dv_says
Joined 11 years ago
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280
Submissions
40
Member since
Apr 28
dv
View on Hacker NewsRecent submissions
Comment · 10 years ago
Lots of desktop integration features! Custom chat notification bubbles, screenshot taking, file downloads and uploads, resizable font, various keyboard shortcuts, menu bar icon, and more.
Comment · 10 years ago
Enchat, my take on a Mac app for Facebook Messenger: https://www.mornings.com/enchat/
Comment · 11 years ago
Using Elixir here for a couple of months, for an app backend, and even for shell script type of projects. Great language, no surprises, and very responsive community -- really, my biggest wish is for more people to try it, as I think it's still relatively niche. Had no previous Erlang experience. While you don't have to write Erlang code itself, you'll over time become familiar with Erlang/OTP architecture concepts, such as GenServer, ETS, distributed nodes, and so on.
Was very happy to see this recent post from Pinterest [1] as a sign that some of the more "mainstream" teams are starting to look at it.
Also, a repost [2] of some helpful tips if you're just getting started.
[1] https://engineering.pinterest.com/blog/introducing-new-open-...
Comment · 11 years ago
In fact, this even can even sync new/modified/deleted files, similar to rsync. Very handy for deploying static assets or backups, for example.
aws s3 sync --delete [--acl public-read] ...Comment · 11 years ago
Independent verification.
For example, this could have helped in [1][2][3] where toxic food products were very mislabeled.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
Comment · 11 years ago
I'm assuming the big name products here have carefully measured, A/B tested, etc. every screen and they are at their best (other than Apple Music, which is a whole other creature). That said, product teams should still periodically audit onboarding content, ideally with a set of fresh eyes. Does everything still make sense? Is there a logical flow from A to B?
It would have been interesting to be "a fly on the wall" and see how some of these evolved over time. I suspect some of the oddities initially started with a good set of screens, but then a new piece was later tacked on without a full audit or without the resources to change everything else.
Comment · 11 years ago
You're on point, these help mechanisms should be rare and few, or they would be a nuisance as well.
The problem with forced screen of tooltips in the very beginning is that you haven't had a chance to explore the app yet, and so it's hard to mentally assign importance to them. And later, they're gone.
Comment · 11 years ago
Not a fan of screen overlay tooltips as in [1]. My first instinct as a user is to get them out of my way, and I do that every time, feeling guilty. And adding a "next" button and going through tooltips one-by-one doesn't make this any better, just more annoying.
Actual games (such as GTA or Cut the Rope) do a great job with onboarding, and apps tend to take the simpler show-everything-in-the-beginning way.
Two alternatives I've tried as an indie dev:
- Gamification, where you ask the user to perform one task, such as "drag X to Y." Only after they performed the action move on to the next prompt, and perhaps not even immediately.
- Utilizing badge counts or "bouncing" animations to indicate some action that needs to be performed. The benefit is that the user can try it on their own time, and you're not rushing them. The downside, though, is that some users may never actually click.
On the flip side, these approaches can add complexity in both code and how you structure your UI.
[1] http://s3.amazonaws.com/marquee-test-akiaisur2rgicbmpehea/R9...
