A Personal API • Hacker News Board

Re: A Personal API

#31

Post by JMTQp8lwXL » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 7:28 PM UTC

xwowsersx wrote: post #2

I can't read this because I'm having trouble scrolling to the right. Just me? What's with the annoying horizontal scrolling?

I didn't try scrolling vertically until I saw the other comments posted here. I would presume whomever implemented the scrolling didn't personally own a mouse or touchpad that has horizontal scrolling functionality.

Re: A Personal API

#32

Post by fullstop » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 7:28 PM UTC

a3n wrote: post #25

Scrolling: Works for me. Roll the mouse and I get a vertical scroll. Linux whatever, firefox=latest pushed update from whenever

On a laptop without any sort of mouse wheel / scrolling capabilities. It sucks -- pressing space doesn't scroll to the next page. Page up and page down don't work either.

Re: A Personal API

#33

Post by dang » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 7:28 PM UTC

karma_fountain wrote: post #14

It's nicer vertically scrolling https://imgur.com/a/6Xw7quy . Just compare the 2 op.

https://outline.com/evxWSv also works. Please let's stop commenting on the scrolling now, and focus on what's interesting herre.

Re: A Personal API

#34

Post by jascii » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 7:38 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #30

jascii wrote: post #22

Did anyone manage to read enough of this to see whether this is more than a "wouldn't it be great if.." idea? Ideas are cheap..

" Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thanks for correcting me! (upvote -- not like you need them but I appreciate all your hard work!)

Re: A Personal API

#35

Post by TJSomething » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

a3n wrote: post #25

Scrolling: Works for me. Roll the mouse and I get a vertical scroll. Linux whatever, firefox=latest pushed update from whenever

It takes me 26 flicks of my scroll wheel to show a single column. Given the content, each column should be about 3 flicks max.

Re: A Personal API

#36

Post by azinman2 » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

So I love the ambition - especially as a way to decouple services and encourage interop. But in the end, isn’t this kind of thing typically a lowest common denominator approach? For example, Spotify or iTunes specific features/integrations either get lost or get added as an extension, to the point where you’re only worse off the main service’s APIs (which will be always up to date and are still required to be up, and will have dedicated devops teams unlike your VPS).

The case of updating your website again is pretty specific and niche... the majority of people’s personal sites these days are their FB/IG pages. And this does nothing to create APIs for locked down 3rd parties like WhatsApp or Messages.

Rather than being a simple wrapper / bridge, is there the possibility of doing something more new that isn’t possible with a variety of SDKs? Like a personal API into my health or routines, that either creates inferences or is able to intelligently control a variety of devices/services?

Re: A Personal API

#37

Post by kwhitefoot » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

I rather like the horizontal scrolling. It was refreshing to see a site adapt properly to the vertical size of the viewport as well.

Makes reading such pages much more comfortable on a wide screen like my 17" HP Omen.

Re: A Personal API

#38

Post by keithwhor » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 7:46 PM UTC

mawalu wrote: post #29

I'm toying around with this idea myself. After some thoughts I created a simple node.js app that provides services like a http server and a spotify api client to module that are autoloaded from some folder. Whenever I feel like it I can very easily extend this platform by just writing a new javascript file. Currently there are thinks like * An endpoint to show my currently playing track on spotify * An endpoint that…

You should check out Code on Standard Library [0], we do exactly this - turn JavaScript files into APIs via the open source FunctionScript specification [1]. We’re a Stripe-backed company and we do a lot of other stuff, too (handle auth between multiple providers... etc.), but building APIs easily is where we started.

We have a lot of new tooling coming soon, so if this is of interest to you please reach out! You can e-mail me directly: keith at (our domain).

[0] https://code.stdlib.com/

[1] https://github.com/functionscript/functionscript

Re: A Personal API

#39

Post by kwhitefoot » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

fullstop wrote: post #32

a3n wrote: post #25

Scrolling: Works for me. Roll the mouse and I get a vertical scroll. Linux whatever, firefox=latest pushed update from whenever

On a laptop without any sort of mouse wheel / scrolling capabilities. It sucks -- pressing space doesn't scroll to the next page. Page up and page down don't work either.

Win 10, FF 70.0.1 left and right cursor control keys work fine.

Re: A Personal API

#40

Post by kwhitefoot » Mon, Dec 02, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #27

I don't whether this was posted because the submitter has a particular interest in a "personal API", or if it's discussion fodder for "here's how NOT to do a web UI". Seriously, do so few people ever say, "hey, honey, come here for a minute and try something for me..."? (On the off chance that the page author comes to their senses, or a different URL is offered, the current link goes to a page with horizontal scrolli…

Use the cursor keys.