

Show HN: Scroll Reddit - JonathanBouman
http://www.Scrolldit.com

======
cryptoz
Wow, I wonder what people think when I tell them I spend a lot of time on
reddit. This content looks absolutely nothing like what I'm used to seeing. I
suppose I hide away in subreddits and miss all this weird frontpage material.

It looks so...alien.

~~~
JonathanBouman
Don't worry, multiple subreddits work as well on Scrolldit:
<http://www.scrolldit.com/?r=science%2Bprogramming%2Baww>

~~~
brador
What did you use to get that grid system that adapts to the screen width
dynamically?

Any links to a tut on that?

~~~
JonathanBouman
That grid system is an awesome jQuery plugin built by David DeSandro:
<http://masonry.desandro.com>

~~~
rhnoble
I love Masonry so much. I want to marry it.

------
canadaduane
This is really useful and well presented. Two things:

1\. The flying boxes effect is cool at first, but it's annoying when you are
trying to look at the articles near the source of the "boxplosion". They
obscure (and on a slow browser) cause temporary occlusion of the stuff that
I'd like to read. Maybe cause them to explode in the background, rather than
the foreground?

2\. Although the UI is simple and really nice looking, I think one of the most
important pieces of information from Reddit is "popularity". Perhaps you can
fit the number of votes next to each box. Or even better, add a single-bar bar
chart with positive and negative votes like this:

\+ \+ \+ | \- -

Where each '+' or '-' in this representation is 100 votes or something like
that.

~~~
JonathanBouman
Thanks for the feedback. 1\. Good suggestion! I'll put it on my todo and see
if it's possible. 2\. Not sure if you saw it, but it is possible to hover the
box and see the votes (bottom right). Most popular content is rendered on top
(in some situations the order could slightly differ because of asynchronous
calls being made in the background). Not showing the votes by default was
because I try to keep it as clean as possible. I can fix you a parameter to
set if you want to see the votes by default, let me know and I put it on the
todo.

------
JonathanBouman
Good examples of the power of the UI:

<http://www.scrolldit.com/?r=listentothis>

<http://www.scrolldit.com/?r=itookapicture>

~~~
rokhayakebe
They need to start video on hover.

~~~
alanh
Uh how is that not a terrible idea / why are we too lazy to click play?

------
goo
I love these -- <http://reddpics.com> is similar, and I love seeing different
takes on a client representations of reddit.

I made <http://imgist.com> in the same vein -- it's a different take on making
good image content easy to browse (on reddit in particular).

------
petercooper
Without the flying windows, it'd be good.

Reminds me of <http://news.peepcode.com/> a bit which might also interest
folks. It's made up of Geoffrey's Twitter friends' links as posted on Twitter.

------
alanh
This is really good and cuts down on my #1 Reddit pet peeve, blind links /
link bait titles.

One weird thing though — all your throbbers/spinners seem to be running
_backwards_.

------
david927
I was thinking of something similar. But I was thinking it should be a
straight list (one article per row) and to the side should be a graphical bar.
Mouse over the bar and the content goes away forever. So you can just swipe
your mouse side-to-side over the bar to consume the content (and not see it
again).

------
designsourced
Good size on the posts - large enough to read on 13" screen.

Would like to see it centered (not sure if you are leaving the right margin
for future ads)

Link to the comments?

You just increased my work productivity by 300% not having to click on every
damn meme. Great work. Will use often.

~~~
JonathanBouman
Thanks! Good to hear you enjoy it on your 13' screen, one of my goals was to
increase the usability of Reddit on mobile devices. Right margin is not left
for ads, it's there because another box couldn't fit (try to play with your
browser width to see what I mean). Comments are accessible through the title
of the box. Have fun!

~~~
mattsidesinger
Would love a 1 column mobile version. Have been using this quite a bit. Nice
work.

------
wecing
Absolutely good job! But like canadaduane said, the flying boxes effect could
be annoying when scrolling down the page; and, on the other hand, your design
fits imageboards (like 4ch) more, because when so many pictures showing up, I
(like most people, I think) would not read the text.

------
pg_bot
I am assuming this uses the isotope jquery plugin, if anyone else is thinking
about using dynamic grids like this I would suggest taking a look at the
project. (free for non-commercial use) <http://isotope.metafizzy.co/>

~~~
JonathanBouman
It uses Masonry, from the same author as Isotope. Difference between those two
is that Isotope uses GPU accelerated CSS animations. Sadly there are quite a
few bugs when you combine CSS animations with flash (for example on the iPad),
videos won't render on the proper position. Therefore I had to stay with
masonry. Please let me know if someone is aware of a workaround. (Example of
the bug: <http://jsfiddle.net/desandro/t3Cmy/>)

------
levesque
See also <http://www.reddpics.com>

~~~
JonathanBouman
It's nice, but picture only like panoptikos.com :)

------
Gigablah
Suggestion: could you change the "connection error" javascript dialog into
something that doesn't block the page, e.g. a growl notification? My
connection is spotty and I get that box a couple of times, rather disruptive.

------
Igor_Bratnikov
Yes great idea and my avoiding reddit while working plan has been thwarted

------
JonathanBouman
Scrolldit.com is bugged in Opera, I tried to fix it but can't find out what
goes wrong and how to solve it. Is there anyone here who can shed a light on
it?

------
angryasian
I think this actually makes my reddit browsing slower. I think looking left to
right and having titles not aligned is slower than reading top to bottom.

------
waratuman
Ok, may have scrolled on this page forever. When the page gets lots of content
it gets slow. Could you remove the DOM elements at the top as you scroll?

~~~
JonathanBouman
That's indeed a problem if you scroll for a long time.

I can't really remove content from the DOM since that would cause other boxes
to float back to the top (moving chaos in your window). Maybe replacing the
images not in focus with a 1x1 pixel stretched to their size is a fix to
decrease memory usage (although I think this will differ between browsers).
Anyone here with a good idea how to fix this?

------
purplefruit
I love it. This is one of the few Show HN posts I might actually use.

(Not to say other stuff is bad... I'm just not an early adopter)

~~~
wonjun
I feel the same way. This saves me some time.

------
lrvick
Typo in your twitter share button: "Scroll through* Reddit.com -
<http://scrolldit.com>

~~~
JonathanBouman
Thanks for the typo! Fixed it in the latest version, expect it within a few
minutes:)

Edit: New version with fix online.

------
alvivar
You know what I have been doing the last hour? Scrolling Reddit :P I got to
say, it's really a nice experience... Good work!

~~~
JonathanBouman
Nice! Glad you like it, spread the word :)!

------
LuxuryMode
This is actually pretty awesome. Nicely done.

------
alexwolfe
Pretty addicting scrolling feature. An overload of information but a cool
graphical way to see what's going on.

------
tomlin
This is not a slight against what you've done here - but damn, this does not
make my ADD easier to deal with.

------
antimora
Works very well on my iPad. Well done!

~~~
JonathanBouman
Was one of the goals to make it work on iPads, great to hear you like it :)!

------
mrmekon
I sent this link to a coworker, and he was incapacitated for the rest of the
work day. Good job!

~~~
JonathanBouman
For him you're not a coworker anymore, you turned into a friend ;-)

------
brador
Whats the copyright situation around Reddit posts? Is putting ads on Reddit
content allowed?

~~~
JonathanBouman
Not sure, but the ads you see are coming from Reddit itself ;-)

------
one-man-bucket
This is really neat!

I never realized how much of the reddit content was internet memes :)

~~~
JonathanBouman
Thanks! Also give other subreddits a try, /r/listentothis
(<http://www.scrolldit.com/?r=listentothis>) or /r/itookapicture
(<http://www.scrolldit.com/?r=itookapicture>), those really show the power of
the UI. Another thing to try is to visit it with a tablet :)

------
zalew
relevant: <http://panoptikos.com>

~~~
JonathanBouman
Panoptikos is indeed a nice mashup, however picture reddits only.

------
lurchpop
great freakin job man. I built reddpics.com last year. Your UI is much better.

~~~
JonathanBouman
Thanks lurchpop! Btw. Good job on reddpics, in some occasions it's faster as
Scrolldit (I guess because of the prerendered thumbs), your site was one of my
favorites before I build Scrolldit :)

------
danso
I can't tell if this is a site meant to increase Reddit's usability or if it's
a satire mocking the kind of content that Reddit too often features. Either
way, very well done!

------
faruken
"Connection timeout." - That's the only thing I've seen so far.

~~~
JonathanBouman
What browser? Did you try to reload the page?

~~~
faruken
Safari. However, it's gone now. I guess it was a network problem on my side.

------
awegawef
Love it. Maybe work on making it dynamic width?

~~~
JonathanBouman
Thanks, what do you exactly mean with dynamic width? Do you mean for each box
other widths?

------
hallowtech
oh dang, just lost about 30m. will bookmark.

------
hernan7
Great job. Needs a "pause" button IMO.

~~~
JonathanBouman
Already has a stop button for new top 50 check, I'm busy with optimizing the
way it works (maybe load new content only if top is in focus)

------
jianshen
scrollhn? :)

~~~
JonathanBouman
Already tried that, but I can't find a good reliable realtime datasource.

I could only find the news.ycombinator.com/bigrss feed (which blocks Yahoo
YQL, so I can't convert it to jsonp). The workaround would be a proxy that
circumvents the block, but I'm not sure if that's okay. Anyone from HN who
could help me out?

------
lwat
I like it! The fixed-width column format ( <http://canv.as> uses it too) works
really well for small chunks of random content.

------
gcb
loved for the few seconds before auto update kicked in.

remove that or add a toggle. or maybe update when i reach the top.

~~~
JonathanBouman
You can disable it by clicking the stop icon on the right of the loader :)

