Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Basecamp Next: UI Preview

37signals.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 85 posts

Re: Basecamp Next: UI Preview

#2

Post by tnorthcutt »

From that video, it looks like they're using the term "discussion" to refer to a single post/comment. Jason or DHH: is there a particular reason why that terminology made more sense for your product than something like "comment(s)"? Or am I misunderstanding, and a "discussion" is actually a collection of comments?

Re: Basecamp Next: UI Preview

#4

Post by jasonfried »

tnorthcutt wrote: post #2

From that video, it looks like they're using the term "discussion" to refer to a single post/comment. Jason or DHH: is there a particular reason why that terminology made more sense for your product than something like "comment(s)"? Or am I misunderstanding, and a "discussion" is actually a collection of comments?

You can have a discussion on anything. A message, a to-do, an event, a file, a text document, etc.

The Discussions section aggregates everything together, no matter where it happened. It feels like the right name to us. It models the world better. You discuss things in person, you discuss things in a project.

Re: Basecamp Next: UI Preview

#6

Post by bretthopper »

The new "sheets" UI paradigm is strange to me. Jason mentioned a few times that they wanted to provide focus by getting rid of unnecessary design elements and chrome. But with the sheets, you actually get unneeded chrome. Your main content viewport keeps getting shifted down and to the right.

Why not just use breadcrumbs at the top to provide context? That way, the entire content area could be taken over whenever you click on a link which would be much simpler.

Re: Basecamp Next: UI Preview

#7

Post by tnorthcutt »

jasonfried wrote: post #4
tnorthcutt wrote: post #2

From that video, it looks like they're using the term "discussion" to refer to a single post/comment. Jason or DHH: is there a particular reason why that terminology made more sense for your product than something like "comment(s)"? Or am I misunderstanding, and a "discussion" is actually a collection of comments?

You can have a discussion on anything. A message, a to-do, an event, a file, a text document, etc. The Discussions section aggregates everything together, no matter where it happened. It feels like the right name to us. It models the world better. You discuss things in person, you discuss things in a project.

That makes sense. I may not have asked clearly, though. Is a "discussion" a collection of one or more comments, or is each comment/post/thing its very own "discussion"?

For example, if I post "What do you guys think about this new feature?" and then you reply with "I think it's an awesome feature.", is there one discussion or are there now two discussions?

Re: Basecamp Next: UI Preview

#8

Post by jasonfried »

bretthopper wrote: post #6

The new "sheets" UI paradigm is strange to me. Jason mentioned a few times that they wanted to provide focus by getting rid of unnecessary design elements and chrome. But with the sheets, you actually get unneeded chrome. Your main content viewport keeps getting shifted down and to the right. Why not just use breadcrumbs at the top to provide context? That way, the entire content area could be taken over whenever you…

When you use it you'll see why breadcrumbs are inferior. Breadcrumbs don't give you a sense of place. Breadcrumbs aren't natural. It sounds like a subtle thing, but once you use it you'll see the difference. Also, sheets have a much larger click target which makes them a lot easier and faster to use.

Re: Basecamp Next: UI Preview

#9

Post by jasonfried »

tnorthcutt wrote: post #7
jasonfried wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have a discussion on anything. A message, a to-do, an event, a file, a text document, etc. The Discussions section aggregates everything together, no matter where it happened. It feels like the right name to us. It models the world better. You discuss things in person, you discuss things in a project.

That makes sense. I may not have asked clearly, though. Is a "discussion" a collection of one or more comments, or is each comment/post/thing its very own "discussion"? For example, if I post "What do you guys think about this new feature?" and then you reply with "I think it's an awesome feature.", is there one discussion or are there now two discussions?

That would be one discussion. The original topic and any comments about that topic.

Re: Basecamp Next: UI Preview

#10

Post by bretthopper »

jasonfried wrote: post #8
bretthopper wrote: post #6

The new "sheets" UI paradigm is strange to me. Jason mentioned a few times that they wanted to provide focus by getting rid of unnecessary design elements and chrome. But with the sheets, you actually get unneeded chrome. Your main content viewport keeps getting shifted down and to the right. Why not just use breadcrumbs at the top to provide context? That way, the entire content area could be taken over whenever you…

When you use it you'll see why breadcrumbs are inferior. Breadcrumbs don't give you a sense of place. Breadcrumbs aren't natural. It sounds like a subtle thing, but once you use it you'll see the difference. Also, sheets have a much larger click target which makes them a lot easier and faster to use.

The only purpose of breadcrumbs is to provide a sense of place. It literally tells you where you are and how you got there. And where you can easily navigate back to.

In terms of being natural, they definitely don't map to a physical analogy like your sheets do. But that's a good thing to me.

edit: I agree with the click target benefit. Although I think you could do some useful things design wise with breadcrumbs to achieve a lot of what you guys did with sheets.

Post reply on HN