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This page is a good example of what's wrong with HN. Someone publishes their open source experiment in minimal browser UI design, and everyone shits on it for

This page is a good example of what's wrong with HN. Someone publishes their open source experiment in minimal browser UI design, and everyone shits on it for not being a built-from-scratch web browser with low memory usage.

fmueller 10y ago
Why should this be wrong? People can be who they want to be. If something is cool it's appreciated, if it's not, it's been shit on. That's life, deal with it. Not everyone is made of porcelain. Some are able to deal with critisism even if it's not delivered like it's taught in management classes.
- JustUhThought 10y ago
  I shit on you.
- dang 10y ago
  This is a common objection that does carry some weight, but turns out not to hold in HN's context. In a large, semi-anonymous, weakly cohesive internet forum, the behavior referred to in this thread as "shitting" propagates into a force that's destructive of the community. The best people begin to leave, the shit piles up, and soon we're in a death spiral. That's the #1 risk to HN, so we worry about it. Like many here, we've seen it happen before, and HN was literally founded on the idea of not letting it happen again—or at least trying to stave it off. That doesn't mean we don't get the value of hard-hitting technical critique done in a right context; it means that HN is not a right context for the shitting variety. Nor do we ask users to be namby-pamby milquetoasts; we ask them to understand enough about the fragility of the community to preserve it for the future. We don't want a scorched-earth outcome. So go ahead and make clear technical criticisms, but make them without the extra jabs that people often feel compelled to stick in. That latter behavior isn't hard technical critique anyhow, just chest-beating.
intopieces 10y ago
This is a good example of what is right with HN. Technical people expressing their technical demands w/r/t a technical project. If you want people to ooh and ahh over a project and keep quiet about its faults, show it your relatives.
- sdegutis 10y ago
  There's nothing helpful about derailing a thread. Just because we're technical doesn't automatically make doing so not inherently be a hindrance.
- enoch_r 10y ago
  You don't get it. Someone built an experiment in minimalistic UI design. "Technical people" started a massive pile-on, declaring "this is stupid, this doesn't have a minimalistic codebase at all." That's not a technical demand, and it's not identifying a product's faults. That's a demand that this project have an entirely different purpose. Personally, I use `chromium --kiosk-mode` as my everyday browser, and this project looks like something I'd be interested in if I were on a compatible OS. Not a small codebase, not a lightweight browser, but that's not what I care about. I want something that has Chrome's features (great devtools, doesn't crash every hour like the webkit browsers I've tried) but with less UI devoted to, uh, chrome that I don't use or want or need.
  - twiceaday 10y ago
    The warranted response is obviously a mix of technical and product-based critique. But you would be foolish to expect every comment to convey this mix.
  - __jack__ 10y ago
    You don´t get it. Labelling dark skinned electron as experimental browser is bs.
  - falcolas 10y ago
    When a experiment has a domain and a splash page, it's left behind the status of "an experiment" and gone into the realm of "a product". IMHO, free or not, it's a product, and should be judged appropriately.
jeppesen-io 10y ago
I cannot agree with you more
choward 10y ago
I'm going to shit on it for being at the top of hacker news and after a minute of looking at the web site I still have no idea what the point of it is.
- dang 10y ago
  Please don't do this here.
HannibalLecter 10y ago
I get what you're saying however let's not be hasty in criticizing our beloved HN friends. Experiments are scientific. UI is an art form, and while there is some science present behind UI design, most of that science is founded on observational data, and at times we get someone who has an idea (runs with it) and they just make something and CALL it experimental. How are they experimenting? Where is the data? What data? None. No data. No report. No research findings. So in this context, the word experimental is an excuse for bugs being present, much like how every website server-based tool and how every software release are labeled as alpha or beta indefinitely. They want to lower liability, when it's not really necessary. This project is NOT experimental. It's an idea that someone came up with and the idea is not new. It's old. It's the idea that minimalism is possible and good. That features are somehow bad or cluttered. Someone might as well download the latest Linux Mint, remove everything of marginal value, and create a new shell to it you have to guess about how to use... and market the skin as a whole new OS. tl;dr: false advertising
ASalazarMX 10y ago
Being experimental and open source resonates with most users here, but it doesn't make the project immune from technical criticism. Aesthetically, it's an interesting proposal for minimalism, but technically, it's literally the opposite.
- enoch_r 10y ago
  I posted this elsewhere, but since a lot of people seem genuinely confused about why someone would want a project like this, I'll say it again. I use `chromium --kiosk-mode` as my daily browser. Chromium has features I value highly (e.g. great devtools, doesn't constantly crash like webkit), but I'd rather have a more minimalistic user interface (less space devoted to chrome I don't want to waste screen real estate on). Note that this preference is completely orthogonal to the desire to have a lighter weight, more minimalistic browser in terms of codebase, memory usage, etc.
ksk 10y ago
Unfortunately that's how the real world is when you ask people to spend their time to look at what you've done. They are going to look at it for exactly 10 seconds and tell you it sucks or that they have no use for it. If HN (or any other website) turns into a "Its OK, you're among friends here" type of auto-fawning community, it would delude people into thinking they're actually doing something worth showing to people as opposed to hacking on a hobby project for their own enjoyment. (This isn't specific to the linked project)

fmueller 10y ago

Why should this be wrong? People can be who they want to be. If something is cool it's appreciated, if it's not, it's been shit on. That's life, deal with it. Not everyone is made of porcelain. Some are able to deal with critisism even if it's not delivered like it's taught in management classes.

JustUhThought 10y ago
I shit on you.
dang 10y ago
This is a common objection that does carry some weight, but turns out not to hold in HN's context. In a large, semi-anonymous, weakly cohesive internet forum, the behavior referred to in this thread as "shitting" propagates into a force that's destructive of the community. The best people begin to leave, the shit piles up, and soon we're in a death spiral. That's the #1 risk to HN, so we worry about it. Like many here, we've seen it happen before, and HN was literally founded on the idea of not letting it happen again—or at least trying to stave it off. That doesn't mean we don't get the value of hard-hitting technical critique done in a right context; it means that HN is not a right context for the shitting variety. Nor do we ask users to be namby-pamby milquetoasts; we ask them to understand enough about the fragility of the community to preserve it for the future. We don't want a scorched-earth outcome. So go ahead and make clear technical criticisms, but make them without the extra jabs that people often feel compelled to stick in. That latter behavior isn't hard technical critique anyhow, just chest-beating.

intopieces 10y ago

This is a good example of what is right with HN. Technical people expressing their technical demands w/r/t a technical project. If you want people to ooh and ahh over a project and keep quiet about its faults, show it your relatives.

sdegutis 10y ago
There's nothing helpful about derailing a thread. Just because we're technical doesn't automatically make doing so not inherently be a hindrance.
enoch_r 10y ago
You don't get it. Someone built an experiment in minimalistic UI design. "Technical people" started a massive pile-on, declaring "this is stupid, this doesn't have a minimalistic codebase at all." That's not a technical demand, and it's not identifying a product's faults. That's a demand that this project have an entirely different purpose. Personally, I use `chromium --kiosk-mode` as my everyday browser, and this project looks like something I'd be interested in if I were on a compatible OS. Not a small codebase, not a lightweight browser, but that's not what I care about. I want something that has Chrome's features (great devtools, doesn't crash every hour like the webkit browsers I've tried) but with less UI devoted to, uh, chrome that I don't use or want or need.
- twiceaday 10y ago
  The warranted response is obviously a mix of technical and product-based critique. But you would be foolish to expect every comment to convey this mix.
- __jack__ 10y ago
  You don´t get it. Labelling dark skinned electron as experimental browser is bs.
- falcolas 10y ago
  When a experiment has a domain and a splash page, it's left behind the status of "an experiment" and gone into the realm of "a product". IMHO, free or not, it's a product, and should be judged appropriately.

jeppesen-io 10y ago

I cannot agree with you more

choward 10y ago

I'm going to shit on it for being at the top of hacker news and after a minute of looking at the web site I still have no idea what the point of it is.

dang 10y ago
Please don't do this here.

HannibalLecter 10y ago

I get what you're saying however let's not be hasty in criticizing our beloved HN friends. Experiments are scientific. UI is an art form, and while there is some science present behind UI design, most of that science is founded on observational data, and at times we get someone who has an idea (runs with it) and they just make something and CALL it experimental. How are they experimenting? Where is the data? What data? None. No data. No report. No research findings. So in this context, the word experimental is an excuse for bugs being present, much like how every website server-based tool and how every software release are labeled as alpha or beta indefinitely. They want to lower liability, when it's not really necessary. This project is NOT experimental. It's an idea that someone came up with and the idea is not new. It's old. It's the idea that minimalism is possible and good. That features are somehow bad or cluttered. Someone might as well download the latest Linux Mint, remove everything of marginal value, and create a new shell to it you have to guess about how to use... and market the skin as a whole new OS. tl;dr: false advertising

ASalazarMX 10y ago

Being experimental and open source resonates with most users here, but it doesn't make the project immune from technical criticism. Aesthetically, it's an interesting proposal for minimalism, but technically, it's literally the opposite.

enoch_r 10y ago
I posted this elsewhere, but since a lot of people seem genuinely confused about why someone would want a project like this, I'll say it again. I use `chromium --kiosk-mode` as my daily browser. Chromium has features I value highly (e.g. great devtools, doesn't constantly crash like webkit), but I'd rather have a more minimalistic user interface (less space devoted to chrome I don't want to waste screen real estate on). Note that this preference is completely orthogonal to the desire to have a lighter weight, more minimalistic browser in terms of codebase, memory usage, etc.

ksk 10y ago

Unfortunately that's how the real world is when you ask people to spend their time to look at what you've done. They are going to look at it for exactly 10 seconds and tell you it sucks or that they have no use for it. If HN (or any other website) turns into a "Its OK, you're among friends here" type of auto-fawning community, it would delude people into thinking they're actually doing something worth showing to people as opposed to hacking on a hobby project for their own enjoyment. (This isn't specific to the linked project)