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Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

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Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#151

Post by [deleted] »

jules wrote: post #130
calhoun137 wrote: post #55

There is an important point to be made about the quote from the end of this article. "Thanks go to Ben Alpert for helping me understand the linear algebra / cross-product magic ...I ended up going w/ a cruder slope-based approach, mostly b/c I’ve lost all intuitive understanding of linear algebra" Let that be a wake up call to all of the programmers who continue to claim that you can "get away" with out knowing much…

In this case the slope method is better and simpler than the cross product method. def slope(p): return (p.y-oldMouse.y)/(p.x-oldMouse.x) isInRange = slope(menuBottom)

[deleted]

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#152

Post by [deleted] »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #61
calhoun137 wrote: post #55

There is an important point to be made about the quote from the end of this article. "Thanks go to Ben Alpert for helping me understand the linear algebra / cross-product magic ...I ended up going w/ a cruder slope-based approach, mostly b/c I’ve lost all intuitive understanding of linear algebra" Let that be a wake up call to all of the programmers who continue to claim that you can "get away" with out knowing much…

I took away the exact opposite - this is yet another example of not needing to know the right math. In the end, he can study up a bit and/or seek out a friend who does know, but be got the hack done without it. This is how it works with my wife and I sometimes. I write a lot of code, and she either fixes or writes or advises me on the bit I need to work much better. I admit we can't run the world or write good code w…

[deleted]

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#153

Post by saraid216 »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #133
spullara wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like it would be easy to capture 'space' and arrows keys in the textfield and do the right thing. Anyone seen someone do that?

You wouldn't want to capture the space key because you'll need that in search queries but the arrow keys sound like an idea for those interested in accommodating both cases.

Arrow keys and page down sound like "activate autocomplete" to me.

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#154

Post by saraid216 »

jschuur wrote: post #96
tjic wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one will answer this. If they say "no", they're speaking for Amazon, and saying "we give you a right to infringe our patent". If they say "yes", they're speaking for Amazon, and making the firm look douchey. Mu - unask the question.

It's perfectly valid to ask a question, even if you know the other side can't answer it. That doesn't mean we should give the engineers who come to this time a hard time about not answering it. It's just a legitimate thing to ask out loud.

Hm. I'm going to disagree.

If you know the engineer can't answer it, it's silly at best to ask it. At worst, it's malicious. See http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/JAQing_off (If you don't know that, then there's no problem and a quick explanation why it's not worth asking should end the thread. It's not something I'd take someone to task for.)

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#155

Post by nowarninglabel »

enraged_camel wrote: post #144
ww520 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please DO NOT listen to this guy. This auto-focus to the search box misfeature absolutely ruins any page viewing navigation. For people who use up/down arrow or pgup/pgdown keys to scroll down the page (which is pretty much all laptop users), this focus stealing misfeature would frustrate them to no end. I won't go back to any site that does this.

I disagree completely. The fact that Amazon does not auto-focus to the search box annoys me greatly, since 99% of the time I find the items I'm looking for via search. Compared to Google, Youtube, etc. Amazon feels clunky.

Then why don't you just search via Google? "site:amazon.com bank of bob" or even most of the time you can just add the word amazon to your search query "amazon bank of bob" and I get exactly what I'm searching for.

To me you haven't made any case at all why others should have to suffer so you can have auto-focus on Amazon when your needs are already met elsewhere.

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#156

Post by panic »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #101
MiguelHudnandez wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think perfect and mediocre are both enemies of good. "It complies with the spec... ship it."

Not of the same magnitude then. Mediocrity is the nemesis of good, with the sole mission of undermining it at every turn. The drive for perfection, on the other hand, might sometimes be a foe, but overall facilitates good. It's clear which is a more damaging influence. Personally, I'll agree with Salvador Dali when he said, "Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it."

Gentlemen, we are going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because nothing is perfect. But we are going to relentlessly chase it, because in the process we will catch excellence. I am not remotely interested in just being good. —Vince Lombardi

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#157

Post by oh_sigh »

Nycto wrote: post #43

Hey all, I'm on the team that built this. We also built the redesign that launched last year. In fact, this was part of that. The article pretty much nails our implementation. Point of fact: Our team is recruiting. If you dig UX projects like this, shoot our manager Chad an email: chaddes at amazon dot com

Slightly offtopic, but why doesn't amazon.com have the caret auto-focus on the search box for typing, like google.com does?

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#158

Post by jchavannes »

glomph wrote: post #60
slig wrote: post #23

Really nice! Two questions: - What's the "cross-product magic Amazon uses to detect movement inside the 'blue triangle.'"? - How did you do those GIFs?

https://code.google.com/p/sharex/ makes those types of gifs very easy on windows. It can also do a load of other cool stuff.

Off topic, but the Reddit post about Neox Screen using the ShareX source code and asking for donations is quite disheartening. Not that anything illegal occurred, just the level of deceitfulness.

http://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/17qmek/my_friend...

Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown

#160

Post by dylangs1030 »

Serow225 wrote: post #148
Nycto wrote: post #43

Hey all, I'm on the team that built this. We also built the redesign that launched last year. In fact, this was part of that. The article pretty much nails our implementation. Point of fact: Our team is recruiting. If you dig UX projects like this, shoot our manager Chad an email: chaddes at amazon dot com

Am I the only one that gets tripped up each time I go to Amazon by mousing over the button and immediately clicking on it, thinking that's how to get the dropdown to appear, only to have the click take me to 'my account', then requiring me to go back up to the menu and wait for it to drop down instead of clicking? :)

No, that used to happen to me almost all the time. My habits only just recently adapted to it.

It's funny how ubiquitous unfeatures are that when we're treated to nice features we unintentionally sabotage them. We have to unlearn the former habits.

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