

Show HN: My Static Page HTML App To Track And Recommend Books For Hackers - DanielBMarkham
http://hn-books.com?ref=manual

======
onli
That is a nice site. All the reviews are from you? You are using a custom tool
for the static page generation?

Small thing: on the main page, you have a-links into buttons, for the audio-
book, e-book and normal one. That doesn't work for me, a click just presses
the button (newest FF under Ubuntu).

Do you want hints for the design?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Sure! Email them on.

The site is almost 4 years old, and it's starting to show its age. I would do
much differently were I to start over.

Yes, currently the reviews are from me. I let the site slide for a long time
because I only wanted books that would still be good ten years from now, and
you don't see a lot of those released each year.

Interesting problem I ran into with the site? Gushing reviews. Turns out if
you only review the best stuff, you quickly run out of superlatives. That was
the main reason I didn't finish reviewing all the entries.

The challenge I took when building the site was to do as much as possible
without a transactional database or realtime back-end system. The site
compiles from an MS Access database to JSON, which is then stored on the
server. I found with a semi-static database and rich querystring, I could do a
lot more than most people would imagine. It made me start deeply thinking
about app architecture -- completely changed the way I look at it.

But the UX? Not so much.

~~~
onli
I sent you an email

------
DanielBMarkham
Usage:

1) Find what people are saying about a book before purchasing. Example:
[http://www.hn-books.com/Books/Slaughterhouse-
Five.htm#the_bu...](http://www.hn-books.com/Books/Slaughterhouse-
Five.htm#the_buzz)

2) Save a list of books that answer a particular question as a link to share
with others instead of having to list your favorite books over and over again.
Example: "These are the best sci-fi books I read last year: [http://www.hn-
books.com/#B0=164&B1=166&B2=165&BC=3&EC=0&FC=0...](http://www.hn-
books.com/#B0=164&B1=166&B2=165&BC=3&EC=0&FC=0&Q0=15&QC=1")

3) Read reviews

4) Create a "Countdown clock" that shows how long your startup has until you
run out of money: [http://hn-books.com/EZ-Business-Model.htm](http://hn-
books.com/EZ-Business-Model.htm)

There are a few more features. More functionality than most folks would expect
from a static html page app.

