Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#431

Post by dpark » Sat, May 14, 2016, 1:09 PM UTC

amorphid wrote: post #162

Grue3 wrote: post #151

Google Reader. There are no replacements that a) update fast enough, and b) allow search for free. I know, I tried all of them. Firefox had an amazing plugin called "Ubiquity", which was basically like command line for your browser and you could write custom scripts for it. It was seriously better than anything that exists today. They stopped developing it for some reason. Tab Groups is another feature that's now aba…

Have you tried Digg's RSS reader? I've been using it a bit lately, and like it well enough. http://digg.com/reader .

Digg reader randomly losses state and shows me days of stuff as unread again. I also frequently have to use "mark all read" to clear out the bolded feed name, even if there are no items shown. I've also seen it stop updating a feed for days and then suddenly showing a half dozen items.

I use Digg reader because it seems better than most alternatives, but it's not as reliable and consistent as Google Reader.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#432

Post by inanutshellus » Sat, May 14, 2016, 1:10 PM UTC

Firebug, before FireFox 30.

Developer Tools (and the skin-of-developer-tools that is Firebug 2) are markedly inferior. From breakpoint- and file-management to the functional limitations and missing features around dom management... I miss the Firebug that died in FireFox 29.

...

Here's what I'd like DevTools to do:

* Make a breakpoints view, not one embedded into a massive list of unsorted (or sorted-by-load-date I guess?!) files that changes over time. If that can't be done (or is against the design philosophy of DevTools), letting me choose the sort order would be nice (e.g. recently-viewed files first, or files with breakpoints, etc ..... and uh, remembering those files and/or settings through refreshes would be fantastic... I miss it from Firebug 2). It's nice because after/during refreshes the breakpoint view lets you pull up the file the second it's loaded, instead of scrolling around in the file list until you find it.

* Make it a LOT more obvious when DevTools is stopped at a breakpoint.

* DevTools doesn't handle initial focus the way Firebug does. As in, when you pull up Firebug via the selection icon--oh, DevTools needs that selection icon for the toolbar--it goes straight to the dom node you selected.

* Make DevTools stop crashing. It stops working. Constantly. The console will just stop printing output, and the DOM view just stops displaying HTML, requiring a browser restart. (When this happens, if you, say, pull up the console and type "1" and hit enter, usually the console echos "1" back to you. When you're in this state, it's not echoed back, though, oddly, some script messages still pop in.)

* Make "debugger" start working again. There are some places where--for who knows what reason--both Firebug and DevTools have ignored breakpoints I've put in, and I've been able to get around it in Firebug by explicitly putting in "debugger;" into my code. You definitely know you're in deep kimchi when you need "debugger;".

Also, for one of my websites, it can't load the source. It just shows "eval" as the filenames over and over with nothing in them. Firebug 2 loads it just fine.

If I use the browser too long, the Inspector and Console tabs go blank.

Oh, and DevTools often doesn't honor my breakpoints. They "slide" down to the next line DevTools thinks it can actually stop on. Sometimes, once I restart my browser they'll work again.

For another, as a time-saver I put breakpoints on lines that /will/ be valid when I refresh (saves me from having to refresh the file twice), so it'd be grand if it simply honored the line i clicked rather than "sliding" down to the next valid one.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#433

Post by anexprogrammer » Sat, May 14, 2016, 1:11 PM UTC

neurostimulant wrote: post #304

anexprogrammer wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lenovo destroyed the Thinkpad legacy. I gave up on them a few years ago when they dropped the 7 row keyboard. The 7 row keyboard was leagues ahead of any other laptop keyboard, ever. The replacement keyboard is awful. I hate the loss of web forward/back keys too. I hate chicklet keys. I hate pgup/dn placed as though I'll almost never use them. I still prefer the trackpoint over any touchpad. I'd buy a retro Thinkpad,…

Whoa, I never tried any of the old Thinkpad. I think the keyboard in Lenovo's Thinkpad is already better than other cheap laptops, and the old one is even better?

It's a bit like the vi/emacs debate, it'll run and run :)

I prefer mechanical keyboards - my old IBM Model M that is wearing better than I am, or on new keyboards, Cherry MX Blues. I've no doubt that colours my laptop preferences. TP keyboards tried to duplicate that feel. Lenovo have slowly backed down the IBM "clicky" feel of the keyboard so a t22 or t43p feels quite a bit more clicky than a W520.

@masseyset says the new keyboard has better spacing. What he means is the key spacing is precisely identical (I saw many reviews claimed larger spacing, or that the keyboard was bigger, it's objectively untrue) but the key tops, being flat rather than sculpted, are larger so feel like a different spacing.

Being chicklet, the key travel is a fraction 1/2, 1/3? of the old TP keyboard. This is the bit I hate with chicklet keyboards along with their actuation point. 6 or 8 years of Macbook as main machine and I never got past that dislike. Devoid of feel and travel. I ended up with a Matias Tactile Pro for any time I wanted to do anything significant, so only needed to use the dead calculator keyboard when travelling.

The Thinkpad chicklet keyboard is way ahead of a Mac or anyone else's chicklet keyboard, and they brought back a fair bit of the clicky feel they'd slowly been losing (at least on my friend's W540). As chicklets go, it's very good. It'll never have the travel of the old 7 row TP keyboard, so I will never like it.

I could probably live with the new TP chicklet as the weighting is back to good. The lack of travel and scattering the pgup/home block randomly around the whole keyboard to save 50c and the extra 1/2 row is unforgivable.

I think that covers my biases. Oh, I lean towards vi. :)

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#434

Post by davb » Sat, May 14, 2016, 1:12 PM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #390

davb wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Console gaming when it Just Worked. Nowadays when I pop in a game it's update this and update that, long loading times etc. This might be about to change with Nintendo's upcoming NX system rumoured to use ROM cartridges rather than optical media. The cart-based 3DS has loading times comparable to the Mega Drive or SNES (negligible). And the cartridge distribution model is great for this with sub-par internet connec…

I strongly suspect the NX will be based on a game streaming service like OnLive. If you look at most of the rumours with that in mind, they make more sense.

I very much doubt it. They'd be cutting off massive markets where internet connectivity isn't consistently good (most of the world). Sure, Nintendo are struggling to find their place in the home console market right now but they're more conservative when it comes to changing the distribution/sales model.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#435

Post by sly010 » Sat, May 14, 2016, 1:13 PM UTC

brownbat wrote: post #370

Grue3 wrote: post #151

Google Reader. There are no replacements that a) update fast enough, and b) allow search for free. I know, I tried all of them. Firefox had an amazing plugin called "Ubiquity", which was basically like command line for your browser and you could write custom scripts for it. It was seriously better than anything that exists today. They stopped developing it for some reason. Tab Groups is another feature that's now aba…

Ubiquity was amazing. It was sort of like a launcher in a browser combined with IFTTT. You could use it to chain together APIs and reduce them to natural language commands. You could highlight "abogado," translate it, get a map to the nearest one, shorten the url to that map, and email that shortened url to a friend all with one nearly natural language command. I'm not that great at coding, but even I was able to wri…

Ubiquity was ppioneered by Aza Raskin (son of Jess Rasking, designer the original Mac interface). I always had the feeling that uqiquity never was a Mozilla project per say, it was more his personal project that he happened to do inside Mozilla. Perhaps he left or got promoted and the project stopped. I am only guessing.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#436

Post by haroldweber23 » Sat, May 14, 2016, 1:14 PM UTC

Writely. Worked very well to write together. Then Google bought and integrated into its ecology and changed its name to Google Docs. If you do not like the Google monopoly, like me, and do not like their collaboration with the NSA and the US foreign policy, Google Docs is no option. Writely should have stayed independent. Shame on their founders and the VCs.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#437

Post by anexprogrammer » Sat, May 14, 2016, 1:14 PM UTC

david-given wrote: post #300

anexprogrammer wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with your tap water? Don't they have the same safety standards to meet? UK tap water is great (Well, outside of Greater London where it's basically limestone slurry). I've never bought bottled or filtered aside from the brief time I was in London. At least two brands of UK bottled water were bottling northern tap water and selling it. Business idea I wish I had thought of!

Tap water in the UK is heavily chlorinated. If you go to a country which doesn't chlorinate tap water it's like night and day. (I live in Zurich. The water company here say that comparing Zurich tap water with bottled mineral water is unfair --- their tap water is considerably better.)

Not sure if it's down to how hard the water is in each area, but here (NW England), a fairly soft water area, you never notice the chlorination. You notice the chlorine quite a bit in London, along with the free limestone in every glass.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#438

Post by therealmarv » Sat, May 14, 2016, 1:14 PM UTC

toupeira wrote: post #346

Grue3 wrote: post #151

Google Reader. There are no replacements that a) update fast enough, and b) allow search for free. I know, I tried all of them. Firefox had an amazing plugin called "Ubiquity", which was basically like command line for your browser and you could write custom scripts for it. It was seriously better than anything that exists today. They stopped developing it for some reason. Tab Groups is another feature that's now aba…

Have you tried theoldreader.com? Not sure if search is free since I'm on their paid account, but the feeds definitely update more reliably than other readers I tried, especially with private one-subscriber feeds.

theoldreader is maybe not as fast as Google Reader but it replaced it for me perfectly. Love the third party integration (greader for Android) and its handling.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#439

Post by awqrre » Sat, May 14, 2016, 1:15 PM UTC

hoof_marks wrote: post #101

Windows XP and its search feature- Win7 above does not have it. Yahoo Geocities- simply miss it. and also Yahoo in general. My current yahoo mail is chock a block with spam mails. plus their ads. Xerox Ventura desktop publishing software- that was cool when book publishing was required. Motorola T90/91 basic mobile phone. superb and handiest phone used. Current Moto is smart but not unbeatable. Most importantly old B…

I don't do any updates on mobile unless I have a reason (apps usually degrade over time)... but I do do my Ubuntu updates.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best tool you used to use that doesn't exist anymore?

#440

Post by cJ0th » Sat, May 14, 2016, 1:15 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #388

Ecco Pro outliner. Technically it still runs on w10, but the various glitches forced me to onenote. I also really miss my nt4 system: office 95, delphi 3, coreldraw 5, photoshop 5, netscape 4. Despite having only a 233 mhz cpu and 128 megs of RAM that system seemed more responsive and easier to use than my current pc's, and it did everything i needed it to.

re: Ecco Pro outliner

Maybe Treeline[0] (a favorite of mine) or BasKet[1] (not sure if a windows version exists) suit your needs. They're both open source and more responsive than onenote.

[0] http://treeline.bellz.org/

[1] http://basket.kde.org/