Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: A Handcrafted Web

scrollkit.com

11–20 of 87 posts

Re: Show HN: A Handcrafted Web

#11
"The web is the most advanced publishing system we've ever had but the process in which most people publish is backwards next to print."

There were probably similar things said about the shift from hand copied books to using printing presses.

Re: Show HN: A Handcrafted Web

#12
post #2

This team page reminds me of geocities from the late 90s. https://www.scrollkit.com/s/iaJos01

I like it. Lots of personality, you know they're there to make it fun.

We could do with a return of the GeoCities self-made-page aesthetic (with improved aesthetic sense, of course) on a web where everything on the big sites is neatly templated and identical in layout. Amidst all the consistency, I've been missing the touches that used to make personal sites unique. All people do on their blogs now is throw on funny pictures; the format/layout is never broken, or it simply can't be.

This is a good reminder to us to break the mould whenever we feel it's appropriate (or whenever we feel like it).

Re: Show HN: A Handcrafted Web

#13
post #7

Love the "Go slower" idea. Would be very refreshing, if more people started doing this. Then again, I am very much at fault for talking too much and too quickly on twitter. However, I'm not actually certain what your product does .

We're a tool for people to make webpages without using a template, so they can start from scratch with a totally blank canvas. You can see the sort of things people are making here: http://www.scrollkit.com/s/I6QWRuK/

Re: Show HN: A Handcrafted Web

#14
People hate scrolling or parallax scrolling pages would be much more wide spread, they're easy to make and awesome looking.

Relying on the user scrolling I don't believe is a good idea, but the rest of it I definitely agree with.

Re: Show HN: A Handcrafted Web

#16
Blame the move toward blogging systems that separated content from presentation. Blame advertising which has to be front-and-center at all times.

I wonder how advertising would work on the web if you didn't have omni-present ads but instead sometimes the viewport contained no ads, sometimes it contains big huge ads that take up the entire viewport (like a full-page ad in a magazine). Would that make up for them not being visible at all times? Anyone tried this?

Re: Show HN: A Handcrafted Web

#17
post #6

I really like what ReadyMag http://readymag.com is proposing in this area.

Wow, this is kind of wonderful. It somehow does "vibrant yet professional" really well, in contrast with the "genuine amateur" feel of scrollkit. They have one hell of a designer, that's for sure. Seems like they're proposing a Photoshop/Flash-like rich-app design interface for webpages?

I'd like to play around with the app but the Team slide is causing my browser to hang.

Re: Show HN: A Handcrafted Web

#19
I like the thought behind this. There is a disparity between the layouts of the print word and the web, though, I think there are a lot of reasons that this is true.

For one, the technology that allows this coupling of design and copy has been slowly maturing and at times has been very cumbersome. In the past, sites that tried to break the tabular, "only text" mold were often slow to load and broke without third party libraries.

As internet speeds improved so did third party support and the design process for this new technical media. The interoperability of the technologies could still lead to a lot of pain when developing for everyone and doing so in a fashionable way.

Now, we're at that fork where everything has matured enough that it's opened up the ability to infuse more character and creativity into our designs and the technology allows the feasibility. However, I think there's still a gap. There's a gap between the idea and the effort required in order to achieve it. There is still transition between the idea, the design and the realization and often we see a loss of inspiration as it comes to that fruition.

I think there is still headway to make on the fluidity and experience of the digital domain. That visceral reaction that many of us enjoy when rifling through the pages of a book or glancing through the glossy pages of a magazine have yet to be duplicated, even if this site makes a great stab at it. To remove the consciousness of the square portal of emitted light is going to be the next frontier though.

Re: Show HN: A Handcrafted Web

#20
Hi Kate, you guys are probably still tweaking away and have all of this noted, but I'll post some issues I have anyway:

- Thought I was saving the page from the Settings drop-down where it shows me the URL to my site and says "Update", rather than the "Done" button to the top right.

- Expected to be able to drag-and-drop the images to the canvas so I could do it en mass instead of click them, then have the clipart stick to my cursor until I dropped it/resized it before going back into the images panel.

- Not being able to see that the elements have styles attributed to them without clicking into them is kind of rough.

- Outlining an object by a bounding-box instead of the shape of the object can get confusing when you have multiple layers.

- In the layers drop-down, everything is listed as a "Text" element. Some without any description (shape preview would be nice). Should be able to delete the object after selecting it from within this panel too.

- I think the layout would be easier/more familiar for people if the top bar options were vertically-aligned to be a toolbar, and if the user actions bar at the bottom was up at the top right. Have a separate floating box or one that comes in from the right side for when you select an object that has attributes/FX to fiddle with.

- You can see the code but not edit it?

- Just realized where the background editor was. That should be a part of the primary toolbar.

Otherwise really interesting, would be great for creating quick instruction manuals and simple product pages. Like someone else mentioned, I am waiting on ReadyMag for this kind of publishing tool, but I like where things are headed here moreso than some other editors I've come across.

Post reply on HN