get it. HN has a lot of Web devs/designers and website look and feel is something they're passionate and opinionated about. But I do find it a little irritating when discussion about the content of a submission is drowned out by complaints about scrolling.

Thoughts?

Websites are coming closer and closer to the parodies from sci-fi movies. They're not the equivalent of a newspaper anymore, they're closer to a through the door leaflet.

Some websites used to have a link to a printable version, can we now have a link to a human readable version, please?

I fail to see anything heroic or noble about stealing, no matter what reason and from whom. Anyone who had anything stolen from them will understand that it produces a huge feeling of insecurity in your own home(or about being in your own town), no matter how small or cheap the stolen thing was. Yeah, great that he hasn't harmed anyone while stealing - I still have absolutely no respect for what he was doing.

I love this design! It pops.

Not sure what folks are having an issue with regarding scrolling. Works fine on Chrome, UBuntu + XMonad

Wow, again a page that messes with the scrolling experience? What's up with that? Terrible user experience.

What enviroment are you on?

From my experience, if someone is complaining about scrolling then they're on OSX with inertial scrolling. It really is a pain when websites take control of the scroll positions.

Firefox@Ubuntu14. I think it works as intended by the designer it just irritates me that some images will stand still while scrolling.

What's with the negative comments about the scrolling? It works fine either drag-mousewheel scrolling, flicking the mouse wheel, dragging the scroll bar on the right, or using a trackpad.

The main content, the text, scrolls as normal thoughout, using any preferred method.

No issues on firefox running on xubuntu.

Firefox V. 26.0

Ubuntu 13.04

It was actually very pleasurable as the pictures on the sides would change and the occasional full screen pictures. It's a shame it's such a pain to develop cross browser cross platform modern websites. This one was done well where it works.

No issues with my mouse with a regular scroll-wheel or my Magic Trackpad (god that's a dumb name) in Firefox 32 on OS X.

Pretty severe visual stutter in Safari on OS 10.9.2. The page also fires up my laptop fan.

I liked it, there was one bad case where the background was newspaper text. Chrome on Mac and there were no performance problems.

presented by the Unscrollable

I had some trouble going from section 2 to section 3, but I found that by clicking on the number 3 in the header I could progress.

I agree. Great story, terrible scrolling.

I don't like the format either but I was able to scroll without a problem using Firefox. What browser are you using?

Chrome renders much of the story's text behind images. I think, anyway. It's not a fluid story.

It renders fine in Chrome 36 on my Windows machine here.

Disabling all CSS makes the article very readable. Welcome to the modern web!

I might be alone in this but I found it easy to navigate. I'm on a laptop but I expect this would be really nice on a tablet.

Not sure what people are talking about, really, the scrolling is basically unchanged. The native scroll bar exists and is 100% functional. Page-up/down/space just works, seemingly without involving Javascript or anything, and with no delay.

I could select and copy paste the entire text! How refreshing.

The top navigation bar is unobtrusive, functional, and the links are actual anchors, no javascript involved and ready for sharing. In fact, the whole page renders fine (with very minor feature downgrading) with Javascript disabled.

And it looks fantastic on both a 24" desktop screen (Chrome and Firefox) and on a 4" mobile screen, with a typically less-optimised-for browser (Mobile Firefox) to boot. I'm enjoying the high-res, screen filling photos.

Printing doesn't work well, but I think we've all moved on (and like I said, copy paste does work). I can't say for sure how accessible it is, one would think the BBC has some sensitivity for that issue.

Honestly, I think it's fantastic. On the other hand, it looks so polished I haven't even started reading it.

Credits say it's built with this: http://shorthand.com/

Good find.

Interestingly, the Shorthand (TM) homepage has noticeable scroll jank near the bottom on my 2012 Macbook Air (Chrome), whereas the BBC site scrolls smoothly as far as I read (part 2/3 I think).

The BBC have done an exceptional job for my platform. :)

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