3 ms·

I agree it's a little counter-intuitive. But if it's top to bottom then all the lines would cross each other which would ruin the UI. If there's a way to make i

by idank 13y ago

I agree it's a little counter-intuitive. But if it's top to bottom then all the lines would cross each other which would ruin the UI. If there's a way to make it top to bottom while keeping the UI useful, I'd love to hear!

tieTYT 13y ago
Maybe I'm missing some point, but I don't think you need the lines if it goes top to bottom. Or, maybe you'd only need one line to show up if you highlighted a snippet/description: To point back to what you're hovering over.
- idank 13y ago
  I think it'll be hard to match portions of the command to their boxes if there were no lines at all. How would you know that the `v` in `tar xzvf foo` matches the 4th box? Having a single line when you hover could help, but sounds confusing for new users that are unaware of this feature.
  - tieTYT 13y ago
    That's a fair point. What if you put the snippet and the description side by side so you don't even need the arrows? Perhaps like this: tar description1 x description2 z description3 ...
calhoun137 13y ago
> If there's a way to make it top to bottom while keeping the UI useful, I'd love to hear! I understand that the UI looks very nice, but at least for me, having the explanation boxes be in order would make it a lot easier to use. So here is my suggestion: You can keep everything looking exactly like it is now, except get rid of the lines altogether, and display all of the explanation boxes in order. When the user scrolls down far enough, display the query at the top of the page with fixed position so that it is always on screen. Then topmost displayed explanation box will get highlighted, along with the relevant portion of the query; unless the mouse is hovering over a certain box or portion of the query, in which case that command/box pair becomes highlighted instead. If a user tries to scroll with the mouse wheel or keyboard, but there is no more content to display on the page, then the scrolling causes the highlighted box to change instead. If a portion of the query is highlighted which is not on the page, then clicking that portion will cause the page the jump so that the corresponding box appears and becomes highlighted.
- err4nt 13y ago
  I know I'll be lynched for suggesting an extraneous JavaScript library like Bootstrap here on HN, but what if the command stayed visible at the top of the screen once you scrolled past it on the page (just like how Bootstrap's Affix plugin works) and the relevant part of the command you were reading about became highlighted as you scroll down the description (just like Bootstrap's ScrollSpy plugin). That would be an intuitive UI without relying on wires to connect the content to the sections of the command and it lends itself to responsive layout as well because the command can easily wrap to multiple lines without losing clarity as you read the explanation (where the wires might start to eat into screen real estate at phone width and become much less clear if the command had to be split to multiple lines to stay visible)

by idank 13y ago

tieTYT 13y ago

Maybe I'm missing some point, but I don't think you need the lines if it goes top to bottom. Or, maybe you'd only need one line to show up if you highlighted a snippet/description: To point back to what you're hovering over.

idank 13y ago
I think it'll be hard to match portions of the command to their boxes if there were no lines at all. How would you know that the `v` in `tar xzvf foo` matches the 4th box? Having a single line when you hover could help, but sounds confusing for new users that are unaware of this feature.
- tieTYT 13y ago
  That's a fair point. What if you put the snippet and the description side by side so you don't even need the arrows? Perhaps like this: tar description1 x description2 z description3 ...

calhoun137 13y ago

> If there's a way to make it top to bottom while keeping the UI useful, I'd love to hear! I understand that the UI looks very nice, but at least for me, having the explanation boxes be in order would make it a lot easier to use. So here is my suggestion: You can keep everything looking exactly like it is now, except get rid of the lines altogether, and display all of the explanation boxes in order. When the user scrolls down far enough, display the query at the top of the page with fixed position so that it is always on screen. Then topmost displayed explanation box will get highlighted, along with the relevant portion of the query; unless the mouse is hovering over a certain box or portion of the query, in which case that command/box pair becomes highlighted instead. If a user tries to scroll with the mouse wheel or keyboard, but there is no more content to display on the page, then the scrolling causes the highlighted box to change instead. If a portion of the query is highlighted which is not on the page, then clicking that portion will cause the page the jump so that the corresponding box appears and becomes highlighted.

err4nt 13y ago
I know I'll be lynched for suggesting an extraneous JavaScript library like Bootstrap here on HN, but what if the command stayed visible at the top of the screen once you scrolled past it on the page (just like how Bootstrap's Affix plugin works) and the relevant part of the command you were reading about became highlighted as you scroll down the description (just like Bootstrap's ScrollSpy plugin). That would be an intuitive UI without relying on wires to connect the content to the sections of the command and it lends itself to responsive layout as well because the command can easily wrap to multiple lines without losing clarity as you read the explanation (where the wires might start to eat into screen real estate at phone width and become much less clear if the command had to be split to multiple lines to stay visible)