11–20 of 29 posts
For another approach to annotation, check out fixjam.com. I never took this past the 1-day hack stage, but I'd like to revisit it at some point. You can try it by clicking the bookmarklet and highlighting some text.
Normally I don't comment (at all) on posts like this, but this is just bad. The comments overlay cover up the very text that you're suppose to be reading. This disrupts the reading flow, making it hard to find my way back to where I was reading, especially comments are merely secondary to the actual article. To get back to the article I have to press this tiny close button on the top left corner of the comments overl…
Normally I don't comment (at all) on posts like this, but this is just bad. The comments overlay cover up the very text that you're suppose to be reading. This disrupts the reading flow, making it hard to find my way back to where I was reading, especially comments are merely secondary to the actual article. To get back to the article I have to press this tiny close button on the top left corner of the comments overl…
Interesting points, thanks. I'd disagree with comments being merely secondary to the actual article though. Our point is that inline commentary, if done well, should be as important as the content itself.
For me, it's simply that the trigger is both unpredictable and way too insensitive. It takes two very large scrolls of the entire height of the trackpad on my MBP, and it doesn't respect the scrolling momentum. It just feels very non-native.
Overall, I like the design.
I just noticed that you're splitting up m.o into separate sentences.
The biggest problem I see, however, is the slideout pane from the right when you click an annotation. RG does this without taking up the whole reading area; it seems a bit silly to reproduce the whole sentence being annotated and cover up the rest of text for one heavily padded tweet. Personally I would find a two-mode interface more useful: hover to see a small dialog with the top/newest tweets and a summary of the annotation activity, and click to get a larger overlay if there's too many tweets for the small view.
Finally, I think using pg's essays might actually hurt you. I get that it's a gimmick, and the HN crowd might like it, but I think the man himself might be less flattered and more put off if it seems like you're trying to make up for technical shortcomings by flattering him.
This would be nice if not for the pagination. It's slow, unpredictable, and unnecessary. For another approach to annotation, check out fixjam.com. I never took this past the 1-day hack stage, but I'd like to revisit it at some point. You can try it by clicking the bookmarklet and highlighting some text.
I came here to say that. The web already has a way of dealing with the situation where the text doesn't fit on the screen: it's called scrolling. Scolling is a much better solution than pagination, firstly because it's what people expect (and is therefore easier to use) but also because it gives the user more control over what part of the text they see.