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To Be

to.be

146 pointsof57 comments

I feel like someone spent a lot of money on the domain and then subsequently tried to work out what the hell to do with it, "pivoted" a number of times, and somehow ended up with... whatever the hell this is.

It looks stupid now, but in retrospect twitter and instagram looked stupid as well. It's the kind of startup that either fails horribly or explodes in usage inexplicably.

Myspace and Geocities had a baby? But they're both dead?

More like Google Wave and Google Docs had a baby.

This is interesting, but the front page is rather cluttered and makes it hard to pay attention to the core message.

AdBlock Plus blocked this entire page, if anyone is seeing an entirely white page like I was.

So did noscript.

I temporarily allowed the domain and it was well worth the click.

Don't you expect most pages to be broken when using noscript?

Yes, but most are at least visible.

If I only have to allow one page, it's all good.

But then the first page wants to load from another 10 pages. I allow the non-tracker ones, usually two or three. Reload.. and they want to load from another 5 pages. I usually give up here since I'm not that interested anyway. Why the heck do you need code from over 15 external pages?

It is truly amazing how bloated most webpages are these days.

Yup - blank page. That's all I needed to know.

Perhaps the domain was previously used for serving ads and the block list needs updating.

Completely white page with NoScript, please add a <noscript> tag

That's a good idea. Why would someone downvote this?

Because it's silly to ask web developers to cater to a specific extension used by a marginal minority of people. Much better to use a more general method for when JS is unavailable.

And people using noscript or similar tools (like myself) should know by now when a page fails to check that first.

But the comment applies to anyone who's not using JavaScript in their web browser.

Although I like programming in JavaScript, there's many people I know that consider JavaScript itself to be a silly extension of what a web browser should do.

many people I know !== many people

The percentage of people that considering JavaScript "to be a silly extension of what a web browser" is so small that it would be a rounding error in most charts.

Pretty nihilistic argument as the same is true for everything else mentioned on HN.

And many people, including those who made this website, consider Javascript to be an integral part of what a web browser should do.

Would you complain about a free video game if it only worked on playstation, and you had only an xbox but still refused a free playstation?

But a noscript just tells someone that they are missing out on something. A "hey, disable noscript or enable JS so you can see the page." deal.

Hackers news work perfectly fine without JavaScript.

JS should be an enhancement to improve UX, but not a doorstopper for search engines, web scrappers, and blind people.

Hacker News is a fairly simple site for this use case. It works. However I would not say that it is perfectly fine.

Try upvoting with js disabled. The page has to do an entire refresh. That could be a doorstopper for people with limited data plans or with spotty network coverage.

2005: Yep.

2010: Ehh, JS is useful sometimes.

2015: Lol no.

Funny, I'd put that in the exact opposite order. Back in the day there were taskbars, popups, visitor counters and what have you, JS was mostly an annoying gimmick. Today it's about actual site functionality, it's pretty fast and (generally) sandboxed.

Derp, phrasing. I meant exactly that. :P

"...JavaScript itself to be a silly extension" "lol no"

Thinking of modern browsers as just document viewers is silly. They're built to be extremely capable javascript runtimes.

A <noscript> tag is the more general method.

Not everybody knows they're using noscript.

Like my friends when they borrow my laptop, for example.

This page follows a typical JavaScript antipattern of not showing anything to search engines, web scrapers and people who block JavaScript.

A noscript tag sould at least tell me, what the site offers when enabling JS, to give me a reasont to enable JS.

And it takes ages to load on a normal DSL line. I dont want to know how slow this page is when browsing with a cell phone.

I just checked. This page not only requires JavaScript, but also a Desktop environment. There is no drag and drop on my computer.

I'm thinking modern art, make no sense, have fun, be "strange", create something raw and unique... yeah. Some people will have fun with this I'm sure. Not for me at this moment in life though, but that shouldn't matter to anyone.

Cheers

What exactly is this? It looks to me like a multiplayer vaporwave-inspired shirt maker.

My advice is the demo video should show something compelling being created not a bunch of completely random nonsense that does nothing to evoke any kind of connection with anyone. Presumably you created this with this Hamletesque title to create memorable "Internety" experiences. Show one. Otherwise I think it is hard to understand. Sure, someone else could probably create something much better than is in that video but if even the creator can't create something compelling ... its a bit weird. Just my advice. It is an interesting drawing tool, otherwise.

I thought the same thing. Was wondering why the lack of anything substantial created. They made a video. Could have made a more complete project with their product for the video. :)

Regardless, cool idea.

Target group:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seapunk

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=%22seapunk%22

It's like a hipster Web 2.0 version of YTMND.

Maybe I'm overreacting b/c this aligns with my interests pretty directly but this is outrageously cool + well-executed. And better yet looks like there's already a bunch of interesting users on there.

Completely eliminates the technical barriers to creating this type/genre of net art so it's gonna be interesting seeing the effect that has alone

How long has this been around?

to.be has been around since 2012 / 2013. I'm glad you think it's cool.

The domain to.be has a long history in Belgium (.be is the CcTLD for Belgium). Before and around 2000 it was one of the most popular websites there, it was literally the place.to.be. I always liked the domain name, it was clever and with lots of potential. At one stage it was a well-known chat site, but a succession of pivots and different owners led to a obscure existence. And now it somehow resurrected as a t-shirt printing company based in the US.

The concept was a lot more interesting to me than the implementation. I thought I would end up being able to view a and click bunch of masked, active HTML items, instead it seems to bake it down into a single image. Editing tools looked neat, but "print on a T-shirt" was the last thing I expected, and a disappointment.

Hmm, I'm not sure what you mean by 'bake it down into a single image'. You should be able to drag around the HTML elements on the field, if you've made an account and are working on your own field, or pulled it from someone else.

I haven't had a chance to read through some of the source, but does anyone know how the photo editing is done? Are there libs to handle those effects?

Safari 7.1, no extensions: blank page. Firefox 34.0.5, clean install: blank page. Chrome 39.0.2171.99, clean install: blank page.

Looks like a great site to make dank memes with.

Love it. A free form virtual world. Been wanting to build one of these for a long time.

Somehow, I'm not sure how, you've crippled the scrollbar on my browser :S

|| !

or not (to be)?

Could be used to create "mood boards" for games, stories, art

Who owns the content?

The terms are here: http://to.be/terms

There's a long section on "Ownership" that I don't fully understand, but you can interpret if you're interested.

IANAL, but seems like a typical clause. Essentially you hold the copyright, but you agree to give them a perpetual license to do whatever they please with the stuff you submit (including allowing other users to incorporate it in their own works).

Tumblr will love it! ;)

Well done! clap

I don't get it.

No snide. The fact that most here don't get it makes me think this project will be, at least, moderately successful.

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