5 ms·

So, basically, "web publishing is broken because you have to do it on someone else's terms". And then you say "use our stuff instead".

sp332 14y ago
Web publishing isn't broken because of the experience of making a page, it's broken because someone else determines the experience of visiting a page. This gives publishers control over the visitor's experience.
notJim 14y ago
This was my initial reaction as well. Actually, as I find myself scrolling down the page, I thought the ideas were compelling. It was like this: [Facebook part ] Hmm… ok… [GO SLOWER ] Yeah! |----- .... ---- | YEAh! |.. ..... ------- .| YEAH! [Make it meaningful] Yeah! |.. ..... ---- .. .| YEAH! [Join ] Wait… what? Join… your app? I thought this was about hand-crafting. This is just another ad for a service that will be acquihired in 2 months? FUCK.THAT.
- kateray 14y ago
  these are the ideas behind scroll kit and i'm glad you agree with them. but we'd be some pretty shitty hackers if we just talked about them and weren't trying to actually DO something to change things.
  - oinksoft 14y ago
    How does having a "Join" form make somebody a better "hacker"?
    - notJim 14y ago
      If you sign up, they've got a pretty rad system behind that join form.
  - notJim 14y ago
    Absolutely. We seek to solve the problems we see in the world through technology. I feel your message would be more honest if you went for an approach like WordPress did: with an open-source tool. You make money by providing a hosting platform for the less technically inclined. And think about it. Wordpress actually did revolutionize publishing.
    - codybrown 14y ago
      what do you mean by honest?
    - mcantor 14y ago
      What's wrong with making money by providing a service to someone happy to pay for it?
      - notJim 14y ago
        Nothing, but calling it a movement aimed to fix broken publishing when it's just another walled garden that will disappear at the first buyout offer is disingenuous. To clarify a bit: I am annoyed not by what the product is, but by the way it's marketed.
        codybrown 14y ago
        The editor produces vanilla html/css that can be transfered and hosted anywhere. And I'm glad that you think its worth buying but we're not for sale.
- nbashaw 14y ago
  Not everyone knows (or wants to learn) HTML & CSS. I can see this service being valuable for those people
- alttag 14y ago
  I didn't even make it that far. [EDIT:Although, wanting to comment, I did go back and read the whole thing.] "make them scroll" ... um, no. The increasing number of pages that are requiring vertical scroll to be useful loses the great usability/accessibility of the "above the fold" method of pages. Even with the improvements in scrolling over the past decade (scroll wheel mice and scrolling gestures), it's still a chore that makes the "cost" tradeoff of some sites (including, I'll admit, this one) to be "not worth the effort."
  - olliesaunders 14y ago
    I thought that view was discredited some time ago. First result in Google for "people like to scroll": http://uxmyths.com/post/654047943/myth-people-dont-scroll http://uxmyths.com/post/654047943/myth-people-dont-scroll
    - alttag 14y ago
      That's nice. I don't like to scroll. Surely there's someone else in the world like me. From the article you linked: "[P]eople used the scrollbar on 76% of the pages, with 22% being scrolled all the way to the bottom That's a low enough conversion rate for certain page types that it may not always be worth the effort. If I want something, I'm happy to scroll, but if I'm browsing, there had better be a good value proposition in doing so. "Another eye-tracking study conducted by CX Partners confirms that people do scroll if certain design guidelines are followed" ... So, the article says (several times) people scroll, but only under certain design conditions. Is a long form article worth scrolling for? Usually; it's better than ad-ridden pagination, I think we'll both agree. Where the OP went wrong, I think, was that the scrolling was a design gimmick, not a content opportunity. It came across, to me, like the purpose of scrolling was to be "artsy" and "design-minded", rather than to convey content. Perhaps what I'm attributing to the scrolling design was really a lack of editing for length. Jakob Neilsen (who was mentioned in the article you linked) also comments on why scrolling might be less of a good idea [1]: "scrolling ... can be difficult for users with motor skill impairments." "Low-literacy users can't easily reacquire their position in the text after it moves. "Elderly users often have trouble getting to the right spot in scrolling menus and other small scrolling items. Not everything you read on the Internet is wholly true. 1: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050711.html http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050711.html
codybrown 14y ago
You're able to build a completely unique site from a blank page in scroll kit. You are given a text form in other publishing platforms. Those are pretty different terms.
- state 14y ago
  A large part of the value of the web is in creating _structured_ data. I would be amenable to a proposition that gave people more creative tools for publishing on those terms, but I think you're missing the point of the medium.
  - sdoering 14y ago
    I believe, that this is the view of a lot of persons/companies, that make money of the web. And I have to disagree, because of my experience with a lot of "not so savvy"-users. For them, they like good information (or entertainment) and they really like the personal touch to things. If the information is interesting, they like to know more about the individual behind these pages. and a lot of these people like the handcrafted touch of "older" websites, that do not look all alike (wp, svbtle, octopress, et al). So maybe the product is interesting for some of the people, who are not skilled in designing individual pages, but want non the less to publish on the web. Just my experience with the 99% of people, that are not hackers, professional bloggers or net-savvy-people. Me, I'm going to stay with nanoc [http://nanoc.stoneship.org/ http://nanoc.stoneship.org/] and jekyll [https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll] and for the time being (until redesigns are finished) wordpress.
    - state 14y ago
      I didn't mean to imply that anyone has made the activity of creating structured data sufficiently interesting or worthwhile for "not so savvy" users, but that this project doesn't seem to advance to cause. A lot of people and companies do make money on this, but I see the creation of rich structured data as good for everyone. We can better learn from and engage with well structured collective knowledge.
  - 14y ago

sp332 14y ago

Web publishing isn't broken because of the experience of making a page, it's broken because someone else determines the experience of visiting a page. This gives publishers control over the visitor's experience.

notJim 14y ago

This was my initial reaction as well. Actually, as I find myself scrolling down the page, I thought the ideas were compelling. It was like this: [Facebook part ] Hmm… ok… [GO SLOWER ] Yeah! |----- .... ---- | YEAh! |.. ..... ------- .| YEAH! [Make it meaningful] Yeah! |.. ..... ---- .. .| YEAH! [Join ] Wait… what? Join… your app? I thought this was about hand-crafting. This is just another ad for a service that will be acquihired in 2 months? FUCK.THAT.

kateray 14y ago
these are the ideas behind scroll kit and i'm glad you agree with them. but we'd be some pretty shitty hackers if we just talked about them and weren't trying to actually DO something to change things.
- oinksoft 14y ago
  How does having a "Join" form make somebody a better "hacker"?
  - notJim 14y ago
    If you sign up, they've got a pretty rad system behind that join form.
- notJim 14y ago
  Absolutely. We seek to solve the problems we see in the world through technology. I feel your message would be more honest if you went for an approach like WordPress did: with an open-source tool. You make money by providing a hosting platform for the less technically inclined. And think about it. Wordpress actually did revolutionize publishing.
  - codybrown 14y ago
    what do you mean by honest?
  - mcantor 14y ago
    What's wrong with making money by providing a service to someone happy to pay for it?
    - notJim 14y ago
      Nothing, but calling it a movement aimed to fix broken publishing when it's just another walled garden that will disappear at the first buyout offer is disingenuous. To clarify a bit: I am annoyed not by what the product is, but by the way it's marketed.
      - codybrown 14y ago
        The editor produces vanilla html/css that can be transfered and hosted anywhere. And I'm glad that you think its worth buying but we're not for sale.
nbashaw 14y ago
Not everyone knows (or wants to learn) HTML & CSS. I can see this service being valuable for those people
alttag 14y ago
I didn't even make it that far. [EDIT:Although, wanting to comment, I did go back and read the whole thing.] "make them scroll" ... um, no. The increasing number of pages that are requiring vertical scroll to be useful loses the great usability/accessibility of the "above the fold" method of pages. Even with the improvements in scrolling over the past decade (scroll wheel mice and scrolling gestures), it's still a chore that makes the "cost" tradeoff of some sites (including, I'll admit, this one) to be "not worth the effort."
- olliesaunders 14y ago
  I thought that view was discredited some time ago. First result in Google for "people like to scroll": http://uxmyths.com/post/654047943/myth-people-dont-scroll http://uxmyths.com/post/654047943/myth-people-dont-scroll
  - alttag 14y ago
    That's nice. I don't like to scroll. Surely there's someone else in the world like me. From the article you linked: "[P]eople used the scrollbar on 76% of the pages, with 22% being scrolled all the way to the bottom That's a low enough conversion rate for certain page types that it may not always be worth the effort. If I want something, I'm happy to scroll, but if I'm browsing, there had better be a good value proposition in doing so. "Another eye-tracking study conducted by CX Partners confirms that people do scroll if certain design guidelines are followed" ... So, the article says (several times) people scroll, but only under certain design conditions. Is a long form article worth scrolling for? Usually; it's better than ad-ridden pagination, I think we'll both agree. Where the OP went wrong, I think, was that the scrolling was a design gimmick, not a content opportunity. It came across, to me, like the purpose of scrolling was to be "artsy" and "design-minded", rather than to convey content. Perhaps what I'm attributing to the scrolling design was really a lack of editing for length. Jakob Neilsen (who was mentioned in the article you linked) also comments on why scrolling might be less of a good idea [1]: "scrolling ... can be difficult for users with motor skill impairments." "Low-literacy users can't easily reacquire their position in the text after it moves. "Elderly users often have trouble getting to the right spot in scrolling menus and other small scrolling items. Not everything you read on the Internet is wholly true. 1: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050711.html http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050711.html

codybrown 14y ago

You're able to build a completely unique site from a blank page in scroll kit. You are given a text form in other publishing platforms. Those are pretty different terms.

state 14y ago
A large part of the value of the web is in creating _structured_ data. I would be amenable to a proposition that gave people more creative tools for publishing on those terms, but I think you're missing the point of the medium.
- sdoering 14y ago
  I believe, that this is the view of a lot of persons/companies, that make money of the web. And I have to disagree, because of my experience with a lot of "not so savvy"-users. For them, they like good information (or entertainment) and they really like the personal touch to things. If the information is interesting, they like to know more about the individual behind these pages. and a lot of these people like the handcrafted touch of "older" websites, that do not look all alike (wp, svbtle, octopress, et al). So maybe the product is interesting for some of the people, who are not skilled in designing individual pages, but want non the less to publish on the web. Just my experience with the 99% of people, that are not hackers, professional bloggers or net-savvy-people. Me, I'm going to stay with nanoc [http://nanoc.stoneship.org/ http://nanoc.stoneship.org/] and jekyll [https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll] and for the time being (until redesigns are finished) wordpress.
  - state 14y ago
    I didn't mean to imply that anyone has made the activity of creating structured data sufficiently interesting or worthwhile for "not so savvy" users, but that this project doesn't seem to advance to cause. A lot of people and companies do make money on this, but I see the creation of rich structured data as good for everyone. We can better learn from and engage with well structured collective knowledge.
- 14y ago