

Ask HN: Please review my webapp (Streetread) - mstefff
http://www.streetread.com
Hey,<p>My latest web application went public today and I'd love to hear some input from everyone. The site is called Streetread. I've been dubbing it 'Google Reader meets Wall Street'. Streetread is a single-page ajax-driven interface that simplifies the process of gathering the large amount of news and data that flood Wall Street every day. The site aggregates the latest headlines from over 20 of the leading financial sites as well as from all of the stocks you choose to follow. The interface makes sifting through the content extremely easy and the articles are even presented within the same page. Basic stock charts/quotes display with the stocks you follow, etc. Please check it out and let me know what you think.<p>Thanks,<p>Mike
======
mstefff
Hey,

My latest web application went public today and I'd love to hear some input
from everyone. The site is called Streetread. I've been dubbing it 'Google
Reader meets Wall Street'. Streetread is a single-page ajax-driven interface
that simplifies the process of gathering the large amount of news and data
that flood Wall Street every day. The site aggregates the latest headlines
from over 20 of the leading financial sites as well as from all of the stocks
you choose to follow. The interface makes sifting through the content
extremely easy and the articles are even presented within the same page. Basic
stock charts/quotes display with the stocks you follow, etc. Please check it
out and let me know what you think.

Thanks,

Mike

~~~
j2d2
Most people in my firm (used to be one of the top wall st firms until, say,
around march :) swear by bloomberg. So do the guys who bought us. You'll
definitely need some sort of login system that allows chatting and a LOT more
information if you wanna get these people off their bloomberg terms.

~~~
mthg
Hello to you there @ Bear Stearns. I'm a Bloomberg core infrastructure
engineer, and I can second that. I can type in a symbol and type in a
functional mnemonic, hit enter and see a news aggregate pertaining to a
certain security, along with just about everything else you want to know about
the security and/or the company underlying it. And of course Bloomberg
messaging is a premier form of OTC trading. I understand this is most likely
targeting the armchair investor (aka clueless speculator) although they should
probably go to Vegas instead if they think they're going to make consistent
returns picking stocks with their meager information.

~~~
j2d2
Hello. I'd like to talk to you about life working for Bloomberg if you
wouldn't mind. jdennis@gmail.

------
cjc
mstefff, I think this is a great idea, but I have to agree with the majority
of commenters that the implementation is poorly executed in three main ways:

1) the scrolling simply does not work as expected

2) you unnecessarily reinvented the scroll bar (axod elaborates very well on
this)

3) needing to sign up before typing in a ticker symbol is a major turn off

These are all easily fixable problems, but you are showing little interest in
listening to user feedback. Here are three things you said:

"I've barely had any issues with the scrolling"

"if you're at the top, you shouldn't scroll up, you should scroll down"

"There isn't anything wrong with the wrap-around"

It is easy to become blind to the deficiencies of interfaces you create. Of
course the wrap-around seems logical to you because you created it. However,
and this is really important, almost every single HN commenter had a problem
with it. If you want your app to become popular and maybe even profitable, you
MUST listen closely to your users/customers. Even if you do not agree with our
collective advice, it is detrimental to openly tell your potential users that
they are wrong.

So in a nutshell, open up to this constructive criticism. Your site looks very
nice and offers a hefty collection of important financial news. Beware,
though, that if developers cannot figure out the interface, suits won't stand
a chance.

~~~
mstefff
The scrolling is fixed. Please check it out and let me know.

~~~
cjc
much much better - exactly what people were looking for :]

------
czstrong
Incompatible Browser.

I'm at a large Nation-wide law firm and stuck on IE6. I imagine there are
Wall-Street corporationss that are also still using old browsers.

~~~
iron_ball
As a long-time Opera user, I can say that this incompatible browser landing
page crap has got to go. Either bend over backwards to satisfy everyone, or
gracefully degrade, or collapse entirely without a warning message -- but I'm
using a perfectly competent browser and you're locking me out of your damn
site. 0/10.

~~~
jfarmer
While true for Opera, it's rather generous to call IE6 a "competent browser."

~~~
mstefff
Good point. I know IE6 still has a decent user-base but I really felt I
shouldn't spend the enormous amount of time necessary to make this site work
with it. IE8 is due out soon and for web developers to continue supporting IE6
is the reason why its still around. I only wish more people would stop
supporting it. Opera on the other hand is a great browser but I can't get
jQuery to work correctly with it at all. And thats out of my hands in a way.

~~~
iron_ball
According to w3schools.com's browser stats -- which, by the way, are slanted
toward people with an interest in web design -- IE6's share has only been
dropping by about 1.5% a month for the last year, and is still around 26%.
It's safe to assume IE6 support will remain _completely unavoidable_ for any
serious business, especially those pitching to a more traditional (read
"technologically backwards") audience.

~~~
pchristensen
Thank you! So many people miss the point that while it might be a useful
ideological and labor saving decision to not support IE6, it also limits the
size of your market (possibly drastically). That's a decision that should be
based on business principles, not just taste. Sure, if you're targeting geeks,
ditch it, but if you're targeting "mortals", you'd better darn well support
their browser if you want a 2nd (well, 1st I guess) look.

------
axod
Scrolling is seriously broken. (ff3/OSX)

You display some articles, then I scrollwheel, and things go bezerk. I
scrollwheel down and it jumps up and down like a kid with hyperactivity
disorder. There's no scrollbar - I have no idea where I am in the list of
stories. Trying to match up where I was with where I am now is pretty hard.
You've put up/down/top/bottom buttons at the very top and called them
"Navigate".

So you've reimplemented a scrollbar (Standard browser UI component), but very
very badly.

Up and down keys don't scroll properly either. If I hold down a key, it should
keep repeating. Pressing a key should scroll the amount I am used to. You seem
to be scrolling by a _lot_ , on keyup - not what people expect.

Sorry, but I just hate it when people reinvent something that already exists,
is standard, and works. Especially when their implementation is completely
unusable.

Why not just use a scrollbar like people expect?

Also when I click on an article to read it, I expect to click [back], to go
back, instead of clicking on [return to the reader]. Once again, ignoring
standard browser usability.

Also if you try to open an article link in a new window, or copy it to send to
a friend etc, it breaks, and you land at the homepage (I assume you're using
onclick etc). Another usability flaw.

~~~
mstefff
New window link fixed. Worked fine earlier. Strange.

~~~
axod
Well, it opens it in both now... also you cannot copy the link :/

------
chollida1
\- Scrolling is too slow, \- Page loads are too slow

If your going to target the investment banking community, you'll find we want
our information fast. You'll notice the old stock tickers had symbols whizzing
bye, not slowly scrolling.

If I detect even the slightest lag I'll go somewhere else, probably an rss
reader.

~~~
j2d2
You're still much more up on tech than most people I work with. To them, if
it's not in bloomberg it doesn't exist.

------
JimEngland
Solid idea, but the one problem I noticed right away is that the site does not
currently load news. "Error loading news. Please try again or contact
support." Here are two other issues I think you should look at:

UI issue: When I click on a stock, I get the stock quote and information on
the right side just fine. However, it does not say anywhere the name of the
company. I think that putting the company name above the stock quote on the
right frame would be useful.

External links: When linking to an external site (such as Google Finance)
"Open in a new Window" does not work for me. Also, the bookmarks link is a bit
confusing; it shows a few icons (like del.icio.us) and one could think that
clicking on a part of that bookmarks icon would be linking to that particular
service. Finally, the top bar (the Streetread part) seems to blend into the
external page at times; maybe use part of the dark blue header in the design
of the external top bar?

Overall, I think that this is a great service so far, good work!

~~~
mstefff
What browser/os are you using?

~~~
JimEngland
Firefox 2 and Windows XP. I am behind a decently strict company firewall as
well.

------
jjburka
Looks nice. The only thing I found is if you scroll up in the news list area
it doesn't stop at today's news , it loops back to a couple days ago. Which is
rather unintuitive.

~~~
mstefff
As I said earlier, if you're at the top, you shouldn't scroll up, you should
scroll down.

~~~
greatreorx
"if you're at the top, you shouldn't scroll up,"

Why not? If I don't know I'm at the top, my only choice is to scroll up. You
don't give any visual clues as to where I am vertically - it's impossible to
tell if I'm at the most recent headline. If I want to go back to the very top,
my only choice is to scroll up until I can't any more. Ideally if I'm already
at the top and I scroll up and nothing happens, that tells me I'm at the very
top of the window.

Assuming the user knows he's at the top and so then 'shouldn't scroll up'
seems like a bad assumption.

------
steveplace
Pretty slick.

What advantages does this have over me hopping over to Yahoo Finance and
plugging in a ticker?

Also, I get live news feeds in my trading platform for any security.

I know you've probably done competitive analysis, but here are some other
sites that do pretty cool stuff too:

theflyonthewall.com (fastest news out there) stocktwits.com (twitter + stock
mashup)

Good Luck.

------
avinashv
Firefox 3 on an Intel Macbook running Leopard: the scrolling is completely
broken. If I click on a stock, the new loaded data just scrolls wildly.
Further scrolling using the scroll wheel seems to just send the page to
various locations at random.

Seems like an interesting idea, but there's no way I'd use it in this state.

------
sebg
Incompatible Browser. As someone who is in your target audience (I work for a
well-known Wall Street Firm), this seems to miss the point.

Also, it seems to me that you are going against Reuters, Bloomberg,
finance.google, and finance.yahoo. What is your value added there?

Good Luck!

------
ig1
You'll stuggle.

You won't even touch the professional markets dominated by
reuter/bloomberg/etc. They're playing a whole different ballgame.

Which means you'll have to go after the google/yahoo/ms finance market. Which
might be possible, but you don't look to have any competitive advantage over
those services at all. While on the other hand they have vast competitive
advantages over you.

My gut feeling from your site and your comments is that you've gone into this
project without a good understanding of the market (what's currently
available, why people use it) and without a clear user in mind.

My personal opinion is that you should scrap it, chalk up the experience, and
have another go, but this time concentrate on something you have domain
knowledge of.

------
uuilly
There is a lot of talk in this thread about your target market. They're right,
you'll never beat bloomberg. But... I come from a family of Wall St. people
and I can attest to the fact that most "street" news is consumed by non-
insiders. My dad is a financial advisor and essentially spends his day telling
people that what they saw on CNN Moneyline (or whatever it's called) isn't
true. So there are plenty of non-pros who you could target.

Personally I don't care about the market so I'm not the one to ask. But I
thought your site did what it needed to do well... Godspeed.

------
Stabback
Good concept, but could be implemented better. Definitely make the logo sizes
at the top the same size. Don't stretch or anything, but leave grayspace
between them. It just looks cluttered right now.

Center the instructions vertically as to not have so much empty space.
Although it will still be the same amount, it will look like less.

How about multithreading? As in when you click on one it becomes active,
allowing you to have more than one news source active at a time. Weave the
news entries by date and color code them (not everything, but maybe a color
code a symbol at the start).

If you implement the above, how about having categories? Sports, world and
business, etc? The possibility for sports from the New York Times and
International Business from Reuters would be a major feature.

Like I said, great idea. Some more work would make it amazing.

*edit: I like my scrollbar. I have come to expect my scrollbar from websites. Give me my scrollbar back, it acts as a visual clue to where I am and it allows for intuitive navigation. Don't force me to use your system.

------
sc
Overall a nice, simple interface.

The scrolling, vertical, ticker-like lists tripped me up for a second, though.
I thought the left-hand arrow, pointing to the left, would scroll the list in
left, that it would kind of pull the list in that direction like a ticker.

~~~
swombat
The wrap-around scrolling made it unusable for me, but I'm assuming that will
be fixed somehow. Looks great, and I'm going to forward it to some of my
friends once the wrap-around is working.

~~~
mstefff
There isn't anything wrong with the wrap-around. If you're at the top of the
list you shouldn't scroll up, you should be scrolling down towards the bottom.

~~~
byrneseyeview
Have you watched someone actually use your app? Here's how it went for me:
start at the top, scroll down a few days, scroll back up to the top, somehow
end up scrolled back _weeks_. It's arbitrary to loop after a few days -- if
you could collect data going back to the beginning of each company's history,
that might be more sensible.

I don't see any real-world analogue to going forward from the present and
ending up several weeks in the past, and having to embrace a brand-new
paradigm in order to use the interface is perhaps not what you need to do to
your users.

~~~
mstefff
The list of items goes back the latest 100 items. When you are scrolling
towards the bottom and you reach the end, it brings you back to the top.

~~~
swombat
After asking your users for feedback, it's generally useful to listen to them.

Here you have a sample of users who are saying the wrap-around navigation is
totally broken for them.

What's the right answer to that? Hint: it's not: "No, you're wrong, it works
fine."

~~~
mstefff
I was just explaining the idea behind it. I'm not disagreeing. I'm removing
the scrolling mechanism for the article list completely.

------
mstefff
Ok, the weird article scrolling is being removed momentarily. Thank you for
the feedback.

~~~
mstefff
now if only ie7 didn't butcher overflowed divs..

~~~
mstefff
Someone wanna lend a css hand? Why is ie7 running the div off horizontally on
every other content load?

<http://www.streetread.com/bad.png>

------
tstegart
It does a nice job of laying out information, so I give top points for
information design. The scrolling is a killer though. sounds like you really
love the idea you came up with, but unfortunately, its very annoying and very
confusing. It was like that Star Trek episode where they keep repeating the
same day over and over again. You need to give the user some indication they
have reached the end, whether its the top or the bottom. I'm sure the code
looks great, but its bad user design on that point.

------
dmix
Well designed, works very smoothly for me on FF3+Leopard. I love how quickly
it switches back to the reader.

First two things that stood out to me: 1) I would like to be able to input a
stock symbol on my own with out signing up, that would show how its valuable
to me personally without jumping through hoops. 2) Search, I'd like to be able
to search the multiple sources if possible. I'm guessing your just aggregating
feeds, but it would be a quality feature.

------
terpua
Quick comments:

1) Ability to add our own news/blog sources (good for you to expand news
sources) 2) Remove username from registration (I realize it's only one field
but it's one field less to fill in and don't see the point to it) 3) Make news
sources font smaller and in different color. If hyperlinked, it will go to the
actual collection of articles from that news source.

Simple stock news engine for hobby investors. Useful app.

------
elai
This seems like a part of google finance's news view (except with more news).
What I liked about google finance is how it pegged news articles with exact
times on the market. Yours might have more articles, but I don't see how it's
that much better than something more integrated.

------
ideamonk
DESIGN - the transparent menu doesn't look CLEAR or nice when it overlays the
logos of companies. Besides, the theme is about rounded corners so why is the
dropdown of the menu rectangle, its positioning should be lowered by 3-5px and
do something about the transparency.

------
s3graham
I thought the ticker symbols were associated with the logos above them at
first. I think you need to edit the layout a bit or improve whitespace
somehow.

Scrolling broke in a strange way when I moved up. Also, there must be a
scrollbar.

------
maxklein
It's brilliant, exactly what I need. Excellent for hobby stock traders. I
don't want to sign up for an account though, I just want to be able to edit
that top bar. Till you implement that, I won't sign up.

~~~
mstefff
You would really rather input all your symbols every time you visit the site?
Instead of filling out a 4 field simple form?

~~~
maxklein
No, I want to see Visa. I have no interest at all in any other stock. So I
want to edit it and view the news on that, and I would expect the site to
remember this for the next time. When I am more invested in the site and I
plan to use it regularly, then I will make an account. But right now I'll put
it on my toolbar and just lurk for a while, as I want to use it to see news on
a single stock.

------
slater
Why do I have to be logged in to edit the list of stocks?

~~~
mstefff
If you were to change the stocks without being logged in, once you navigate
away from the site, the symbols would be lost, and I felt users might be
annoyed by that. Registering literally takes seconds too.

~~~
Stabback
Yes, but that is seconds users do not want to take. I'd advice letting them
edit it, but have a small notification at the top letting them know that it
will be lost without an account. Cookies are unreliable but they may help.

~~~
mstefff
That's a very good idea and I'll definitely consider implementing that soon.
Thanks.

------
mercury
I get "error reading data" from all news sites...

hm

------
auston
I say it's semi-useful. But very easy to use.

1 thing though... I don't like what happens when I try to scroll up on news
stories for a stock.

~~~
mstefff
Are you referring to how the list loops to the end? You're supposed to be
scrolling down but I see how that could get confusing. I was worried some
users would scroll in the wrong direction.

~~~
auston
Yep.

------
mstefff
The scrolling issue is fixed and I'm working on all of the wonderful comments
you've suggested. Please check it out...

------
dustineichler
Really good job mstefff, the feedback seems good too. Don't rest on your
success...

------
ucdaz
I would also add a voting feature. What did you use to write this? RoR?

~~~
mstefff
I mentioned the voting issue earlier:

"I considered having this as a feature but didn't for two reasons. Since this
is geared towards the investment community, I felt most serious investors
don't care about community and what others think, and last, what's popular to
some may not even be relevant to others in this industry."

The site is built on Drupal and jQuery.

------
aston
Ahh! Broken back button! Really, really annoying.

~~~
mstefff
Broken back button?

~~~
aston
When I click to go to an outside article (say a company profile), it shows in
something like an iframe, and the only way to return to the front page is to
click the "Return to reader" link provided. My browser back button doesn't do
anything.

~~~
mstefff
That's because you aren't going to a new page. The entire interface never
reloads.

~~~
aston
I understand the technical reason for the behavior. It'd be awesome if the
back button worked anyway.

[http://www.contentwithstyle.co.uk/Articles/38/fixing-the-
bac...](http://www.contentwithstyle.co.uk/Articles/38/fixing-the-back-button-
and-enabling-bookmarking-for-ajax-apps)

------
noodle
allow people to vote up some of the news stories, and have the main page
display the popular stories.

~~~
mstefff
I considered having this as a feature but didn't for two reasons. Since this
is geared towards the investment community, I felt most serious investors
don't care about community and what others think, and last, what's popular to
some may not even be relevant to others in this industry.

~~~
ig1
I've yet to meet a serious investor who didn't care about the consensus view.
Groupthink impacts the prices of stock as much as fundamentals.

------
alaskamiller
This is pretty darn cool, you need to keep working on it. I would love for a
search box to either search or quickly hit on the stocks I have in my list
instead of relying on the side scroll buttons.

------
tzury
nifty application --

------
shiranaihito
For Opera, you might want to consider showing a warning instead of completely
blocking access.

