4 ms·

I got tired of reading about building websites. So, I built this. attempts+=1

17 points by jastr 15y ago

IanDrake 15y ago
It didn't really work for me, but I think the concept is funny. Sadly, I see a C&D in your future...or if SOPA is passed some jail time.
pluies_public 15y ago
Really cool concept, huge kudos for going through and actually making it :) That said, there's a big, big blunder on the UX side: there is absolutely no feedback. The cursor has to change when you hover the clickable elements, it's the expected behaviour of every website out there and is really disturbing that it doesn't. Implementing some sort of feedback after clicking a link (spinner would be cool, greyed-out background maybe) is also necessary. Right now, the user has no idea what's happening (has my click being taken into account? What's happening? Who knows?) - say right there, I'm on Willy Wonka, clicked Ravenclaw, and nothing happens at all. So I reclick. Nothing happens. Might be the server working in the background, might be a bug - oh, there, it just loaded, and also voted Ravenclaw for Van Gogh because I clicked twice on Ravenclaw.
- jastr 15y ago
  thanks for the feedback and ideas. in testing, after clicking on a house, a new celebrity would appear instantly, so there was no reason to show a waiting bar. now we can't handle the load!!! lesson learned. thanks! switching to a new box soon..
swang 15y ago
Your site is kinda slow at the moment so I'll just mention a few things. Changing the house logos to text after a 1-2 second delay is annoying. Either it should change when you hover over it or better yet create a div that hovers over the mouse with the description instead. Having the logo change to text and then clicking that as a confirmation is weird and probably not very intuitive. There's no way to tell whether my vote was submitted or not. You're using Wikipedia to load the images instead of loading it on your own server. Not sure if it violates whatever Wikipedia image policies but you shouldn't be leeching images off other people's servers. That's bad form and makes your site feel slow. Voting shouldn't be allowed until the image actually loads (again because of above, it takes forever to load). I clicked on one of the house logos and because there wasn't anything to indicate that my vote was sent I clicked it again. The application then quickly loaded the next celebrity and then skipped right to the next one because it assumed that my double click meant I was voting the same house for 2 consecutive celebrities. Besides some interface issues. Good concept.
- jastr 15y ago
  thanks. changing the logo - changing to text on hover, i thought was really annoying when moving the mouse around. good idea with the div, will try that. submitted votes - will brainstorm ideas to show you've voted vote on image load - do you know a good way to check if the image has loaded? thanks for the feedback
  - jwdunne 15y ago
    In regards to checking if an image has loaded, there is an an onload event in JS which, as the name implies, triggers upon the image loading.
ender7 15y ago
Needs an "I don't know who that is" button. Really fun though!
ghc 15y ago
Now it's time to read about scaling websites ;)
- jastr 15y ago
  any suggested reading!? akamai isn't within my budget at the moment...
  - ghc 15y ago
    That's actually a tough one! There are a lot of books about scalability (such as the O'Reilly ones, which I've read), but they don't really tell you what you probably need to know right now. Mostly it's technology dependent...read up on caching, if you haven't already. Memcached or Redis can make a huge difference in performance. If you let us know your software stack I'm sure there will be an expert to chime in and let you know the simplest hack to get things responding faster right now.
glimcat 15y ago
Congratulations, you have just reduced the distance to becoming good at this by an order of magnitude. attempts += 1 while 1
cantbecool 15y ago
What technologies did you use to make it?
jaequery 15y ago
mugatu, enough said. i give it a thumbs up.
j_camarena 15y ago
I did the same here. I learned HTML/CSS from zero (im a mechanichal engineer). My last page using Joomla two years later: http://guali.com.mx http://guali.com.mx
jastr 15y ago
the site is practically at a standstill now! thanks for using it. I'll be moving it to a better machine tomorrow. Should I leave it up in the meantime (even though super slow) or put up a splash page eg. "come back soon"? anyone have any ideas/preferences?
- rprime 15y ago
  Better something than nothing. Cache all the things!
jastr 15y ago
after 3 hours, i'm on a new server!

17 points by jastr 15y ago

It didn't really work for me, but I think the concept is funny. Sadly, I see a C&D in your future...or if SOPA is passed some jail time.

pluies_public 15y ago

Really cool concept, huge kudos for going through and actually making it :) That said, there's a big, big blunder on the UX side: there is absolutely no feedback. The cursor has to change when you hover the clickable elements, it's the expected behaviour of every website out there and is really disturbing that it doesn't. Implementing some sort of feedback after clicking a link (spinner would be cool, greyed-out background maybe) is also necessary. Right now, the user has no idea what's happening (has my click being taken into account? What's happening? Who knows?) - say right there, I'm on Willy Wonka, clicked Ravenclaw, and nothing happens at all. So I reclick. Nothing happens. Might be the server working in the background, might be a bug - oh, there, it just loaded, and also voted Ravenclaw for Van Gogh because I clicked twice on Ravenclaw.

jastr 15y ago
thanks for the feedback and ideas. in testing, after clicking on a house, a new celebrity would appear instantly, so there was no reason to show a waiting bar. now we can't handle the load!!! lesson learned. thanks! switching to a new box soon..

swang 15y ago

Your site is kinda slow at the moment so I'll just mention a few things. Changing the house logos to text after a 1-2 second delay is annoying. Either it should change when you hover over it or better yet create a div that hovers over the mouse with the description instead. Having the logo change to text and then clicking that as a confirmation is weird and probably not very intuitive. There's no way to tell whether my vote was submitted or not. You're using Wikipedia to load the images instead of loading it on your own server. Not sure if it violates whatever Wikipedia image policies but you shouldn't be leeching images off other people's servers. That's bad form and makes your site feel slow. Voting shouldn't be allowed until the image actually loads (again because of above, it takes forever to load). I clicked on one of the house logos and because there wasn't anything to indicate that my vote was sent I clicked it again. The application then quickly loaded the next celebrity and then skipped right to the next one because it assumed that my double click meant I was voting the same house for 2 consecutive celebrities. Besides some interface issues. Good concept.

jastr 15y ago
thanks. changing the logo - changing to text on hover, i thought was really annoying when moving the mouse around. good idea with the div, will try that. submitted votes - will brainstorm ideas to show you've voted vote on image load - do you know a good way to check if the image has loaded? thanks for the feedback
- jwdunne 15y ago
  In regards to checking if an image has loaded, there is an an onload event in JS which, as the name implies, triggers upon the image loading.

ender7 15y ago

Needs an "I don't know who that is" button. Really fun though!

ghc 15y ago

Now it's time to read about scaling websites ;)

jastr 15y ago
any suggested reading!? akamai isn't within my budget at the moment...
- ghc 15y ago
  That's actually a tough one! There are a lot of books about scalability (such as the O'Reilly ones, which I've read), but they don't really tell you what you probably need to know right now. Mostly it's technology dependent...read up on caching, if you haven't already. Memcached or Redis can make a huge difference in performance. If you let us know your software stack I'm sure there will be an expert to chime in and let you know the simplest hack to get things responding faster right now.

glimcat 15y ago

Congratulations, you have just reduced the distance to becoming good at this by an order of magnitude. attempts += 1 while 1

cantbecool 15y ago

What technologies did you use to make it?

jaequery 15y ago

mugatu, enough said. i give it a thumbs up.

j_camarena 15y ago

I did the same here. I learned HTML/CSS from zero (im a mechanichal engineer). My last page using Joomla two years later: http://guali.com.mx http://guali.com.mx

jastr 15y ago

the site is practically at a standstill now! thanks for using it. I'll be moving it to a better machine tomorrow. Should I leave it up in the meantime (even though super slow) or put up a splash page eg. "come back soon"? anyone have any ideas/preferences?

rprime 15y ago
Better something than nothing. Cache all the things!

jastr 15y ago

after 3 hours, i'm on a new server!