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Monocle
- sirwanqutbi 13y agoI don't see that layout as necessary. Can't you make it 1 layout, with the comments threaded under the link..
- rfnslyr 13y agoHacker News - a nice Hacker News.
- ZoF 13y agoThe original title to this submission was "Monocle - A Nice Hacker News?" To give this comment some context.
- kmfrk 13y agoIndeed. Thanks for the new, completely useless title.
- corresation 13y agoIt seems that many unfortunately take "constructive criticism" to be only delusion-inducing back patting: People get their panties in the bunch around here when people have anything but unadulterated praise for various Show HN projects. Dare to point out that restricting your project to Facebook logins might restrict usage and boy do some get the vapours, and a dozen hysterical "I remember back when HN wasn't so mean" blog posts start getting authored. There is always a danger in being involved in an echo-chamber. As Groucho Marx so famously said "I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member". If you seek out and insulate yourself from broader criticism, the result is very unlikely to be useful. I plan on posting a Show HN in the coming weeks, and my greatest hope is that it will be torn to pieces. I'm enough of an adult to categorize and prioritize the criticism.
- ZoF 13y agoLooks like the emberjs tutorial got seeded with some articles and comments. You might consider loading your scripts after the base html is rendered so the initial page-load isn't 2-5 seconds of nothingness. Seems like the content div is blank as a default, you might consider placing the most popular or trending article there by default as you are loading it anyway. I would recommend loading titles and thumbnails first, rendering and having comments load in the background so the initial load time is lessened further, unless you are side-loading comments for another reason. Also, you can only sign up with twitter/github connect? God, it's so negative here.
- patja 13y agoThe font rendering suffers greatly from the widely-known Google web font rendering issues in Chrome for Windows.
- alptrv 13y agoOn Mac OS it's not ok either, thanks to `-webkit-font-smoothing:antialised` and low contrast.
- kmfrk 13y agoJust remember that a CMS is not a community. I hope the following posts will detail how the community is managed - not the back- or front-end.
- mbrock 13y agoCrucial point!
- davmar 13y agowonderful! feature request: can the article open in an iframe in the main content area? or in a pop-up iframe? the back button sucks.
- grimtrigger 13y agoI was thinking of working on something similar and was debating an iFrame. I was worried it would mess up people's readability plugins (especially important for mobile devices). Also not sure what the ethics of iFraming other people's work is.
- freehunter 13y agoLooks like monocle.io is down.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- tomjen3 13y agoWhy does this app need to read my tweets and see who I follow?
- spullara 13y agoThey can't ask for less than that through Twitter's OAuth API. If you have a public account, they could do that anyway with just your username.
- eschaton 13y agoYou may want to reconsider the name. There's already a (quite good) publication with the name "Monocle" if you hadn't checked. Edit: A link to Monocle the magazine: https://monocle.com/ https://monocle.com/
- imrehg 13y agoSeconded. Especially because the "quality content with a focus on technology, startups and frankly anything that appeals to the inquisitive mind" is pretty close to what that Monocle is doing :)
- machinagod 13y agoThe application looks good with interesting articles at the time of writing. As a note though, I opened the link because I thought it was related to Monocle magazine (http://monocle.com/ http://monocle.com/) which also provides high quality content (albeit not community-sourced). Maybe reviewing the name is in order? Edit: phrasing
- personlurking 13y agoAs a reader of Monocle, I thought the same. Being that they both play in the publishing content world, I'd think Monocle the magazine would come down on the OP legally. Aside from all that, I'm eager to check it out.
- petercooper 13y agoHigh five to my fellow Monocle readers (subscribers?) ;-) Just as a FWIW, I'd totally love a Hacker News-style site for Monocle-esque topics (i.e. the blend of culture, design, business)..
- thirdstation 13y agoNice minimal design. I like the ability to read a summary before deciding to click through. I was confused at first when the main content frame was empty (like another commenter pointed out - maybe put something there on page load). One bug, the summaries are missing apostrophes.
- jbail 13y agoI don't understand how using your Twitter handle will elevate the level of discourse. Twitter itself is full of trolls. Also, you can create anonymous Twitter accounts that don't use your real name, so accountability goes out the window too. For what its worth, it looks like a modern tech discussion forum built using modern tools. Nothing wrong with that, but that's how it should be branded. The feel good aspect without any real technical backend to enable it falls a bit flat.
- freehunter 13y agoI wish I could log in, but I don't use Twitter or Github. Why would I want to set up an account on Site A when all I want to use is Site B?
- cmod 13y agoLooks / feels exceptionally similar to Potluck: https://www.potluck.it/rooms/ee3db6e8 https://www.potluck.it/rooms/ee3db6e8
- paranoiacblack 13y agoInteresting idea, but I wonder if "niceness" is really that important when sharing ideas that may or may not be controversial. Being professional and constructive might be a good goal, but these don't necessarily entail "niceness." That is, you can still be professional and constructive while being a giant asshole. Also, I'm not really sure making people accountable by making them use Real Names or whatever account tied to their real name will make them be nicer. It might seem like that because on social networks, you can selectively add people to talk to that you enjoy being nice to. When it is an open forum, the discussion might still turn sour because people have contradicting viewpoints and that's okay, especially in a technical discussion. Finally, tying people to their real names by default sounds like it lends itself to all kinds of Internet Detective-y stuff which will probably lead to more Ad Hominem attacks than discussion. Source: I post on Something Awful where we can still have useful discussion and call each other out on our bullshit. Niceness isn't as important as the free discussion of ideas.
- marshray 13y agoTo me, Reddit has done a great job of letting me think of it as the kind of place that suits my style of discussion. I hear stories about the atrocity exhibition in this-or-that group of subreddits but never encounter it personally.
- onosendai 13y ago> Social accountability is provided by linking your Twitter or GitHub accounts I never understood the reasoning behind this kind of social login. If you're dead set on being an ass, then you'll be one regardless, even if it takes creating a burner Twitter or GH account. Anything short of demanding proof of identity and linking your real name is useless (and now you have two problems.) All this achieves is forcing people to sign up to another service in order to use your own. A low barrier to entry with community moderation is enough to keep the value of the comments high, while keeping noise to a minimum.
- ThomPete 13y agoThere is actually evidence as far as I remember which indicates that people using for Facebook commenting system behaves nicer because others can identify them.
- rapind 13y agoI've never seen any evidence of this being true. Only opinions on it. A quick google turned up an article on TC about contrary evidence however. http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/29/surprisingly-good-evidence-that-real-name-policies-fail-to-improve-comments/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/29/surprisingly-good-evidence-... Real Name policies are obviously valuable in an advertising deck... I'm skeptical on whether the benefits translate to users.
- ThomPete 13y agoYou might be right. I can't remember where I read about it. I do think it does have some impact.
- janardanyri 13y ago> I never understood the reasoning behind this kind of social login. If you're dead set on being an ass [...] The purpose is to influence people who exist on the spectrum somewhere between angelic and dead set on being an ass.
- jrokisky 13y agoMy friends and I have wanted a personal version of something like this for a while. We have several Facebook groups where we share links/ideas and comment on them but would like to move away from Facebook. Does anyone know of any service that offers this?
- mimiflynn 13y agoI would love a self-hosted version of this monocle.io for my group as well. Any plans to release this on github or similar?
- jrokisky 13y agoAgree, that would be awesome!
- tommaxwell 13y agoPotluck? https://www.potluck.it/ https://www.potluck.it/
- latchkey 13y agoI just tried out Potluck and it feels like the whole goal of it is to suck in your graph. It has zero content or usability until you do that. I suspect that even after you add your graph, if none of your friends are using it, it will continue to have zero content. Seems kind of the opposite of what Monocle is trying to do.
- j_s 13y agohttp://www.discourse.org/ http://www.discourse.org/
- kmfrk 13y agoJust make a subreddit on reddit.com. People tend to think of reddit as just a community, but it's also a convenient platform tool. There's rarely much of a reason to overthink it - many people do, however, and even create start-up as a result! Go with what's been tested properly and proven to work to a decent degree.
- alptrv 13y agoAm I the only one who don't like this new trend when every second website now is designed with the low contrast and native OS antialiasing disabled? I'm 24 and I just can't read the summaries on this site. Just compare the two versions on this screenshot [1]: default on the top, and native antialiasing on the bottom with the slightly darker text (#67707c) 1.http://monosnap.com/image/OgCT8YKqEoHTAxAmgofKDxDNb.png http://monosnap.com/image/OgCT8YKqEoHTAxAmgofKDxDNb.png
- dmazin 13y agoI hope this comment is seen as observational rather than the sort of blind criticism that Monocle dreams to avoid. The article discusses the design and performance of Monocle, which are definitely pleasant. However, the aspects of the community seem more like wishes than anything encouraged by Monocle (except for the Twitter/Github links) nor seemingly present. Monocle is more interesting (though less ambitious) than Atwood's Discourse, but similarly misses the difference between community and charm, and performance and design.
- arcameron 13y agoThis is super slick, once loaded. I haven't tried commenting or posting, but as a reader, I'm pleased. My only criticism atm would be seeing a completely blank page with NoScript on.
- Pwnadog 13y agoI'd love this UI for reddit.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jgrahamc 13y agoAt my default browser size I can see 8 items on Monocle at a glance and 21 on Hacker News. I'd suggest, at least, reducing the size of the information about the submitter, number of points, etc. When scanning HN I very rarely look at those. I don't find avatars add to the conversation mostly because I don't first look to see who said something. If I read something interesting I might look to see who wrote it. I'm not sure what the thumbnail graphics from the article are adding. One thing I like about HN is the choice I make between reading the comments and reading the article with no framing.
- AndreasFrom 13y agoAmusingly, the font is too small to be pleasant on my tablet and the layout isn't very zoom-friendly.
- danielweber 13y agoExcessive attention to identity can really destroy a discussion site. There are communities where I know everyone, but knowing the topic being discussed I already know what each and every person is going to say. Zero information content there.
- StavrosK 13y agoThat's not because of the attention to identity, though, it's because there aren't that many people there.
- smackfu 13y agoIt works much better on mobile though which is probably where they focused the design. Whereas HN is basically unusable except in landscape on mobile.
- angersock 13y agoThat's an interesting thing, though--it makes me less likely to post from HN on a mobile device, and thus I'm more likely to be thinking in a useful manner and making thoughtful criticisms.
- octatone2 13y agoI can't read the low contrast overly designed content area.
- sktrdie 13y agohttp://contrastrebellion.com/ http://contrastrebellion.com/
- joaomsa 13y agoLayout really reminds me of http://hn.premii.com/ http://hn.premii.com/
- hk__2 13y agoWould you mind adding a favicon?
- arcameron 13y agoWill you make it OSS?
- lquist 13y agoVery hard to read grey text on a white background.
- markgx 13y agoI agree. It needs a little more contrast.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- msutherl 13y agoReading on the right side of the screen is really uncomfortable. Goes to show we still haven't figured out this app-design thing.
- forrestthewoods 13y ago"an experiment in creating a friendly and intelligent community around sharing quality content" Ugh. I'm tired of people trying the same old crap to curate content. They're all roughly the same and none are that good. Upvotes suck and we need to move past them. If someone wants to take the next step in internet content curation then they need to adapt a netflix style algorithm. Anything short of that I just don't care about.
- rhizome 13y agoYou're right that it's a problem of Information Architecture, but recommendation engines aren't the only next step possible.
- icedog 13y agoPlease indulge us on other next steps.
- mitchty 13y agoI agree upvotes suck, but I think part of the problem is both displaying the score, and allowing downvotes to influence things. I'd like more builtin randomness for things. Display comments but display them randomly instead of by any sort of score maybe. But then this all belies the biggest issue I have with reddit/hn/whatever. Trying to follow discussions is painful as its hard to ascertain what has been posted since you last read things and not. That alone is my biggest gripe with most of this, even newsgroup readers made things much easier to follow discussion. But I'm curious, how would the netflix style algorithms work in practice? It would seem like it would just encourage more filterbubbleish input not? Occasionally off topic news tends to be somewhat engaging and I don't like the idea of removing serendipity amongst news/programming articles. I may not use haskell for example often or even at all, but lots of the time I do see articles that really end up being well worth my time to read.
- raganwald 13y agoPerhaps they simply want to create a community that discourages "Ugh. I'm tired of people trying the same old crap to curate content," and encourages If someone wants to take the next step in internet content curation then they need to adapt a netflix style algorithm.
- sthatipamala 13y ago> "quality content with a focus on... anything that appeals to the inquisitive mind" This is a source of a lot of uncivil behavior on HN. Startup founders/tech geeks are intellectually interested in a lot of topics but unqualified to discuss them in any detail. This results in comment threads full of knee-jerk reactions and bikeshedding.
- marshray 13y agoWhat the heck do you know about it? We're also full of sarcasm too.
- xradionut 13y agoSometimes the truth is unpopular and seen to be uncivil when bluntly stated. Should we all rub blue mud into our belly-buttons and sing praise of everyone's opinions?
- jamesaguilar 13y agoThere is space between those two extremes.
- sthatipamala 13y agoCheck out the /r/Askhistorians and /r/Askculinary subreddits. They are good examples of "civil" discussions without ass kissing.
- ineedtosleep 13y agoDon't get me wrong, the contributors to those subreddits are amazing, but what makes those subreddits work the way they do is the strict moderation. Unsupported posts, memes, etc. are immediately k.o.s. and I believe that's what keeps the quality contributors from leaving.
- lobster_johnson 13y agoThe most exposed among the high-quality "ask" subreddits may be /r/askscience. There you will typically find that whole swathes of subthreads have been deleted by the moderators. There are lots of civil, high-quality contributors, to be sure; but it's the moderators that ensure that it stays civil and focused.
- JulianMorrison 13y ago1. You reinvented Reddit. 2. Eternal September will eat you too.
- jamesaguilar 13y agoThere is more to this than just Reddit. For one thing, there's a different approach to identity, and for another there's summaries and whatnot that get automatically pulled. And, for all we know, other additions that he hasn't shared yet. Plus, reinventing Reddit is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, the site you are using right now. Also, your comment is itself a bit Eternal Septemberish -- you know, the belittling, and the intentional disregarding of differences between Monocle and Reddit. Not sure if that's meant as implicit metacommentary or if you aren't actually aware that you are contributing negatively.
- skizm 13y agoFacebook reinvented MySpace. Gotta start somewhere.
- sprizzle 13y agoI only wish Hacker News could look that good.
- HugoDias 13y agoPlease, add target blank to the links. Its the most wanted feature in HW ( for me )
- Perrydu 13y agoI cannot register this using my personal domain email like @perry.asia...
- Gertig 13y agoOnly Twitter or Github auth.
- SkyMarshal 13y agoNice start for the interface, though only responsive down to tablet size. Check out http://qz.com/ http://qz.com/ for a similar interface that actually scales all the way down to mobile size.
- cwilson 13y agoI would consider adding who submitted the article to the list view. It sounds small, but on HackerNews I recognize names of people who have submitted past articles I enjoyed quite often and tend to always click on those. If you're trying to build a community I think this is pretty important. My gut reaction when I first hit the site wasn't "Oh, awesome, there is a community of people here talking about stuff and submitting things", it was "Hmm, looks like a bunch of curated links or an RSS reader". Also, if your username/profile is the same on Monocle as it is on Twitter, I'm even more likely to recognize submitters that I follow there as well.
- burke 13y agoDoes it strike anyone else as unfortunate that every new social news site has to be its own completely closed ecosystem? What happened to the age of the protocol?
- bowerbird 13y agosafe, friendly, constructive, and supportive is great! and i suggest that you could award everyone a trophy! -bowerbird
- arrowgunz 13y agoAlex did his part by creating something interesting. Just look at the comments on this thread. This, right here is the problem. Everyone keeps complaining about stuff that they haven't done or not capable of doing. If you have a suggestion, just try to communicate with him or the other developers working on it. Any developer would like creative/helpful input. Stop bitching and support people who create stuff.
- maddddddddddddd 13y agoand yet he needed this place to let you know about his place. no one wants to participate in an environment that censors honesty. his idea is retarded.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- camus 13y agoYou are the one bitching about the comments here. a discussion thread is made so that people can state whatever opinion they want to state. Dont like it ? dont answer. We all are bitching,the issue with you is you dont understand you are actually bitching.
- arrowgunz 13y agoDude, relax. I am talking about the discussion, not the actual product itself. >a discussion thread is made so that people can state whatever opinion they want to state. Since when did stating opinion become bashing the developer/creator? If you have a problem, you should probably not get involved in the discussion in the first place. >We all are bitching,the issue with you is you dont understand you are actually bitching. Haha, you have absolutely no clue to what I am talking about here. That's alright.
- sirwanqutbi 13y agoThe reason you have just re-invented reddit is because you like designing interfaces...
- sktrdie 13y agoWhere's the HTML data? Search engines aren't going to be able to crawl any of your content: $ curl -l http://monocle.io/posts/this-is-you-on-smiles
- pbiggar 13y agoThat's not a good test for it. See https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/ https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/ for details. (I don't know if monocle is doing that, but simply checking curl does nothing for rich client side apps).
- mercurialshark 13y agoSounds like they were inspired, at least in part, by Thoughtly. "Quantifiably Good Content." But I'm partial. http://thoughtly.co http://thoughtly.co
- desireco42 13y ago@macman, is this spine.js app? If not, why not?
- cathustler 13y agoWith the way that infinite scroll currently works, I could effectively DDOS, or at least slow down the instance of Monocle I am interfacing with by just scrolling down, and once I got the first story just scroll up and down endlessly. I'm looking at Chrome Developer Tools' Network tab right now[1] and it seems you're sending a bunch of "ignore" fields in a POST request, and from that I gather that the farther down I go, the larger the POSTs get. So, at the very bottom, I'm sending a ton of huge POST requests. Point-being, this is probably not a good thing. 1. Developer Tools – http://grab.by/ohwa http://grab.by/ohwa
- chasing 13y ago"There can be too much negativity in the tech community. It seems the average response to someone out on a limb, showcasing their latest idea or startup, is one of snark and derision. That is no way to foster an entrepreneurial spirit. Monocle is an attempt to remedy that." So, back-patting and hi-fives, but no actual criticism? Because there are plenty of ideas in the tech community that deserve snark and derision. Disagreement is absolutely the way to foster entrepreneurial spirit. What is an entrepreneur besides someone who disagrees with the way things are currently done. Besides, if good ideas are to filter to the top and learn to survive in the wild, then they need to be able to withstand people disagreeing with them and using colorful language to express that disagreement. Not every idea is good. Friends can fight and make fun of one another. People who care about the same thing can loudly disagree. And I think communities where 100% of the people like one another are probably boring communities. And either trivially small or non-existent. So, yeah. Monocle sounds like it could be neat, but if the idea is to shelter people from negative reactions to their ideas, it sounds like it's going to be kind of neutered and boring.
- dorian-graph 13y ago> So, back-patting and hi-fives, but no actual criticism? I didn't see that in the blog post.
- uberc 13y agoThis looks really impressive. One note -- there is an established current affairs/culture magazine/media brand called Monocle. While Monocle (the magazine) doesn't focus on tech, monocle.io's remit of "anything that appeals to the inquisitive mind" could lead to some overlap. Dunno if there could/would be trademark conflicts. May be worth checking out if you haven't already.
- husio 13y agoPOST to get more data? That's bad.
- lotsofcows 13y agoYes, we should ban all negativity. Looking for problems, vulnerabilities and holes, whether in arguments, suggestions or code is very bad and should be stopped immediately.