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FeX: Forum Explorer – Rethinking how we interact with threaded conversations

mcnutt.in

21–30 of 73 posts

Re: FeX: Forum Explorer – Rethinking how we interact with threaded conversations

#21

Hi hackernews! I'm the author of this site/chrome extension/app. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have/field any comments

This site is crashing my Firefox Klar (ie. Focus) with: https://gist.github.com/sm4rk0/bc35eafbd516047b73d9dec2e2663...

Re: FeX: Forum Explorer – Rethinking how we interact with threaded conversations

#22
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing. I'd suggest adding a bit of descriptive prose / "about" / readme / FAQ on the linked page. Also, its layout is suboptimal on mobile safari.

> I'd suggest adding a bit of descriptive prose / "about" / readme / FAQ on the linked page. I think this would be essential. I've been clicking around on it, and it's not entirely clear to me how to work it. I may be an idiot, but I'd really love some instructions. EDIT: I just now managed to see the "wait I'm lost" link toward the bottom. It took some doing (that's part of the page that gets clipped). I'm now follo…

> I'd suggest adding a bit of descriptive prose / "about" / readme / FAQ on the linked page.

I'm on it! https://github.com/mcnuttandrew/forum-explorer/issues/67

> Edit edit: OK, I think I have a basic understanding of what's up. It's overly complex for my needs, though -- I think I prefer the normal comment threads.

that's super reasonable! this is an experimental interface, some things are bound to work for some people and not for others

Re: FeX: Forum Explorer – Rethinking how we interact with threaded conversations

#23
post #7
post #6

That page has a major layout issue for me: it appears to have a fixed height with no vertical scrollbar, so the bottom portion of the page is completely inaccessible to me even if I maximize the window. Is that part of what you're trying to test, or is it just an unimportant artifact of the test page? Also, I'm not actually on board with the visualization -- it just makes everything more confusing and harder to follo…

It also happens to me. The graph resizes and reorganizes as the window size is adjusted, but it always shrinks less than it should. There's always a part of the graph that goes beyond the bottom of the window.

What type of browser are y'all on? I'd love to fix this issue. It would be a big help if you would file me an issue here https://github.com/mcnuttandrew/forum-explorer/issues

Re: FeX: Forum Explorer – Rethinking how we interact with threaded conversations

#24
post #21

Hi hackernews! I'm the author of this site/chrome extension/app. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have/field any comments

This site is crashing my Firefox Klar (ie. Focus) with: https://gist.github.com/sm4rk0/bc35eafbd516047b73d9dec2e2663...

Huh, i had not heard of that browser! cool i will investigate

Re: FeX: Forum Explorer – Rethinking how we interact with threaded conversations

#25
post #20

Hi hackernews! I'm the author of this site/chrome extension/app. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have/field any comments

Very cool. I've got to admit though, I'm a little jaded towards "Chrome only" extensions. Is there a reason you couldn't build this in Firefox? As web developers, we've really got to stop this practice lest the web become further fragmented. Anyways, I don't want to come down on you specifically - I realize this is probably just an MVP. You did a great job.

Thanks!

I totally agree, I was just trying to minimize the number of things I was designing for while I was building it.

That said, Firefox addon is in my todo! https://github.com/mcnuttandrew/forum-explorer/issues/45

Re: FeX: Forum Explorer – Rethinking how we interact with threaded conversations

#26

Funny story, I had almost exactly the same idea in 2013 and prototyped it in Mathematica (probably a lot of people have had this idea). Here's a screenshot of some random thread that I happened to visualize (comments were visible as tooltips in my rough and ready implementation): https://imgur.com/a/9xfw6cA (color represents common authorship, size is comment length). I didn't have the Javascript chops to do anything…

I've talked to a few people who've had similar ideas! In fact there is a pretty long history of people in visualization/hci communities creating applications like this. There's an extended abstract that goes along with this work that details this history. Dropping the root node is an interesting idea!

Do you mind linking to the abstract? Would like to read that history.

Re: FeX: Forum Explorer – Rethinking how we interact with threaded conversations

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've talked to a few people who've had similar ideas! In fact there is a pretty long history of people in visualization/hci communities creating applications like this. There's an extended abstract that goes along with this work that details this history. Dropping the root node is an interesting idea!

Do you mind linking to the abstract? Would like to read that history.

I'm trying to figure out if i'm allowed to post it publicly yet, in the mean time shoot me a message (on say twitter @_mcnutt_) and I'll send it to you

Re: FeX: Forum Explorer – Rethinking how we interact with threaded conversations

#30
post #10

Ooh, this is neat, thanks for sharing! I made something similar for Twitter conversations (shameless plug: https://treeverse.app ) so it's neat to see the UI decisions you made, especially the timeline interaction.

I love treeverse! I spent a lot of time looking at treeverse when I was building forum explorer. Did you see that it got used in this paper https://mw18.mwconf.org/paper/to-journey-in-twitter-canoes-m...

I did not see that, thanks for the link! Glad I could be an influence :)
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