

Ask HN: Review My WebApp - kbrower
http://www.chemsink.com/?

======
Adrenalist
This is a really interesting/fascinating webapp. A few suggestions. 1\.
Improve the design / User Interface. It's a bit clunky and diminishes the
experience. 2\. Make the search field auto-complete. Use jQuery and you could
have it done in a few minutes. I am not a chemist, so I don't know the exact
spelling of most chemicals or elements. [http://jetlogs.org/2007/10/22/jquery-
auto-suggest-with-keyup...](http://jetlogs.org/2007/10/22/jquery-auto-suggest-
with-keyup-event/)

~~~
d0mine
He uses jQuery.

The site doesn't work (Windows, Chrome).

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sspencer
I really like the idea of being able to search for a molecule just by drawing
it! It's a fantastic and intuitive idea, if it works...

Which it doesn't, at least for me. When I click the draw link, all I see is an
empty white popup box with Preview and Submit buttons that I can't interact
with.

Here's my setup, for debug purposes:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008072820
Firefox/3.0.1

~~~
Herring
I'm also on 64 bit linux & it works. Wish he had made a huge draw button. I
read about that feature here before I saw it on the page.

PS 2.5 million reactions really? Why aren't they all listed in /reactions/
hmm? :)

~~~
kbrower
The reactions listed in /reactions/ are general types of reaction. There may
be 100,000s of individual reaction between each type.

I will definitely be making it more clear that you can draw the compound.

~~~
Herring
So maybe call them reaction classes/types? For what it's worth, the applet
didn't quite do it for me. But I'm not a chem guy so I don't know about your
target audience. Check with them about usability.

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mdolon
I'm not sure if other tools like this exist but man I could've used something
like this back in my Organic Chem classes. I like it, I tried to search for a
few things and was able to find most of it (couldn't find nitroglycerin). Best
of luck!

~~~
vaksel
I don't really remember since it was like 4 years ago, but I think in my
organic chemistry lab we used something like this. (granted it was an offline
version, and the graphics really weren't that much better)

So if that hasn't changed(don't see why it should, since academia is known for
using crappy looking software), he can probably sell some subscriptions to
different schools chemistry departments. I would make the design a little
better, and make the appealing design as one of the features

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Angostura
A fascinating WebApp, and really useful to schools and students, I would have
thought. I've only tested it for about 2 minutes, but I already found one odd
ommission - try searching for Ethene and see what you get.

Also it says that yo can search by common name, which is fabulous, but you
might want to open the system up to crowd-sourcing so that people can
contribute common names and attch them to molecules.

A search on Deoxyribonucleic acid, for example produces no hits.

------
okeumeni
I have to admit, as a hardcore hacker I'm clueless here. I wanted to type
"water", "beer" then out of frustration I end up typing "wtf" lol.

Seriously you should find away to attract the attention of regular guys like
me, the potential here is to make sense of chemistry to people by being a bit
more talkative on the front page.

Overall it looks like a great tool.

------
tel
Hire a designer and a copywriter because the way it is now tells me absolutely
nothing. My first impression was that you could purchase these chemicals from
the interface.

Play up the social aspects of it, too. As of now, I don't see what
differentiates your site from PubChem (besides speed).

Hooking into a spectroscopy database would not be half bad either.

------
ashleyw
Try to remove your testing pages/comments:
<http://www.chemsink.com/reaction_type/19/>

Not sure how close you are to having real visitors, but test comments are
never welcoming!

~~~
kbrower
thanks, these have been removed

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quantumhobbit
Very cool idea. I would suggest linking to chemical suppliers. I don't know if
Sigma-Aldrich and the like have online stores, but that would be a very easy
way to monetize this idea.

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lpgauth
Some chemical names are displayed as regexp... Not sure if all chemist
understand them :)

ex: 1$l^{6}-thiacycloprop-2-yne 1,1-dioxide

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acro
Maybe you could write a short description of the app to encourage people to
comment?

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rwebb
no clue what it is or what it does

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izak30
Very Cool.

