Django and SQLite for the backend and jQuery for the front end. And a $5 a month server from pythonanywhere.com.
Also using a splash page from glitch.com using static html.
Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?
151–160 of 364 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?
#152I once worked at Chase Manhattan Bank and one of their internal networking teams had a web site for wiring requests. They didn’t want to work too hard so their UI was designed to make data entry as slow as possible, mostly by using huge multi-level drop down lists where the slightest twitch would make them collapse and you would have to start over navigating through them, repeat a dozen times for every run of cable,…
That has got to be the worst system to not have any type of stop gate in the API.
I mean yes... but recall that the entire point of the system was that it would make data entry slow. I think that whoever set it up probably felt that the clunky form was enough of a rate limiter and nothing further was needed on the back end.
Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?
#153I once worked at Chase Manhattan Bank and one of their internal networking teams had a web site for wiring requests. They didn’t want to work too hard so their UI was designed to make data entry as slow as possible, mostly by using huge multi-level drop down lists where the slightest twitch would make them collapse and you would have to start over navigating through them, repeat a dozen times for every run of cable,…
Heroic! Lotus Notes was such a pile of junk. Every time I used it for the simplest task, the combative UI would cause my blood pressure to spike up. I would calm myself down by imagining the blissful life of the ex JPMorganChase IT boss who greenlighted the purchase, living off his giant kickback on some Caribbean island.
Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?
#154A novel way would be to create a UI using a UI that exports the UI code. Using one of these no code tools like Webflow or Handoff. (Disclaimer: I'm the founder of Handoff. Check: www.handoff.design)
Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?
#155I think the weirdest way is using React. I mean, it feels so unnatural for me, compared to the jQuery way. You have to download thousands of packages, keep track of various dependencies and their security holes, adding an overhead for auditing them. HTML5 with jQuery IMHO still beats everything in simplicity and getting work done fastly
Try build a complex website with complex journeys and a component architecture and you'll be begging for React. It's probably because you haven't seen the light. I'd never ever go back to using jQuery unless it was for a basic marketing site - even then I'd probably think of using Vue if anything got more complex than a carousel on the page.
Keep the majority of the rendering server side and it isn't a problem at all. Jquery for some UI enhancement.
Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?
#156I haven't seen this on a page, but David Gelernter wrote about Lifestreams[1] in "Mechanical Beauty," which is a good read. [1]: http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/freeman/lifestreams.html
I've always loved the lifestreams metaphor, mental model.
I spoke to Gelernter at a conference, ages ago. His wares were being compared to JavaSpaces. IIRC, maybe because he had done some work on Linda, or his lifestreams was implemented using same, or something like that. No one really grokked what lifestreams was about or how you'd use it. (Jini and JXTA suffered similar befuddlement.)
Any way, I over enthusiastically encouraged him to repurpose lifestreams into a PIM (personal information manager, shows how old I am) unifying all one's communication and activities. To Gelernter's credit, he listened seriously and pondered.
I'm still waiting. :)
Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?
#157Django and SQLite for the backend and jQuery for the front end. And a $5 a month server from pythonanywhere.com. Also using a splash page from glitch.com using static html.
Out of interest did you ever have any problems with multiple users using SQllite?
Its the common advice that it doesn't work well for multiuser scenarios but I am curious if it is actually a problem for small scale sites.
Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?
#158Weird UIs were what I miss the most about the web in the late 90s. There were no rules, and people were just winging it. I remember my friends making websites for their bands and bragging about how they made it so hard to use, that it was like a secret club if you figured it out.
Kai‘s Power Goo!
Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
A 10X programmer or 100X programmer finds a way to remove layers of abstractions.
Just hide the nasty layers behind more facades or layers of abstraction. Please never reinvent the wheel, we need more layers, its better software design to reuse the old stuff. /s
yep, I mean technically you could directly write the UI directly to IP packets and cut out the whole stack, but it's a step in the wrong direction, abstraction allows people to specialize and focus on their domain.
For a non technical example we could communicate via math for all human interaction, it would be more efficient, and truthful, it would also limit though and transfer of knowledge as it puts difficult constraints on expression.
Stacks are good, the web got screwed up by SUN, IBM, and Oracle's insistent vision of a thin client world, that needed lots of servers.
Re: Ask HN: What are weird and/or novel ways to do web UIs?
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
99% of those "apps" are still just documents with client-side rendering, though. And the web was designed with the intent of running code practically from the beginning, albeit with support envisioned for multiple languages, so programmatic elements in a website aren't really a perversion of the original intent.
I didn't know that. Is there anywhere I can read about it?
The original thesis on REST by Fielding [1].
Section 5.1.7 Code On Demand
[1] https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/fielding...