Show HN: Jeff Atwood's "Effective Programming" on Hyperink's new Crowd Reader

#1

Post by neoveller » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 6:14 PM UTC

Hey everyone, I'm Michael, a product engineer at Hyperink. Over the past month or so, I've been developing a rich, social reading experience for our content, freeing us from the stranglehold of MOBI and EPUB file formats. Today, Jeff Atwood generously granted us permission to release half of his book completely free on this Crowd Reader (paid customers get to see all of it there).

The problem: paperback/print always wins over digital and arguably e-ink. Our solution: make reading a unique and asynchronously social experience.

I've love to get some beta feedback and hopefully some suggestions for how to improve the UI/UX. Thanks, and happy reading!

Show HN: Jeff Atwood's "Effective Programming" on Hyperink's new Crowd Reader
hyperink.com

Re: Show HN: Jeff Atwood's "Effective Programming" on Hyperink's new Crowd Reader

#2

Post by neoveller » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 6:15 PM UTC

Hey everyone, I'm Michael, a product engineer at Hyperink. Over the past month or so, I've been developing a rich, social reading experience for our content, freeing us from the stranglehold of MOBI and EPUB file formats. Today, Jeff Atwood generously granted us permission to release half of his book completely free on this Crowd Reader (paid customers get to see all of it there).

The problem: paperback/print always wins over digital and arguably e-ink. Our solution: make reading a unique and asynchronously social experience.

I've love to get some beta feedback and hopefully some suggestions for how to improve the UI/UX. Thanks, and happy reading!

UPDATE: forgot to mention. This app is 100% JavaScript with Node and my own JS makeshift library on the front. MongoDB for database. Madness.

Re: Show HN: Jeff Atwood's "Effective Programming" on Hyperink's new Crowd Reader

#3

Post by sidcool » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 6:19 PM UTC

neoveller wrote: post #2

Hey everyone, I'm Michael, a product engineer at Hyperink. Over the past month or so, I've been developing a rich, social reading experience for our content, freeing us from the stranglehold of MOBI and EPUB file formats. Today, Jeff Atwood generously granted us permission to release half of his book completely free on this Crowd Reader (paid customers get to see all of it there). The problem: paperback/print always…

Hi Michael, nice to talk to the engineer of the product. I purchased this book last week and it's pretty good. The reading experience is smooth.

What I would like to suggest is making it more like Google web app for reading. It's fast and scrolls horizontally, much naturally like a book.

Re: Show HN: Jeff Atwood's "Effective Programming" on Hyperink's new Crowd Reader

#4

Post by anonymoushn » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 6:49 PM UTC

The title of the book appears to be "Effective Programming" and not "Efficient Programming."

Re: Show HN: Jeff Atwood's "Effective Programming" on Hyperink's new Crowd Reader

#5

Post by neoveller » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 6:54 PM UTC

anonymoushn wrote: post #4

The title of the book appears to be "Effective Programming" and not "Efficient Programming."

Good catch! Thanks a lot.

Re: Show HN: Jeff Atwood's "Effective Programming" on Hyperink's new Crowd Reader

#6

Post by lobster_johnson » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 6:56 PM UTC

neoveller wrote: post #2

Hey everyone, I'm Michael, a product engineer at Hyperink. Over the past month or so, I've been developing a rich, social reading experience for our content, freeing us from the stranglehold of MOBI and EPUB file formats. Today, Jeff Atwood generously granted us permission to release half of his book completely free on this Crowd Reader (paid customers get to see all of it there). The problem: paperback/print always…

Scrolling is severely buggy in Chrome (20.0.1132.57 on OS X) and partially buggy in Firefox (13.0). I did some screen captures.

#1 (https://www.dropbox.com/s/bczmu8kjfhn6ymr/bug1.mov): Scrolling is actually faster in the upward direction than the downward direction. In this video, I continuously move my fingers on my trackpad up 1cm and down 2cm. You would expect the same movement to scroll equivalent distances, but it does not. In fact, you will see that sometimes it stutters or will not scroll at all. (There is nothing wrong with my trackpad, and the problem only affects your site.) This problem affects both Chrome and Firefox.

#2 (https://www.dropbox.com/s/x9zzd298v85atf9/bug2.mov): The viewport is often mysteriously constrained and refuses to scroll any further, even though there is more text. In this video, I opened a fresh window, immediately clicked on one of the chapters, and tried to scroll downards. You'll see me struggle for a bit, then scroll to the previous chapter and then back to the original chapter. Only after doing this am I able to scroll downwards. Seems to affect Chrome only.

Looks promising aside from these rather severe issues.

Re: Show HN: Jeff Atwood's "Effective Programming" on Hyperink's new Crowd Reader

#7

Post by danso » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 6:56 PM UTC

The reading experience is a bit cumbersome on the iPad, in portrait mode. I'd kill the social sidebar if in iPad mode...I'm not likely to use the social bar when at my iPad, but I do judge the overall reading experience based on how effortless it is on the iPad, or any other tablet

Re: Show HN: Jeff Atwood's "Effective Programming" on Hyperink's new Crowd Reader

#8

Post by LaSombra » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 6:59 PM UTC

neoveller wrote: post #2

Hey everyone, I'm Michael, a product engineer at Hyperink. Over the past month or so, I've been developing a rich, social reading experience for our content, freeing us from the stranglehold of MOBI and EPUB file formats. Today, Jeff Atwood generously granted us permission to release half of his book completely free on this Crowd Reader (paid customers get to see all of it there). The problem: paperback/print always…

I liked the UI/UX. The typography is very nice. I would make the right bar optional and add to it an option to write notes.

Thank you Michael, great work!

Re: Show HN: Jeff Atwood's "Effective Programming" on Hyperink's new Crowd Reader

#9

Post by pfraze » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 7:01 PM UTC

neoveller wrote: post #2

Hey everyone, I'm Michael, a product engineer at Hyperink. Over the past month or so, I've been developing a rich, social reading experience for our content, freeing us from the stranglehold of MOBI and EPUB file formats. Today, Jeff Atwood generously granted us permission to release half of his book completely free on this Crowd Reader (paid customers get to see all of it there). The problem: paperback/print always…

Looks good. The "heart" on paragraphs is cool -- now just make it so you can sort by hearts for a quick view of highlights. You could then jump to a selected paragraph in the correct ordering, if you want to read more of the context.

Re: Show HN: Jeff Atwood's "Effective Programming" on Hyperink's new Crowd Reader

#10

Post by neoveller » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 7:02 PM UTC

pfraze wrote: post #9

neoveller wrote: post #2

Hey everyone, I'm Michael, a product engineer at Hyperink. Over the past month or so, I've been developing a rich, social reading experience for our content, freeing us from the stranglehold of MOBI and EPUB file formats. Today, Jeff Atwood generously granted us permission to release half of his book completely free on this Crowd Reader (paid customers get to see all of it there). The problem: paperback/print always…

Looks good. The "heart" on paragraphs is cool -- now just make it so you can sort by hearts for a quick view of highlights. You could then jump to a selected paragraph in the correct ordering, if you want to read more of the context.

That's actually some really kickass feedback that we now have no choice but to implement! Thanks pfraze!