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Terra Bella

terrabella.google.com

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Re: Terra Bella

#151

Post by ACow_Adonis »

dbcurtis wrote: post #43

Is there a readable version of the web site that doesn't have obnoxious scrolling? Someone needs to tell their designers about the Principle of Least Surprise. I'll look at this after they fix this so it doesn't give me a headache.

Jesus google. Politely: get your shit together before putting the webpage up.

Forget whether it breaks the back button. I'm going to say it again because apparently companies need it repeated: scrolling is annoying in itself, but I can't scroll without it breaking.

I scroll down, ok.

Wait, did a menu just appear at the top of my screen out of nowhere?

I keep scrolling down...

I scroll back up... wait a second...there's all these other pages I'm viewing now that I've never even seen before on the way down...what happened?

Ok, those little nav button things on the right hand side of my screen? Well apparently, I can't actually scroll to the bottom one...it just never gets there.

Wait no, I can get to the bottom one, if i start on the top one and scroll down, because apparently that makes me skip the other middle two buttons somehow, but if i click on the middle two buttons and scroll down, although i hit the bottom of the page, it still says i'm not at the bottom of the third nav-button. "What's going on?" i say to myself... Holy cow, wait...there's two nav buttons...a bar on the top and dots on the side?

All right, screw this, its broken, i'll just refresh and start from the beginning...oh no...refresh didn't bring me back to the beginning at all because I'm not actually on the original URL...

Sweet mercy...university lecture material example of how NOT to do a webpage anyone? And a google product at that?

What happened google?

Edit: and the bugs keep piling up the more I look at it, your Terabella link in the top left, not only does it duplicate the links in the other two navigation panes, but it doesn't work! It's taken me to two separate screens now!

Sorry, I'm in an angry mood today, but seriously...

Re: Terra Bella

#152

Post by sidcool »

The top three comments complaining about site's usability. The fourth top level comment actually wonders about space pollution. Lets get our shit together, HN.

Let's comment anything, but upvote things about Terra Bella and it's potential applications, because there's no website that would please everybody.

Re: Terra Bella

#153

Post by sixothree »

sidcool wrote: post #152

The top three comments complaining about site's usability. The fourth top level comment actually wonders about space pollution. Lets get our shit together, HN. Let's comment anything, but upvote things about Terra Bella and it's potential applications, because there's no website that would please everybody.

I would prefer comments be nestable and root level comments should be collapsed by default.

Re: Terra Bella

#154

Post by sixothree »

revelation wrote: post #138

I don't get it, what's new? There are a number of companies doing satellite imagery, you can usually find them by reading the name on the bottom right of your Google Maps view. And yes, these companies also track mining fields and what not, they just don't pretend it's some charity thing.

Obviously something is different about this and they feel the need for preemptive branding.

Re: Terra Bella

#156

Post by nakedrobot2 »

dbcurtis wrote: post #43

Is there a readable version of the web site that doesn't have obnoxious scrolling? Someone needs to tell their designers about the Principle of Least Surprise. I'll look at this after they fix this so it doesn't give me a headache.

I smite this page with the fury of a thousand developers cursing internet explorer 6.

This page is trash! I'm sure that there is some interesting info there but after hijacking my scrolling, and browsing history, I just don't care about it.

Re: Terra Bella

#157

Post by draw_down »

frisco wrote: post #15

Hold on hold on. This is a big swarm of satellites and (I assume) a forthcoming API and the comments are "the scrolling sucks"? They could have used tables and comic sans for all I care. This is awesome. Though Planet Labs will always be my first affection in this space. Talk about a hard and interesting problem. This data takes you to so many different places.

God, no kidding. These comments are a disaster.

Re: Terra Bella

#158

Post by draw_down »

sidcool wrote: post #152

The top three comments complaining about site's usability. The fourth top level comment actually wonders about space pollution. Lets get our shit together, HN. Let's comment anything, but upvote things about Terra Bella and it's potential applications, because there's no website that would please everybody.

Sometimes HN is a bunch of crotchety old grumps yelling about how web fonts don't work with their 10 year old version of Opera.

Re: Terra Bella

#159

Post by thrownaway2424 »

lukas099 wrote: post #113

It's interesting that it's a "Google company" and not "Alphabet".

Why is that interesting? Geospatial data is one of Google's largest lines of business. It was Google's third major effort after search and email. They've been in the business for over a decade.

Re: Terra Bella

#160

Post by ChrisDutrow »

iconjack wrote: post #118
dbcurtis wrote: post #43

Is there a readable version of the web site that doesn't have obnoxious scrolling? Someone needs to tell their designers about the Principle of Least Surprise. I'll look at this after they fix this so it doesn't give me a headache.

I normally frown upon people getting too hung up on page design on HN, but this one I gotta admit is a real WTF'er. When you "scroll" down, it's doing page loads, and filling up browser history. Back back back back back back. Worse still, you think you've backed through all those page loads, and you find out it's one of those sites that keeps you from backing out of their site! We used to call this "breaking the back…

I got smacked with the broken back button too. Had to close the tab, re-load HN and find my place again.

I'm going to guess this is probably not intentional on their end. They're probably aware of the issue, but likely it's a side-effect of an architectural decision that was made previously and hard to un-make now.

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