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Launch HN: IcePanel (YC W23) – Onboard engineers with explorable system designs

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Launch HN: IcePanel (YC W23) – Onboard engineers with explorable system designs

#41

Post by brickers »

JacobShadbolt wrote: post #38
brickers wrote: post #35

Not sure if you’re intending this to be usable on mobile but I found some usability issues from a few minutes browsing on iPhone (I most definitely intend to have a proper look on desktop later - looks fantastically useful): 1- overlapping text/images in header; 2- list of steps was the first thing that was open - took me a minute to understand I could close that to get to the diagram; 3- I couldn’t work out how to z…

We haven't focused on making the editor mobile friendly as most diagrams are too complex for such a small screen - hence why it sucks on mobile. I'm sure it's something we could improve later on as an "on the go" mode, but for now it's not been a priority. Is there a use case to use this on a phone?

It seems like a sensible choice that mobile isn’t your focus - I’m just chilling on the sofa browsing HN after work… I don’t think I know the product well enough to comment on a mobile use case, but I’ll let you know if I think of something when I take a further look

Re: Launch HN: IcePanel (YC W23) – Onboard engineers with explorable system designs

#42

Post by tobr »

JacobShadbolt wrote: post #38
brickers wrote: post #35

Not sure if you’re intending this to be usable on mobile but I found some usability issues from a few minutes browsing on iPhone (I most definitely intend to have a proper look on desktop later - looks fantastically useful): 1- overlapping text/images in header; 2- list of steps was the first thing that was open - took me a minute to understand I could close that to get to the diagram; 3- I couldn’t work out how to z…

We haven't focused on making the editor mobile friendly as most diagrams are too complex for such a small screen - hence why it sucks on mobile. I'm sure it's something we could improve later on as an "on the go" mode, but for now it's not been a priority. Is there a use case to use this on a phone?

> Is there a use case to use this on a phone?

You should probably be thinking of it the opposite way, is there a reason people wouldn’t use it on their phones? It’s on the web, the web is on your phone! People use their phones all the time for work-related things so they are going to expect this to be available there, too.

Re: Launch HN: IcePanel (YC W23) – Onboard engineers with explorable system designs

#44

Post by xwowsersx »

tobr wrote: post #42
JacobShadbolt wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We haven't focused on making the editor mobile friendly as most diagrams are too complex for such a small screen - hence why it sucks on mobile. I'm sure it's something we could improve later on as an "on the go" mode, but for now it's not been a priority. Is there a use case to use this on a phone?

> Is there a use case to use this on a phone? You should probably be thinking of it the opposite way, is there a reason people wouldn’t use it on their phones? It’s on the web, the web is on your phone! People use their phones all the time for work-related things so they are going to expect this to be available there, too.

I disagree. Sure, we use our phones more and more and expect an increasing number of apps to work on them, but sometimes we arrive at a site that we understand can't really provide meaningful usability on mobile. A complex architecture diagramming tool is something I expect to dig into on my desktop. Perhaps some functionality could be optimized to work on mobile or, at the very least, the app should recognize you're mobile and not just crap out, if only to say "You should open this in a desktop browser." But I really don't see the use case for casually browsing an architecture that explains how my VPC connects to the IGW and NATGW and which private subnet my foobar is deployed into. And if for some reason I do arrive at that diagram, I kind of expect it to be a less-than-ideal situation on mobile.

Re: Launch HN: IcePanel (YC W23) – Onboard engineers with explorable system designs

#45

Post by victor96 »

FarhadG wrote: post #43

For those not familiar with C4, this is a great video explaining the concepts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2-rSnhpw0g

Great talk by Simon Brown! There's also a similar talk from Devoxx a few months ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36OTe7LNd6M

Re: Launch HN: IcePanel (YC W23) – Onboard engineers with explorable system designs

#46

Post by kyawzazaw »

tobr wrote: post #42
JacobShadbolt wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We haven't focused on making the editor mobile friendly as most diagrams are too complex for such a small screen - hence why it sucks on mobile. I'm sure it's something we could improve later on as an "on the go" mode, but for now it's not been a priority. Is there a use case to use this on a phone?

> Is there a use case to use this on a phone? You should probably be thinking of it the opposite way, is there a reason people wouldn’t use it on their phones? It’s on the web, the web is on your phone! People use their phones all the time for work-related things so they are going to expect this to be available there, too.

Maybe on an iPad but on a phone?

Re: Launch HN: IcePanel (YC W23) – Onboard engineers with explorable system designs

#49

Post by victor96 »

kyawzazaw wrote: post #46
tobr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a use case to use this on a phone? You should probably be thinking of it the opposite way, is there a reason people wouldn’t use it on their phones? It’s on the web, the web is on your phone! People use their phones all the time for work-related things so they are going to expect this to be available there, too.

Maybe on an iPad but on a phone?

Diagramming on a tablet is an interesting idea, maybe it can provide a better whiteboard-like experience.

Re: Launch HN: IcePanel (YC W23) – Onboard engineers with explorable system designs

#50

Post by kyawzazaw »

> Most diagramming tools are generic and flexible for any purpose. This is great for quick sketches and whiteboarding but painful for creating longer-term documentation where it’s important for objects to contain metadata and have relationships with other objects.

I'd suggest to change this copy writing to "any purpose - which is great". Was a bit confused while reading, had a bit of disconnect.

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