Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#231

Post by codecurve » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

throwaway_bad wrote: post #132

FlorianRappl wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just saw three dependencies (arguably even less): https://www.npmjs.com/package/react Don't know how you reach your conclusion.

If you generate a typical react app with create-react-app, you get ~1000 dependencies in node_modules: `npx create-react-app some-app-name --typescript` (it was actually exactly 1000 dependencies which is freaking me out because the number was so round. wondering if it am counting lines wrong `ls | wc -l`)

And 997 of those are development tooling dependencies that are not included in the application that you eventually deploy.

Don't get me wrong, I would rather there were fewer development dependencies too, but they are tooling abstractions that you are _opting-in_ to.

If that is still a cognitive burden, then there's nothing to stop you using React a build step through a CDN.

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#232

Post by jetti » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 4:54 PM UTC

melvinroest wrote: post #21

This is a bit of an odd answer, even in a question that expects odd answers. That is because it sounds so normal, yet I have Googled for it and almost no one advocates for it. They do maybe advocate for it in terms of design, but I mean in making actual static websites. Enter Google Slides: the product for your uncle Joe and aunt Lysa to create their own websites without knowing how to code! I even have an example we…

My wife was actually going to do this for a website. She is a teacher and wanted a small site for her classroom so that the kids and parents could keep up to date with the goings on in the classroom and she wanted to use Google Slides for this since she has used it for work before. I was shocked and was trying to talk her out of it. At the end of the day, she decided the site wasn't necessary or worth the effort so nothing came of it but I couldn't believe she thought to use Google Slides for that.

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#233

Post by mzzter » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

Back in design school, web portfolios could get pretty interesting. One novel way was to put up a collaborative google doc with some initial info that visitors could edit.

An example of this was http://carlyayres.com/ though it has since been updated to a non-editable page.

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#234

Post by lykr0n » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

neurostimulant wrote: post #182

This library allows you to compile your winform C# gui app into a set of html, js, wasm and dll files and run them in the browser: https://github.com/roozbehid/WasmWinforms Completely blew my mind! Probably not practical but really make me wonder if anything is possible with webassembly.

I think I've seen this in use for the Travis County Tax Office, or at least the vehicle licensing part.

Looked exactly like a WASM app, but running in IE.

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#235

Post by carapace » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

I once made a calendar UI that used D3 to animate little circles that represented days. Switching from e.g. week to month caused the circles to flow to new locations. It had a pastel color scheme and it was really beautiful. Everyone who came into the office and saw it said things like, "I've never seen anything like this on the web." It was just eye candy really. It never saw the light of day. I begged them to put it in front of users or investors but no dice.

BTW, if you like ZUIs read up on Jef Raskin's "Humane Interface" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#236

Post by atrilumen » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

I'm not ready to show it yet (#FML), but my interface renders everything in threads, including graphical controls, which yield messages.

Nothing happens outside the context of a thread. So it leaves a log of everything that happened in that context. Graphical elements can go full-screen... but you don't lose connection to the thread that they appear in.

It will tile these threads across all your (funky, heterogeneous) screens.

I think this will help you to organize things, and homogenize and simplify your experience with those things across devices.

Imagine actually knowing where everything is, and being able to see who, when, and why anybody touched it.

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#237

Post by hmhrex » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 5:09 PM UTC

thewway481 wrote: post #4

it's just a proof of concept, but this web site discussed a few weeks ago absolutely blew my socks off: discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20929801 site: https://3dforreddit.com/r/pics From a comment: " How to use it Desktop: Click to start, WASD and mouse to move Mobile: Dragging on left half of screen is move, right have is look Append any subreddit to the url to switch subreddits " It should work in…

This is amazing. Thank you for this.

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#238

Post by haolez » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 5:10 PM UTC

NoGravitas wrote: post #177

grenoire wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main reason is because you have to build your entire back-end based on the assumption that you are using intercooler. It requires the responses to be formatted HTML for anything more complex than changing the content text. It ends up making the whole approach much more complex than it is advertised.

No, you really don't. What you do, is you write your back end based on the assumption that you have no JS at all, using a server-side MVC framework like Rails or Django or ASP.NET MVC. Make sure that your controllers and views are well-factored and that you're using partial views where appropriate. It's then almost trivial to apply intercooler to the front-end. In a lot of cases, you don't have to change anything at…

Would you still use it today? Sometimes I would like to write simple web apps behind a login page, but the complexity of mainstream frameworks (and their build systems!) makes it not worth it to me.

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#239

Post by seph-reed » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 5:13 PM UTC

gameswithgo wrote: post #113

enlyth wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says everyone on HN while relying on these weird UIs to do their job daily.

Yeah and I hate that I have to rely on them. They are usually terrible.

They're terrible because Google and Facebook keep swinging their weight around and everyone is following in suit. The actual web specs are actually pretty awesome and can do amazing things with reasonable efficiency.

Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?

#240

Post by cr0sh » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

namrog84 wrote: post #7

Go spend 5 minutes here on pc desktop. http://cyberspaceandtime.com/Gaano9Y6KAU.video+related I came across this site a few weeks ago. And it's quite unlike anything I've seen. And try to inspect the site using browser inspector. It's a very different ui than I've ever seen before.

Seems completely broken in Firefox and Safari, and mostly broken in Chrome/Chromium - just what browser does the site work with?