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Ask HN: Please review my webapp (Streetread)

streetread.com

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Re: Ask HN: Please review my webapp (Streetread)

#72

Post by jfarmer »

iron_ball wrote: post #59
czstrong wrote: post #15

Incompatible Browser. I'm at a large Nation-wide law firm and stuck on IE6. I imagine there are Wall-Street corporationss that are also still using old browsers.

As a long-time Opera user, I can say that this incompatible browser landing page crap has got to go. Either bend over backwards to satisfy everyone, or gracefully degrade, or collapse entirely without a warning message -- but I'm using a perfectly competent browser and you're locking me out of your damn site. 0/10.

While true for Opera, it's rather generous to call IE6 a "competent browser."

Re: Ask HN: Please review my webapp (Streetread)

#73

Post by mstefff »

jfarmer wrote: post #72
iron_ball wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a long-time Opera user, I can say that this incompatible browser landing page crap has got to go. Either bend over backwards to satisfy everyone, or gracefully degrade, or collapse entirely without a warning message -- but I'm using a perfectly competent browser and you're locking me out of your damn site. 0/10.

While true for Opera, it's rather generous to call IE6 a "competent browser."

Good point. I know IE6 still has a decent user-base but I really felt I shouldn't spend the enormous amount of time necessary to make this site work with it. IE8 is due out soon and for web developers to continue supporting IE6 is the reason why its still around. I only wish more people would stop supporting it. Opera on the other hand is a great browser but I can't get jQuery to work correctly with it at all. And thats out of my hands in a way.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my webapp (Streetread)

#75

Post by j2d2 »

mstefff wrote: post #69
j2d2 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm willing to share this site with people I work with and can even get it to the people on our trading desk if you give me a way of getting feedback to you. BUT, don't be surprised if people look at it for five seconds and don't care. Finance people are some of the most impatient people I've EVER met and if your design isn't appealing, they'll ignore it. I'd focus on making the information people want jump out at th…

Thank you - that is very insightful. You can reach me at mike@streetread.com

Quick thing. Don't worry about alphabetizing the news sources at the top. Put them in order of importance and let users change this if possible. No one cares about fairness. It's about the best being at the tip of your fingers.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my webapp (Streetread)

#76

Post by iron_ball »

mstefff wrote: post #73
jfarmer wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true for Opera, it's rather generous to call IE6 a "competent browser."

Good point. I know IE6 still has a decent user-base but I really felt I shouldn't spend the enormous amount of time necessary to make this site work with it. IE8 is due out soon and for web developers to continue supporting IE6 is the reason why its still around. I only wish more people would stop supporting it. Opera on the other hand is a great browser but I can't get jQuery to work correctly with it at all. And th…

According to w3schools.com's browser stats -- which, by the way, are slanted toward people with an interest in web design -- IE6's share has only been dropping by about 1.5% a month for the last year, and is still around 26%. It's safe to assume IE6 support will remain completely unavoidable for any serious business, especially those pitching to a more traditional (read "technologically backwards") audience.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my webapp (Streetread)

#78

Post by mstefff »

ucdaz wrote: post #77

I would also add a voting feature. What did you use to write this? RoR?

I mentioned the voting issue earlier:

"I considered having this as a feature but didn't for two reasons. Since this is geared towards the investment community, I felt most serious investors don't care about community and what others think, and last, what's popular to some may not even be relevant to others in this industry."

The site is built on Drupal and jQuery.

Re: Ask HN: Please review my webapp (Streetread)

#79

Post by mthg »

j2d2 wrote: post #48
mstefff wrote: post #2

Hey, My latest web application went public today and I'd love to hear some input from everyone. The site is called Streetread. I've been dubbing it 'Google Reader meets Wall Street'. Streetread is a single-page ajax-driven interface that simplifies the process of gathering the large amount of news and data that flood Wall Street every day. The site aggregates the latest headlines from over 20 of the leading financial…

Most people in my firm (used to be one of the top wall st firms until, say, around march :) swear by bloomberg. So do the guys who bought us. You'll definitely need some sort of login system that allows chatting and a LOT more information if you wanna get these people off their bloomberg terms.

Hello to you there @ Bear Stearns. I'm a Bloomberg core infrastructure engineer, and I can second that. I can type in a symbol and type in a functional mnemonic, hit enter and see a news aggregate pertaining to a certain security, along with just about everything else you want to know about the security and/or the company underlying it. And of course Bloomberg messaging is a premier form of OTC trading. I understand this is most likely targeting the armchair investor (aka clueless speculator) although they should probably go to Vegas instead if they think they're going to make consistent returns picking stocks with their meager information.
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