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I feel I am building a new Google Wave

pivory.com

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Re: I feel I am building a new Google Wave

#81

Post by damncabbage »

lmirosevic wrote: post #59

This is great, I love the feel of this and the value it creates (which I'd describe as "live structured conversations"). Here's some suggestions, keep in mind these are essentially my personal opinions: -Try putting some thought into making the functionality a little more intuitive, by this I mean to try and not necessitate having to hover too much to discover functionality. As a designer I know how difficult this is…

  - Host this as a SaaS and make money, I image businesses 
    would love to use this as a way to gather user feedback 
    and talk to users.
A little tweaking and it might make a good Campfire replacement as well. :)

(Even with a smaller team, a collection of conversational "threads" could be really useful.)

Re: I feel I am building a new Google Wave

#82

Post by orangethirty »

mansoor-s wrote: post #80
orangethirty wrote: post #77

Feedback This is what I get when I try to visit the page: Your browser does not have window.WebSocket object :-( Try the lastest version of Chrome or Firefox or Safari. I know that I have to update, but realize that not everyone has the latest/greatest stuff out there. Also, if I visit your page without JS it doesnt show anything (at all).

As a web-dev I see these kinds of comments a lot. There is a simple solution: Step 1) Upgrade your browser. Step 2) Enable JavaScript. You can't strip down your browsers functionality and expect the web to conform to it. Thats like saying this website won't load on my potato! EVIL EVIL potato haters!

As an engineer focusing on web software I also see these comments a lot. I also know how it drives people (buying customers) away from websites. Yet it is rather surprising how people like you make such comments. "Upgrade your software, you fool!" seems to be the norm. But, how much does it cost to add a few lines of code like the following:

Please enable javascript. If you have any questions how to do so, please click on this link.

In fact, I'll license that code right there under the GNU WTFPL license, so web devs like you can use it to their advantage.

In terms of browsers, allow me to ask you some questions. Do you know which is the second most used browser in the USA? Firefox. Which version? Not the latest. People are always at least one or two updates behind. Not making a website available to a majority is just bad business sense.

Re: I feel I am building a new Google Wave

#83

Post by acomar »

citricsquid wrote: post #29
cheshirecat wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah I got you. I have considered this multiple times, but a flat system still appears better for me. Yes, it is a very important issue and I will try to come up with a better solution, probably hybrid.

Something I like is the idea of "forking" topics, conversations evolve and if a new comment thread becomes over a few replies there's generally a good chance it has become its own conversation which can then involve into another conversation etc etc etc. If I was trying to keep the system as "flat" as possible I would consider deciding on an arbitrary cut off point (total replies, or total "levels" of replies) that a…

That's a great idea. Maybe it needs good auto-categorization to implement well, but another idea is to not bother with the thresholds at all -- every comment can potentially spawn off a new wave of replies, so why not just fork into separate threads immediately? The top level view gives you the flat view of the top level thread, and by diving in through the replies you can keep flat views of each sub-conversation. If every comment is treated the same, then it truly doesn't matter how old the comment you're replying to is because you could be sparking an entirely new discussion.

Re: I feel I am building a new Google Wave

#85

Post by lhnz »

This is what my TODO list would look like if I was you:

* Markdown.

* Remove "guest" from the Users list.

* Reading mode should have much larger text. Remember what sites like Instapaper, Readility, ReadItLater have given people.

* Some way of voting up insightful comments. I don't think the shit storm that you're currently experiencing in spam is currently solved...

* Tiny icons hiding lots of features and the awkward way of getting to the 'reply' links is poor usability.

Re: I feel I am building a new Google Wave

#87

Post by kumarski »

Udo wrote: post #55
kumarski wrote: post #28

http://www.rizzoma.com is much better. The founder himself stayed at my place using airbnb this summer. I'm a YC alum. He has one of the most interesting founding stories I've ever heard. He is a Siberian-Kazakhstani hacking competition winner who knows Judo and runs a series of small businesses in Russia. Bars that partake in sportsbetting-all Legal. He designed the software as a way to manage his businesses with hi…

That unjustified blanket statement and the tone of your comment just rub me the wrong way. Who cares how amazingly, mind-blowingly awesome your buddy the founder of Rizzoma is? This thread is about another project, and it's not based on Wave. This is hardly the place where you should walz in and shill for something else without so much as a word about Pivory, let alone some constructive criticism of any kind.

Sorry Udo.

I wish you the best in building your technology. I will say you've done some pretty cool stuff in the area of UX with the ability to change the fonts and appearance on the fly. I meant no offense.

Again, sorry.

Re: I feel I am building a new Google Wave

#88

Post by javajosh »

mcgwiz wrote: post #76

I don't want to be misconstrued a "bad HN commenter", so I'll say first of all, technically amazing. Also, UX is consistent and aesthetically pleasing (though admittedly incomplete; lots of actions are unexplained... e.g. what's the difference between Focus and Shift). Technical and design accolades aside, IMHO I would not call this an improvement on existing discussion forums. In Part 4 of his post "Building a Bette…

I agree that it is more chat than forum, especially because of the limited (that is, non-existent) support for threaded conversations. (The only thing I could find was a hash-number style referral shortcut).

Personally, I also disagree with removing timestamps. Although HK (presumably the author) is correct in that people can tend to ignore 2-year-old posts, this is an entirely n00b tendency, as old-hands know that there is gold in older content. That said, old-hands can very quickly filter for relevance when hunting for timely news. Removing timestamps removes that facility.

Re: I feel I am building a new Google Wave

#89

Post by SoftwareMaven »

cheshirecat wrote: post #21
MojoJolo wrote: post #18

I think I'm having some problems with scrolling. But anyways, good job!

Thank you! The scrolling codes are messy and slow at the moment. I'll rebuild them using vanilla JS. You guys are the reason I can keep working on this.

Please use the native scrolling. It was completely unusable on a non-Safari browser on my iPad 2 (even vanilla Safari was so sluggish as to reduce any desire to use it). It looked interesting (and the comments here indicate it is), but the scrolling was so bad, I couldn't check it out.

I really hesitated to pint this out, because I hate negative comments when people throw there stuff out here, but this one is just too critical to your potential success.

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