

Show HN: Alice in Wonderland - trong
http://bookses.com/read/52907151d8529aa435000001

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mcescalante
I am terribly confused by the interface, although I assume its intention is to
sort of remind me of rap geniuses "explain" feature, but for Alice in
Wonderland. I love the idea, but the execution needs a bit more UI work :)

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egypturnash
Hmm. I looked at this first on my iPad and I was all "why is this person
linking to the Project Gutenberg edition of Alice".

Now I'm looking on my laptop and it's hard to even begin to savor the illos -
they're all overlaid on each other.

Cool idea, though!

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com2kid
I cannot understand how to use this, images are loaded as I scroll down, but
if I mouse over text, I sometimes get different images overlaid on top of the
already overlaid images. It is very confusing.

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eamsen
I love the book and its gorgeous illustrations, so I welcome this project.

However, the interface needs a lot of work. The current version is really
difficult to view due to the way overlay is handled. Also, there is a reason
why pop-up comments are activated on click on RapGenius, it's a major
distraction otherwise.

Can't wait for the improved version!

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marquis
This is a really fantastic idea, and really needed - I would enjoy showing
these to kids. The illustrations of these classics now in the public domain
have so much character (one day the work of Quentin Blake will go alongside
these).

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trong
Wow thank you so much!

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anigbrowl
Interesting UI.

On a side note, I wonder why Project Gutenberg books are all encoded with CR-
LF. The first thing I do whenever I load one is get rid of them so that the
text can be reflowed properly as paragraphs instead of lines.

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trong
Thanks! Good point. I was thinking there might be poetry so I just replaced
the CR-LF with regular new lines.

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anigbrowl
I didn't think about the poetry aspect, that's a good point. Maybe it could be
a toggle in user preferences.

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goodmachine
Work needed. Specifically: overlapped images are a mistake, and the typography
is not well done. Recommend checking out medium.com for optimal type handling,
and Gingko which has gone further towards a sane UI.

[https://gingkoapp.com/hyperloop](https://gingkoapp.com/hyperloop)

Gingko discussed here

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302825](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6302825)

IMO, novel interfaces like these have a fundamental problem - they're better
for creating or combining content than actually consuming it.

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Groxx
Interesting. Seems like a _significant_ improvement over highlighting and
margin-notes, and more collaborative.

For a while now I've been thinking that something like this would be great to
have _on e-readers_. Maybe someone here knows of one that has it / is capable
of general programming for it? Specifically e-ink, I'm still not a fan of
regular screens for lots of reading.

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GuerraEarth
"Unless you are craigslist." Isn't that the crappiest design ever?!? And isn't
it the greatest website idea...and even more interesting since it's so good
and it looks like (what he said) :=)

Alice has a right to be skew and whacked out. It is odd, though. Still,
ravishing. Thanks for posting.

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hipsters_unite
Seems similar in theory (if perhaps not in execution) to the open source
epub.js project[0].

[0][http://fchasen.github.io/epub.js/](http://fchasen.github.io/epub.js/)

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cheeyoonlee
This has big potential although it immediately reminded me of Rap Genius and
how they've already expanded into other written media. Keep at it and good
luck!

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Breefield
Rep Genius annotations for books, cool.

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brudgers
"The best book on computer programming for the layman." \--Alan Perlis

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kps
“… but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.”

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debt
This looks like a pile of shit. Sorry. It might be a good idea but it looks
like a pile of shit. Unless you're craigslist, if the design sucks no one will
use it.

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k-mcgrady
Nice constructive criticism there. If you think it's shit don't apologise, but
at least offer constructive ways the creator can improve upon it.

~~~
debt
Just trying to get the ball rollin.

