Basecamp Next: UI Preview • Hacker News Board

Re: Basecamp Next: UI Preview

#71

Post by jon_wolfe » Fri, Feb 17, 2012, 1:16 AM UTC

This is an intriguing UI solution. If nothing else, it's ballsy to so radically revamp a flagship application. (I hope it doesn't receive the same reception as FCPX.)

One thing the demo left me wondering is what happens when a user opens a link to something that normally opens in a modal sheet? (if I send someone a url from my browser address bar, for instance.) Does a page load with a sheet overlaying the project homepage, or is there an alternate view for that case?

edit: I see this question was already answered by Jason: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3601498

Re: Basecamp Next: UI Preview

#72

Post by BryanB55 » Fri, Feb 17, 2012, 1:21 AM UTC

jmjerlecki wrote: post #51

"We call it page stacking and we think you’re going to love it." This sentence is sooo very apple.

ha I was thinking the exact same thing.

Re: Basecamp Next: UI Preview

#73

Post by larrywright » Fri, Feb 17, 2012, 1:23 AM UTC

alexyoung wrote: post #58

dhh wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for the time being. Stacker is specifically developed for this unique UI style that we're using for Next. We don't open source our UI elements.

You know who did open source their UI elements? Twitter, with Bootstrap. And you know how awesome that was for everyone? Pretty awesome!

While I agree that Bootstrap is awesome (I use it myself), it's worth pointing out that what Twitter open sourced was not the magic of their core product, but rather the templates that they use to create internal applications. If you look at twitter.com, you don't see any of the same elements that are included in Bootstrap.

Re: Basecamp Next: UI Preview

#74

Post by voidfiles » Fri, Feb 17, 2012, 2:03 AM UTC

larrywright wrote: post #73

alexyoung wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know who did open source their UI elements? Twitter, with Bootstrap. And you know how awesome that was for everyone? Pretty awesome!

While I agree that Bootstrap is awesome (I use it myself), it's worth pointing out that what Twitter open sourced was not the magic of their core product, but rather the templates that they use to create internal applications. If you look at twitter.com, you don't see any of the same elements that are included in Bootstrap.

You mean besides all their UI widgets, right?

http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/javascript.html

Re: Basecamp Next: UI Preview

#75

Post by erikpukinskis » Fri, Feb 17, 2012, 2:43 AM UTC

bretthopper wrote: post #6

The new "sheets" UI paradigm is strange to me. Jason mentioned a few times that they wanted to provide focus by getting rid of unnecessary design elements and chrome. But with the sheets, you actually get unneeded chrome. Your main content viewport keeps getting shifted down and to the right. Why not just use breadcrumbs at the top to provide context? That way, the entire content area could be taken over whenever you…

If the little bit of document sticking out on the left is clickable, that would let you go "back" no matter how far down you had scrolled, which seems like a good feature.

Re: Basecamp Next: UI Preview

#76

Post by gry » Fri, Feb 17, 2012, 3:01 AM UTC

arvidj wrote: post #52

bretthopper wrote: post #6

The new "sheets" UI paradigm is strange to me. Jason mentioned a few times that they wanted to provide focus by getting rid of unnecessary design elements and chrome. But with the sheets, you actually get unneeded chrome. Your main content viewport keeps getting shifted down and to the right. Why not just use breadcrumbs at the top to provide context? That way, the entire content area could be taken over whenever you…

Seems like a glorified back-button to me.

It is. It's also one where you don't need to remember context.

Bret Victor describes and demos this in his presentation "Inventing on Principle." [http://vimeo.com/36579366]. BCX is better than a page-based back button. By the way, back still works.

Re: Basecamp Next: UI Preview

#77

Post by jasonfried » Fri, Feb 17, 2012, 3:04 AM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #75

bretthopper wrote: post #6

The new "sheets" UI paradigm is strange to me. Jason mentioned a few times that they wanted to provide focus by getting rid of unnecessary design elements and chrome. But with the sheets, you actually get unneeded chrome. Your main content viewport keeps getting shifted down and to the right. Why not just use breadcrumbs at the top to provide context? That way, the entire content area could be taken over whenever you…

If the little bit of document sticking out on the left is clickable, that would let you go "back" no matter how far down you had scrolled, which seems like a good feature.

We used to have it clickable, but we found it was fairly easy to click by accident so we turned it off. We may bring it back down the road once we have a little more time to focus on that interaction.

Re: Basecamp Next: UI Preview

#78

Post by fleaflicker » Fri, Feb 17, 2012, 3:34 AM UTC

How are you migrating user data to Next? Or does it use the same underlying schema/data representations?

Re: Basecamp Next: UI Preview

#79

Post by rushabh » Fri, Feb 17, 2012, 4:06 AM UTC

jasonfried wrote: post #8

bretthopper wrote: post #6

The new "sheets" UI paradigm is strange to me. Jason mentioned a few times that they wanted to provide focus by getting rid of unnecessary design elements and chrome. But with the sheets, you actually get unneeded chrome. Your main content viewport keeps getting shifted down and to the right. Why not just use breadcrumbs at the top to provide context? That way, the entire content area could be taken over whenever you…

When you use it you'll see why breadcrumbs are inferior. Breadcrumbs don't give you a sense of place. Breadcrumbs aren't natural. It sounds like a subtle thing, but once you use it you'll see the difference. Also, sheets have a much larger click target which makes them a lot easier and faster to use.

A close button on the top right of the sheets would be nice. Its a common metaphor these days.

Otherwise the UI looks great.

Re: Basecamp Next: UI Preview

#80

Post by CubicleNinjas » Fri, Feb 17, 2012, 4:15 AM UTC

I'm disappointed.

The single view idea is used by many project management tools and requires a user to do the parsing. Clicks are still required to gain access to the project meat. This means quite a bit of both scrolling and clicking.

The design itself doesn't lend itself well to either behavior. Menus don't scroll with you, click targets look to be fairly small.

I'll reserve judgement until I try it myself, and 37signals need simply release this and it will be accepted with acclaim, but I'm not seeing what benefits these changes bring. That said, it is crazy fast for an early build!