Thoughts on my site ? | Hacker News Reader

Thoughts on my site ?

pushtruth.com

1 pointzanek9 comments

So I just finished the first alpha version of an idea I had. Let me know what you all think of it, or have any suggestions, questions, comments.

Here is the description of the site:

PushTruth.com is a real-time content site that allows users to post articles, pictures, video and music. Users can vote on the items submitted and see hot stories grow in real-time, or unpopular stories strink. Users can also zoom in & out to view smaller items. Stories can be posted in the future also (eg: a press conference to be released on YouTube 2 days from now). Users are also able to drag the main interface as well.

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I really don't know what I'm looking at. An aggregator of some sort, but why is is layed out like this? It's not obvious to me.

Try again, without using Flash!

Thanks for the comment. Flash was necessary for a number of aspects of the site (most notably, the zooming features). I definitely understand people having an aversion to Flash, but there are lots of things you can do with Flash that arent possible with HTML/AJAX/etc

I'm sorry to be so brutally honest, but a lot of those things you can't do with HTML/CSS/JS are things you really shouldn't be doing at all. Full-page flash breaks usability in so many ways. It completely kills accessibility. It makes things run very slowly. It means I can't open links in new tabs. The only method of scrolling (clicking to drag) is not at all obvious. I could go on.

The usability (or rather, lack of it) is its biggest problem right now. There are additional design issues, but they're practically irrelevant at this point.

Actually, I think the site would only benefit from losing the zooming along with most other effects. Sorry to say this (as you definitely spent a lot of time on them), but the effects make the site look like someone's first experience with PowerPoint.