3 ms·

I like the general idea a lot. I assume you're shooting for a rather geeky audience, and adding wiki stuff to coding is a pretty sweet idea. I kind of wish tha

by aston 19y ago

I like the general idea a lot. I assume you're shooting for a rather geeky audience, and adding wiki stuff to coding is a pretty sweet idea. I kind of wish that when using a utility, basically the page feels like I'm just using that utility and that the focus isn't on utility mill itself. Think about how Gawker media positions itself in relationship to its blogs. If you put the main site aside and let the utilities be the forefront, you get bigger viral possibilities since people are likely to pass around a util just because it's handy (rather than passing around util mill). Some steps towards this would be giving utils nice, top level paths (no /utility/) and designing the page so that the non-utility stuff is in a non-imposing frame around it rather than being relatively large.

tocomment 19y ago
That's a good idea to put the focus more on the utility. Perhaps someday I could even let people put their logo, and styles on utilites? I also wonder if providing widgetized versions of the utilities might also promote viral possibilities? (That's on my list)
- waleedka 19y ago
  Nice idea. But allow me easy integration with my web site. For example, give me the option to get the utility inputs without any of the logos or text around them. This way, I can link to it from an IFrame on my site and it looks like it's part of my page. Could be very useful to create data collection forms, especially if you also allow a small storage APIs so I can save the form inputs.
  - tocomment 19y ago
    Good point. That's pretty much how I'm envisioning the widgets would work. Maybe with a very small logo? Or maybe not. Data collection would be trickier since so far I'm seeing that as outside the scope of a utility. I'm trying to avoid making it into a general purpose build-a-web-app site since I don't want a huge learning barrier for new users. I could be wrong though, maybe that is what people want.

by aston 19y ago

tocomment 19y ago

That's a good idea to put the focus more on the utility. Perhaps someday I could even let people put their logo, and styles on utilites? I also wonder if providing widgetized versions of the utilities might also promote viral possibilities? (That's on my list)

waleedka 19y ago
Nice idea. But allow me easy integration with my web site. For example, give me the option to get the utility inputs without any of the logos or text around them. This way, I can link to it from an IFrame on my site and it looks like it's part of my page. Could be very useful to create data collection forms, especially if you also allow a small storage APIs so I can save the form inputs.
- tocomment 19y ago
  Good point. That's pretty much how I'm envisioning the widgets would work. Maybe with a very small logo? Or maybe not. Data collection would be trickier since so far I'm seeing that as outside the scope of a utility. I'm trying to avoid making it into a general purpose build-a-web-app site since I don't want a huge learning barrier for new users. I could be wrong though, maybe that is what people want.