5 ms·

The Backbone's connected to the...

20 points by benhowdle89 14y ago

zalew 14y ago
> (don’t worry, no death by Powerpoint here) well, technically PP wasn't used here, but the unnecessary transition effect makes me feel like it was.
- masklinn 14y ago
  "reveal.js" is a fucking plague, and image macros are the new wordarts. Welcome to PP 2.0, browserdeath edition.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - sycren 14y ago
    I actually find presentations like this to be an easier way of obtaining information than long blog posts. "WHO WROTE THE 'DEATH NOTE' SCRIPT?" released on HN earlier this week was very interesting but I kept losing my place down the page. http://www.gwern.net/Death%20Note%20script http://www.gwern.net/Death%20Note%20script
    - masklinn 14y ago
      > I actually find presentations like this to be an easier way of obtaining information than long blog posts. I have little issue with presentations in and of themselves, although generally speaking either the presentation is missing most of the relevant information or it's just a more annoying format for a blog post. I do have an issue with reveal.js which is the epitome of "style over substance" presentations full of pointless rotations and intractable multi-dimensional navigations, and with overuse of image macros which are the lowest common denominator of the modern web and the most information-free way to waste time and bandwidth. > "WHO WROTE THE 'DEATH NOTE' SCRIPT?" released on HN earlier this week was very interesting but I kept losing my place down the page. A bigger difference is that this piece happens to have actual content. And dense one at that. It's not trivial to read let alone skim.
      - sycren 14y ago
        I agree with you. Do you think presentations like this have any place, perhaps more to large groups of people at HN London rather than a singular user?
        masklinn 14y ago
        Oh yes, the format is OK as a support for a talk (although this one precisely has way too much text crammed in some of the slides), and of course the navigation is not an issue when the creator is the one showing the deck. I also think presentations could work better as a single-consumer format if "presentation notes" were available alongside, expanding on the slide itself with what the presenter would usually talk about. Essentially a slide becomes a "hook", a header for a page of content. And the presentation itself becomes a sectioned/paginated post. But I don't know any presentation site which provides a good interface for that (I don't believe speakerdeck does anyway).
        sycren 14y ago
        Interesting, I think you could take that further for group presentations. Say when you are actually in a presentation - the 'presentation notes' are sent in real-time to mobile devices. Could you explain further as to what the interface would be like? If the presentation is full screen, where would the notes be? Somewhere off-page that you could pull in if needed?
        masklinn 14y ago
        > Interesting, I think you could take that further for group presentations. Say when you are actually in a presentation - the 'presentation notes' are sent in real-time to mobile devices. That's a pretty interesting idea, and it could help e.g. non-native or disabled audience follow the talk. If the on-device UI is done well-enough, it could also help with the usual "ask questions at the end" format: tap the text and jot down a quick reminder, and at the end of the presentation the things you tapped can be displayed for review or questioning. > If the presentation is full screen, where would the notes be? Somewhere off-page that you could pull in if needed? Sure, but I think it'd work better if the interface was closer to "presenter view", with the slides taking only part of the screen (say half) and the notes/accompanying text taking the rest. Then you could have something similar to e.g. Reeder/Mac's interface, using the spacebar to read "the next thing", either scrolling down the text (if not all of it can be displayed) or switching to the next slide (if the text is under a page or its end has been reached)
    - pavel_lishin 14y ago
      It makes me a little bit sea-sick, watching the transitions slide around each other. I don't need a long blog post, but my eyes can jump from paragraph to paragraph much faster than (apparently reveal.js's?) slidey animation thing.
      - zalew 14y ago
        > It makes me a little bit sea-sick, watching the transitions slide around each other. me too. I had to close my eyes for the spin after a few times.
alexjarvis 14y ago
More like death by kittens
- sycren 14y ago
  Sorry, we're planning to cross-post this to reddit ;)
vowofnow 14y ago
Does Kashflow jibe with Canadian banks? And is there an Evernote addon in the plans?
- sycren 14y ago
  There is dropbox integration, why would you need evernote?
naugtur 14y ago
The author is saying the technology lagged behind, and presents content that just says "you can use javascript for more than you could in IE5!"
ttty 14y ago
I don't really know why everybody is crazy about Backbone, when Qooxdoo (http://qooxdoo.org/ http://qooxdoo.org/) it's a lot better than it. You don't even have to know/touch html/css. You also have an automated generated page (that contains all of your js files or 1 big file if is min), OOP classes 'like' in Java, and full UI library.
- atomical 14y ago
  > You don't even have to know/touch html/css. Most people here know and prefer html/css to magic. > You also have an automated generated page (that contains all of your js files or 1 big file if is min) Easy with Rails. A lot of backbone apps are running on rails.
  - sycren 14y ago
    I see lots of backbone app tutorials with Sinatra, would you suggest that Rails is better?
    - atomical 14y ago
      I don't know whether it's better or not. But I think Rails is good enough and has a lot of advanced functionality.
  - ttty 14y ago
    Well, why in the world you would want to do the same thing 2 or more and to check in every single browser to know it's pixel perfect? This is the HTM+CSS way. In Qooxdoo, it's pixel perfect in every browser, that's the difference. If you make a view for a component with HTML+CSS you should take care of each browser. Ps. I really think it's a bad idea coupling your client side to the server side. Imagine you want to go to node.js someday..?
- dasil003 14y ago
  There are a lot of different ways to do Javascript and people are very opinionated. Not every client-rich website is a single page app, and the types of operations from familiar CRUD manipulation to complex workflows. In the wild people often have existing code bases. Backbone serves all these interests by providing only a very minimal framework for model/view binding. How you structure the app and what supporting libraries you use are completely up to you. It also makes it very easy to port existing code into Backbone which is quite a strong evolutionary trait for a javascript framework these days. Long term I think Backbone will lose the popularity contest to richer solutions, but similar to HTTP and the web itself, sometimes less is more.
BaconJuice 14y ago
Thank you for sharing this. I actually enjoyed reading it, very entertaining!
- benhowdle89 14y ago
  Thanks a lot! Glad you liked it...
ehutch79 14y ago
Are you seriously suggesting wikipedia becomes a single page app? No really, I realize you say that server refreshes work for wikipedia, but you really seem to be suggesting that all websites should be single page apps.
- rozap 14y ago
  I'm with you on this. mv* Javascript frameworks just don't make a lot of sense on a primarily "document" (and I use that term loosely) based site, like Wikipedia. Things like backbone have their place, but it isn't on every site every made.

20 points by benhowdle89 14y ago

zalew 14y ago

> (don’t worry, no death by Powerpoint here) well, technically PP wasn't used here, but the unnecessary transition effect makes me feel like it was.

masklinn 14y ago
"reveal.js" is a fucking plague, and image macros are the new wordarts. Welcome to PP 2.0, browserdeath edition.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- sycren 14y ago
  I actually find presentations like this to be an easier way of obtaining information than long blog posts. "WHO WROTE THE 'DEATH NOTE' SCRIPT?" released on HN earlier this week was very interesting but I kept losing my place down the page. http://www.gwern.net/Death%20Note%20script http://www.gwern.net/Death%20Note%20script
  - masklinn 14y ago
    > I actually find presentations like this to be an easier way of obtaining information than long blog posts. I have little issue with presentations in and of themselves, although generally speaking either the presentation is missing most of the relevant information or it's just a more annoying format for a blog post. I do have an issue with reveal.js which is the epitome of "style over substance" presentations full of pointless rotations and intractable multi-dimensional navigations, and with overuse of image macros which are the lowest common denominator of the modern web and the most information-free way to waste time and bandwidth. > "WHO WROTE THE 'DEATH NOTE' SCRIPT?" released on HN earlier this week was very interesting but I kept losing my place down the page. A bigger difference is that this piece happens to have actual content. And dense one at that. It's not trivial to read let alone skim.
    - sycren 14y ago
      I agree with you. Do you think presentations like this have any place, perhaps more to large groups of people at HN London rather than a singular user?
      - masklinn 14y ago
        Oh yes, the format is OK as a support for a talk (although this one precisely has way too much text crammed in some of the slides), and of course the navigation is not an issue when the creator is the one showing the deck. I also think presentations could work better as a single-consumer format if "presentation notes" were available alongside, expanding on the slide itself with what the presenter would usually talk about. Essentially a slide becomes a "hook", a header for a page of content. And the presentation itself becomes a sectioned/paginated post. But I don't know any presentation site which provides a good interface for that (I don't believe speakerdeck does anyway).
        sycren 14y ago
        Interesting, I think you could take that further for group presentations. Say when you are actually in a presentation - the 'presentation notes' are sent in real-time to mobile devices. Could you explain further as to what the interface would be like? If the presentation is full screen, where would the notes be? Somewhere off-page that you could pull in if needed?
        masklinn 14y ago
        > Interesting, I think you could take that further for group presentations. Say when you are actually in a presentation - the 'presentation notes' are sent in real-time to mobile devices. That's a pretty interesting idea, and it could help e.g. non-native or disabled audience follow the talk. If the on-device UI is done well-enough, it could also help with the usual "ask questions at the end" format: tap the text and jot down a quick reminder, and at the end of the presentation the things you tapped can be displayed for review or questioning. > If the presentation is full screen, where would the notes be? Somewhere off-page that you could pull in if needed? Sure, but I think it'd work better if the interface was closer to "presenter view", with the slides taking only part of the screen (say half) and the notes/accompanying text taking the rest. Then you could have something similar to e.g. Reeder/Mac's interface, using the spacebar to read "the next thing", either scrolling down the text (if not all of it can be displayed) or switching to the next slide (if the text is under a page or its end has been reached)
  - pavel_lishin 14y ago
    It makes me a little bit sea-sick, watching the transitions slide around each other. I don't need a long blog post, but my eyes can jump from paragraph to paragraph much faster than (apparently reveal.js's?) slidey animation thing.
    - zalew 14y ago
      > It makes me a little bit sea-sick, watching the transitions slide around each other. me too. I had to close my eyes for the spin after a few times.

alexjarvis 14y ago

More like death by kittens

sycren 14y ago
Sorry, we're planning to cross-post this to reddit ;)

vowofnow 14y ago

Does Kashflow jibe with Canadian banks? And is there an Evernote addon in the plans?

sycren 14y ago
There is dropbox integration, why would you need evernote?

naugtur 14y ago

The author is saying the technology lagged behind, and presents content that just says "you can use javascript for more than you could in IE5!"

ttty 14y ago

I don't really know why everybody is crazy about Backbone, when Qooxdoo (http://qooxdoo.org/ http://qooxdoo.org/) it's a lot better than it. You don't even have to know/touch html/css. You also have an automated generated page (that contains all of your js files or 1 big file if is min), OOP classes 'like' in Java, and full UI library.

atomical 14y ago
> You don't even have to know/touch html/css. Most people here know and prefer html/css to magic. > You also have an automated generated page (that contains all of your js files or 1 big file if is min) Easy with Rails. A lot of backbone apps are running on rails.
- sycren 14y ago
  I see lots of backbone app tutorials with Sinatra, would you suggest that Rails is better?
  - atomical 14y ago
    I don't know whether it's better or not. But I think Rails is good enough and has a lot of advanced functionality.
- ttty 14y ago
  Well, why in the world you would want to do the same thing 2 or more and to check in every single browser to know it's pixel perfect? This is the HTM+CSS way. In Qooxdoo, it's pixel perfect in every browser, that's the difference. If you make a view for a component with HTML+CSS you should take care of each browser. Ps. I really think it's a bad idea coupling your client side to the server side. Imagine you want to go to node.js someday..?
dasil003 14y ago
There are a lot of different ways to do Javascript and people are very opinionated. Not every client-rich website is a single page app, and the types of operations from familiar CRUD manipulation to complex workflows. In the wild people often have existing code bases. Backbone serves all these interests by providing only a very minimal framework for model/view binding. How you structure the app and what supporting libraries you use are completely up to you. It also makes it very easy to port existing code into Backbone which is quite a strong evolutionary trait for a javascript framework these days. Long term I think Backbone will lose the popularity contest to richer solutions, but similar to HTTP and the web itself, sometimes less is more.

BaconJuice 14y ago

Thank you for sharing this. I actually enjoyed reading it, very entertaining!

benhowdle89 14y ago
Thanks a lot! Glad you liked it...

ehutch79 14y ago

Are you seriously suggesting wikipedia becomes a single page app? No really, I realize you say that server refreshes work for wikipedia, but you really seem to be suggesting that all websites should be single page apps.

rozap 14y ago
I'm with you on this. mv* Javascript frameworks just don't make a lot of sense on a primarily "document" (and I use that term loosely) based site, like Wikipedia. Things like backbone have their place, but it isn't on every site every made.