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Since you’re a skeptic, I’d love to hear your thoughts on my reply to xtracto!

Shameless plug for my side project: XpanXn.com

The central value proposition is its reimagined UI, making threaded replies more visible and more interactive by separating conversation topics (threads) into different columns.

It’s currently just an MVP, but I expect to at least improve the UI and maybe rearchitect the system in the near future.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

Thanks for the feedback -- definitely agree on the demo! Based on some feedback from one of the Show HNs, I'm planning to make some fake little chat bot, so users have something to interact with (albeit in a very scripted/formulaic way) instead of sending a link to a friend. The chat bot will replace the static demo entirely.

It's definitely a style change first and foremost. I got sick of this pattern: friend sends message1, message2, message3; I respond reply1, reply2, reply3. And then they probably reply to some (if not all) of my replies. Usually it's pretty clear which message corresponds to which topic, but it's always messy. With XpanXn, it's explicit and visually obvious.

Each topic column is a fixed width. You can pan around the chat canvas and zoom in/out exactly as you'd expect! In fact, another motivator was knowing that a lot of people like really small font sizes on their phones. This way, you tailor font size just by zooming in/out. There's definitely some opportunity to improve that, but for now, I think the ability to pan tends to most of that concern.

I think the differentiator is two-fold.

1. Threads aren't secondary. There's no secondary window, and threads don't get lost in the amalgamation of main window messages. All threads are presented equally, which brings me to...

2. It's visual. You see the entire graph -- how the conversation flows -- and you directly interact with the chat canvas.

As someone who’s one week into a four-week gap between knowing there will be layoffs and knowing who exactly will be laid off, I completely agree. There’s some comfort in knowing that the layoff benefits are already defined, but they’re pretty bad for early career employees like me.

My nights are starting to focus on preparing for a job search.

Hey everyone, my name is Peter and I developed XpanXn ("Expansion") after wondering if instant messaging could better mimic real-life conversations if it were designed more like a mind-map.

XpanXn is an instant messaging app where your conversation is not limited to the vertical direction; it can expand in the horizontal direction to isolate different conversation topics being discussed simultaneously. Along with redesigning the dynamics of instant messaging, XpanXn also offers better privacy with no third-party data mining. You're the customer, not the product.

My intent is for this to be a minimum viable product. There's quite a bit of refinement needed to get XpanXn to realize its full potential and match the features we've come to expect from instant messaging apps.

I hope you'll give XpanXn a try -- no account needed. I'll be standing by to answer questions, and feedback is much appreciated!

Sorry to hear that! It looks like an account was successfully created for you, so what happens when you try to log in?

Hey everyone, my name is Peter and I developed XpanXn ("Expansion") after wondering if instant messaging could better mimic real-life conversations if it were designed more like a mind-map.

XpanXn is an instant messaging app where your conversation is not limited to the vertical direction; it can expand in the horizontal direction to isolate different conversation topics being discussed simultaneously. Along with redesigning the dynamics of instant messaging, XpanXn also offers better privacy with no third-party data mining. You're the customer, not the product.

My intent is for this to be a minimum viable product. There's quite a bit of refinement needed to get XpanXn to realize its full potential and match the features we've come to expect from instant messaging apps.

I hope you'll give XpanXn a try -- no account needed. I'll be standing by to answer questions, and feedback is much appreciated!

I've been working on a chat web app for the past few months. Its defining feature is that it reimagines the way in which conversations flow, allowing them to be really nonlinear.

It's almost ready for a ShowHN. I just have to get the websockets working!

Sounds similar to some work I’ve been doing, so thanks for unknowingly validating my design!

At my employer, I’m spearheading a wholesale reimplementation of outdated process automation software, turning everything into Django web apps.

I’ve been working with a monorepo and monolithic deployments to maintain development velocity but recently started transitioning the CI/CD pipeline to deploy each application/service in the monorepo independently. The pipeline packages common assets (including, e.g., manage.py, common HTML templates, and the dependency spec...all housed in the same monorepo) into each app directory before the deploy stage.

Meanwhile, local developers clone the entire monorepo, and when they launch localhost, all of the services come online simultaneously. (That’s the goal, at least!)

I was already excited to see my work come to fruition, and now I’ll be keeping an eye on Khan Academy, too!