Things I Learned Designing at Disqus • Hacker News Board

Re: Things I Learned Designing at Disqus

#31

Post by oblio » Tue, May 13, 2014, 2:52 PM UTC

southflorida wrote: post #26

Pacabel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of those are voluntary, active users, though? I see them more as "victims" of it, who are subjected to it without giving much consent at all. Somebody loads a blog article or some other web page that uses Disqus for accepting and showing comments, and without necessarily wanting to use it the page's visitors have become "users" of Disqus.

i cant stand disqus, i leave articles more than not because i dont like to be forced to comment using the system. it blows and needs to die... i thing webmasters use it because they are lazy, not because it is good.

I don't know if you've used a lot of blogs/CMSes/etc, but you definitely overrate their commenting systems. Most of them are crap. That's why Disqus is so popular, because it has tons of cool features (like the little popup that says when someone has posted before you).

Heck, Disqus is better than 90% of the forums out there (Hi, there, PHPBB or vBulletin!).

Re: Things I Learned Designing at Disqus

#32

Post by grey-area » Tue, May 13, 2014, 2:58 PM UTC

DigitalSea wrote: post #13

I agree with pretty much everything, except designers using Git. Sadly, Git doesn't work for PSD files properly. Some of the PSD files I've worked with before (900mb+) for larger websites and applications would definitely not be a good fit for Git. Although I think the blame lies mostly on Photoshop's end not being the right tool for web design, but being used by designers anyway. I think whatever tool ends up replac…

I really disagree with you that Git is not a good tool for designers. It's certainly not friendly to learn, but for designers who get the process, it is incredibly useful. If you have lots of 900MB binary blobs I guess that's going to be a problem, but the vast majority of assets in a website or app are text files, jpg and png files which are small, and the vector artwork or PSDs used to generate them (for vector that's really small, for psds that can vary from a few MB up to 100MB (which git is perfectly fine with), but 900MB is in my experience really rare). Photoshop is just one tool in the arsenal, and not particularly effective for anything involving text (the layout tools aren't great), anything which will be translated to html (just mock up in HTML/CSS after some quick roughs - far less friction), or anything which requires resolution independence (almost every asset nowadays).

Of course this depends on workflow and tastes vary, but for designers who don't use PSD to actually design websites (a purpose for which it is not very well suited), git or other version control tools are incredibly useful. Wasting a bit of extra space storing a few versions of a psd file is no problem - I've worked on 20GB local repositories before with a lot of assets, without issues, and it's easy enough to separate out large files into another repo or leave them out of version control if you have to. If a designer is creating 1GB PSD files with hundreds of assets in, I'd say (as a designer) their workflow is fundamentally broken unless they are producing billboard advertisements which require very high resolution files - you shouldn't have that much of anything glommed together in one file. So git works perfectly fine for lots of designers today, even working with binary files.

It's just a shame that these version control tools are mostly isolated to the workflow of programmers, as people at most workplaces I've come into contact with, from architects through writers or editors, sorely need a tool like git in order to manage collaboration and versions.

Re: Things I Learned Designing at Disqus

#33

Post by hannesfostie » Tue, May 13, 2014, 2:59 PM UTC

Isn't there something to be said about engineers teaching designers git, and the other way around? I understand that what you're saying is easier and more efficient, but learning to communicate should be a pretty big deal, and teaching others helps a lot.

Re: Things I Learned Designing at Disqus

#34

Post by SolarUpNote » Tue, May 13, 2014, 3:14 PM UTC

DigitalSea wrote: post #13

I agree with pretty much everything, except designers using Git. Sadly, Git doesn't work for PSD files properly. Some of the PSD files I've worked with before (900mb+) for larger websites and applications would definitely not be a good fit for Git. Although I think the blame lies mostly on Photoshop's end not being the right tool for web design, but being used by designers anyway. I think whatever tool ends up replac…

I don't think he was talking about using Git for graphics files. I assume he meant html/css/javascript files.

As a designer who codes (or a coder who designs, not sure at this point), I can see what he means about learning Git. It was tough for me to grasp until I saw this:

http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/

Re: Things I Learned Designing at Disqus

#35

Post by kbenson » Tue, May 13, 2014, 4:39 PM UTC

ch4s3 wrote: post #21

whichdan wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To elaborate, for anyone who hasn't used Photoshop (in several years): you can have layer groups which act as folders containing several related layers, so when you're browsing layers, it isn't just a mess of 500 some-odd rows.

Yeah, I should have mentioned that. You can also stuff a lot of component images into a psd that wouldn't necessarily make it into a final web design.

Sounds like what's needed is a way to extract a PSD into a component file structure, and combine that structure back into a PSD. Without knowing anything about PSDs, I assume it would contain lists of layers with links to resources such as images or whatever is required to approximate the desired view. Something like that as a plugin or hooked to run before and after commits would be really useful in this case.

Depending on how hard the PSD format is to grok (purposefully or otherwise), this may be nigh impossible, but it also seems like it would be a great exchange format (which may be a another reason Adobe wouldn't want it). Then again, maybe there's already something like this...?

Re: Things I Learned Designing at Disqus

#36

Post by pessimizer » Tue, May 13, 2014, 5:01 PM UTC

greggman wrote: post #20

> Designers are generally right brained and engineers are usually left brained Is that true? Even if it's a myth of left vs right side of the brain are designers and engineers really that different in the brain?

It's pseudoscience. His point isn't, though: some people are more deductive/math oriented, some people are more associative/aesthetically oriented, and some people are neither. It's good for them to mix.

Re: Things I Learned Designing at Disqus

#37

Post by joshuasortino » Tue, May 13, 2014, 5:10 PM UTC

DigitalSea wrote: post #13

I agree with pretty much everything, except designers using Git. Sadly, Git doesn't work for PSD files properly. Some of the PSD files I've worked with before (900mb+) for larger websites and applications would definitely not be a good fit for Git. Although I think the blame lies mostly on Photoshop's end not being the right tool for web design, but being used by designers anyway. I think whatever tool ends up replac…

I should clarify, I wouldn't normally recommend using Git for PSDs or binary file collaboration in general.

My point was that a primarily right-brained designer should teach fellow right-brained designers how Git works. Things just make more sense that way.

Re: Things I Learned Designing at Disqus

#38

Post by joshuasortino » Tue, May 13, 2014, 5:12 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #36

greggman wrote: post #20

> Designers are generally right brained and engineers are usually left brained Is that true? Even if it's a myth of left vs right side of the brain are designers and engineers really that different in the brain?

It's pseudoscience. His point isn't, though: some people are more deductive/math oriented, some people are more associative/aesthetically oriented, and some people are neither. It's good for them to mix.

Yup.

I know the whole left/right brain thing isn't real science. I was using it as a common metaphor. Designers and engineers typically approach things differently. Learn from someone else's approach.

Re: Things I Learned Designing at Disqus

#39

Post by joshuasortino » Tue, May 13, 2014, 5:15 PM UTC

j_s wrote: post #30

Does anyone have any thoughts on Disqus, particularly reviewing the usability and/or design aspects? I see the service itself as meeting a need for those with static sites or who otherwise don't want to deal with managing their own commenting system. Disqus has also made some business decisions to increase revenue that have upset a few HN'ers¹. I haven't heard any complaints about usability or other design issues, th…

Even if you haven't heard them, we still get complaints about the usability of the product! It's what we did with the feedback that matters.

As for the business decisions, those were decided by VPs and the business development team.

Re: Things I Learned Designing at Disqus

#40

Post by joshuasortino » Tue, May 13, 2014, 5:16 PM UTC

ing33k wrote: post #2

"Engineers should teach engineers GIT, designers should teach designers GIT." is git part of modern design workflow ? how are designers using git ?

I was talking about the 10% of the time designers should be coding in this type of environment. (I.e. pushing polish code or hacking together a quick marketing page.)