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Well-written article which explores an issue with which we all struggle. Here's another possible but related solution. Have two views, and have a control on th
by intrasight 6y ago
Well-written article which explores an issue with which we all struggle.
Here's another possible but related solution. Have two views, and have a control on the page that will swap between chronological and thread views. In chronological view, have vertical lines behind the messages that connect a message back to the parent message - if it was a response. Don't indent messages - I still want to see my messages on the right and everyone elses on the left. In the threaded view a) reorders messages, b) moves these lines to the left and c) indents the messages. Extra points for animating the transition between views.
As for the site, I know that other's likely have different opinions, but here's mine. I had originally viewed the site with a browser with script disabled. It still worked and was a pleasant read. I did observe an empty panel under "The Solution". Later I looked at it on a different machine where the browser had script enabled and found myself annoyed with animations that added no information. But the missing "The Solution" panel was present. I don't know it I'm an outlier, but I find motion to be VERY distracting when I'm reading.
Another complaint - general but I'll highlight this article - is the ratio of words to markup. For this article, the ratio was about 5% - meaning that only 5% of the characters in the html document were displayed to me the user. That is a very heavy overhead of markup. Is that just par for the course in modern web publishing?
- thejarren 6y agoHi, this is very valuable information for me. This is actually my first time developing a website, so I sorta brute-forced the content onto the site. I'm new to that side of things, and it's a deep learning experience for me. I think my CSS styling is a mess, and the text is all over the place. I'm using Gatsby.js and Sanity CMS on Netlify, though none of my projects are currently within Sanity's CMS because I couldn't figure out how to do that yet. Big learning curve for me. I wrote a bit about it on my blog, but sorry for the messy experience!
- AnonC 6y agoSince you (the author) are here, I’m curious to know how you created all those graphics and what tools and resources you use for the static images and animated images. They look very nice to me.
- danieltrembath 6y ago+1 It was visually a pleasant read.
- thejarren 6y agoThanks a lot! Sorry I didn't comment on this earlier. I have a heavy background of video editing and motion graphics, so I used a mix of Illustrator, Figma, and After Effects.
- intrasight 6y agoJust want to point out that I'm not criticizing the final result - which looks great on both mobile an desktop.
- bear8642 6y agoExcellent ideas >connect a message back to the parent message - if it was a response Assuming you've got a long list of timestamped messages, how do you identify which messages are continuations of old threads and which ones are starting a new conversation?
- intrasight 6y agoThere would only be a line if the message was a "reply" to an older message. Meaning that user long-pressed that older message, and selected "reply". I'd expect that less than a quarter of messages would be replies, and that typically one would only bother replying to recent messages - just a few back in the chronological list. A message just typed into the bottom field isn't a "reply" in my definition, and wouldn't have a connector line.