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Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

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Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#121

Post by ouid »

20years wrote: post #63

Am I the only one who doesn't think Craigslist is "Ugly or Janky"? It's one of the only places left on the web where I can go and not be bombarded by ads, pop ups, crazy amount of JavaScript and slow loading. It just works and is intuitive to use. The only major thing I feel is missing is the ability to search through multiple locations at the same time.

The lack of an index, and indeed the incredible technology dedicated to preventing external indices, is widely considered to be a feature of craigslist.

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#122

Post by dzonga »

tsm wrote: post #45
GoodbyeEarl wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd really like to know how to deal with users input, forms and other stuff without JS. Every tutorial we see today is like "throw tons of JS to this problem and it shall work".

Vanilla forms just GET or POST to some server endpoint with all of the s passed in as query parameters. Frameworks (e.g., Rails) put some syntactic sugar on it, but that's really all that's happening. If the form submission contains invalid input, it's customary to return to the form page (with all the values already filled out) and show a server-generated message about what went wrong. JS is absolutely not required…

I would really want to know more about this too, built a simple site without all that JS bloat

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#124

Post by vonklaus »

maxxxxx wrote: post #10
vonklaus wrote: post #4

I almost always fight the SV meme that largely founders focus on throwaway trivial ideas. I just think this is so stupid. Craigslist is one of the few companies that isnt greedy, is community driven, and if there are examples using there outsize market to kill competitirs or act nefarious-- I havent heard them. I did 3 craigslist deals in the past 2 days. Got coffee with a stranger at 2am who let me flash an os to a…

Are you saying Craigslist is a tiny server in an apartment?

I am saying the profitabls challenger is just a server probably hosted nearly free on AWS or Azure through sponsorships. Being profitable is great and I applaud that, but my point is what is the magnitude of success? This likely is a lifestyle business and it is disingenuous to say it is a CL competitor.

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#125

Post by itomato »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #68
Arizhel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Facebook is trying to move in on their territory for sure. Unfortunately, I don't think they will. Why "unfortunately"? This is a good thing. Facebook is horrible, in many different ways, and the last thing we need is to hand even more power over the internet to them. CL is "ugly", but it's fast and works great, and isn't filled with ads and tracking, something I definitely can't say about Facebook.

Real competition in general is good, it'd force both products to improve.

The only way Facebook could "improve" is to fade away completely.

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#126

Post by stephancoral »

walterbell wrote: post #85
stephancoral wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craigslist has nearly $300 million in profit and only around 30 employees. Why on earth would they ever want to go public?

What's their annual revenue?

$381 million in 2015. I'd be interested in seeing where the 81 mil goes

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#127

Post by Tiktaalik »

erik wrote: post #42
codingdave wrote: post #7

It isn't universal, though. One of the things you find if you move to Utah is, "Don't bother with Craigslist." I mean, it exists here. It gets some use. But most people use the online classifieds from ksl.com, the local TV station. At least, I think it is a TV station. I've never watched it, but everyone uses their online classifieds instead of craigslist. Their site also is ugly, and full of difficult buyers and poo…

Similarly, Kijiji actually found success in Canada, and has quite a bit more traffic than Craigslist for most cities here.

Speaking of ugly and janky, Kijiji is much worse than Craigslist in this area. It's remarkable to me that people use it.

It has not found popularity in Vancouver, where Craigslist is ubiquitous.

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#128

Post by flukus »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #79
laurentdc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ability to run without JavaScript. Genuinely asking - is that still an important quality as of today?

When I visit Craigslist, it loads almost instantaneously, similar to how Hacker News does now, or Gmail used to years ago. This is not the case for sites that use JavaScript to position everything.

> or Gmail used to years ago

Sure you weren't using the basic html version? Because I've been using gmail since it was invite only and it always had a loading spinner.

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#129

Post by flukus »

GoodbyeEarl wrote: post #113
tsm wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vanilla forms just GET or POST to some server endpoint with all of the s passed in as query parameters. Frameworks (e.g., Rails) put some syntactic sugar on it, but that's really all that's happening. If the form submission contains invalid input, it's customary to return to the form page (with all the values already filled out) and show a server-generated message about what went wrong. JS is absolutely not required…

Thank you! it is actually enlightening :) I think it's a little bit awkward to not use put, patch, delete... I wonder however if my server must follow the same technique, if not how to wire a delete endpoint to handle a form post and so on. I'll try to handle a form using only get and post sometime just to see how it works. Thank you!

Well you just made me feel old. For put/patch/delete you can just as easily wire different options to different URL's. We had URL's like /Foo/Delete?43. It may be awkward in a particular framework but it's about as simple as things get.

I've always hated put/patch/delete because it tends to result in data centric UI's instead of workflow centric ones.

Re: Craigslist Is Ugly, Janky, Old School, and Unbeatable

#130

Post by ianai »

itomato wrote: post #125
mynameisvlad wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real competition in general is good, it'd force both products to improve.

The only way Facebook could "improve" is to fade away completely.

I think facebook serves a purpose but I also agree with your statement. The last thing I want are more places relying on facebook. I deleted my facebook to get away from it. Huge "but" though: I did get value out of facebook when I was younger. It's for that reason that I think it's probably a good thing.

Of course...there's also the ever present threat of a new social network growing up with another generation.

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