Redesigning a popular site is a good way for up-and-coming designers to show off their skills - but it's important to consider the target audience and their priorities. Yes, HN users want speed, but mentioning page load times and moving on shows that you haven't really thought about that. We want to get into the meat of HN (which is the conversations) as fast as possible. Everything that gets in the way of that is bad.
1) Spacing - designers love adding extra space, and on first glance it looks beautiful. But too much space slows down browsing speed.
2) The numbered articles - more eye catching than the actual content. A user reading that page will have to spend concentration on not looking at the numbers.
3) The same with the bubbles around the comment counts and upvotes. Those values are important for HN readers - but not as important as the actual topic.
Most of these arguments can be made about ColdFusion (http://www.getrailo.org/ or http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion-family.html). It has problems of its own, but a wildly inconsistent language / API isn't on of them. If I were recommending a language to a budding web developer I would not recommend PHP.
For a novice - absolutely. There are very few languages that make it that easy to develop a web application. Developers that already have experience in another server-side language probably won't get as much value. The exception is PHP developers - you guys really need to try ColdFusion.
Notch is effectively creating an in-game "craft" that actually requires skill. And just like in the real world, people who have that skill should be allowed to profit from it.
I don't really follow this field so I can't name any players other than Adobe and Octoshape, but I know they are out there. My point is that Bram is pitching it like he invented P2P streaming — which he certainly didn't — and GigaOM and TechCrunch are eating it up because it fits some narrative that they know generates pageviews.
I don't really see how this represents an introvert's experience. It does kind of match how someone with Aspergers' (or in an unfamiliar culture) might see the situation - navigating a maze they usually can't see, and having to blunder into walls on purpose to get a brief insight.
Visual Basic played a similar role for me many years ago. I've moved on since, but at the time it was exactly what I needed. The value of a WYSIWYG GUI editor and a simple event system to a budding developer can't be overstated.
You should be explaining your value proposition on the first page. If I had gone just by what I read there I would have assumed that Uberzet was an alternative upload-and-get-public-link UI.
For everyone else: it is an index of the public Dropbox files of everyone who is signed up.
I really agree with chrisdroukas, I had no idea I would be sharing my public folder until after I'd already approved the permissions and poked around.
Also when it comes to deciding if I want to share my public folder it would be nice if you could list what's in my public folder for me. I had to go check.
> Also when it comes to deciding if I want to share my public folder it would be nice if you could list what's in my public folder for me. I had to go check.
Agreed. It's shame Dropbox doesn't let you see what files you have in your Public folder more easily. It would be great if they could some how directly link it to a folder on your computer so you could quickly and easily manage those files.
1) Spacing - designers love adding extra space, and on first glance it looks beautiful. But too much space slows down browsing speed.
2) The numbered articles - more eye catching than the actual content. A user reading that page will have to spend concentration on not looking at the numbers.
3) The same with the bubbles around the comment counts and upvotes. Those values are important for HN readers - but not as important as the actual topic.
The design is less important than the content.