

Show HN: A Handcrafted Web - kateray
http://www.scrollkit.com/s/O7MsYbD

======
mnicole
Hi Kate, you guys are probably still tweaking away and have all of this noted,
but I'll post some issues I have anyway:

\- Thought I was saving the page from the Settings drop-down where it shows me
the URL to my site and says "Update", rather than the "Done" button to the top
right.

\- Expected to be able to drag-and-drop the images to the canvas so I could do
it en mass instead of click them, then have the clipart stick to my cursor
until I dropped it/resized it before going back into the images panel.

\- Not being able to see that the elements have styles attributed to them
without clicking into them is kind of rough.

\- Outlining an object by a bounding-box instead of the shape of the object
can get confusing when you have multiple layers.

\- In the layers drop-down, everything is listed as a "Text" element. Some
without any description (shape preview would be nice). Should be able to
delete the object after selecting it from within this panel too.

\- I think the layout would be easier/more familiar for people if the top bar
options were vertically-aligned to be a toolbar, and if the user actions bar
at the bottom was up at the top right. Have a separate floating box or one
that comes in from the right side for when you select an object that has
attributes/FX to fiddle with.

\- You can see the code but not edit it?

\- _Just_ realized where the background editor was. That should be a part of
the primary toolbar.

Otherwise really interesting, would be great for creating quick instruction
manuals and simple product pages. Like someone else mentioned, I am waiting on
ReadyMag for this kind of publishing tool, but I like where things are headed
here moreso than some other editors I've come across.

~~~
kateray
Awesome, thanks for the feedback. Yeah, we're definitely still tweaking the
design and some of these issues are just things we haven't gotten to yet (3
person team - we're hiring!).

We did have the toolbar vertically-aligned before, but found that it got in
people's way a lot more when they were trying to design the page.

Also, I'm kate@scrollkit.com if there's anything else you come across, this
stuff is super helpful for us.

------
jcromartie
So, basically, "web publishing is broken because you have to do it on someone
else's terms".

And then you say "use our stuff instead".

~~~
notJim
This was my initial reaction as well. Actually, as I find myself scrolling
down the page, I thought the ideas were compelling. It was like this:

    
    
      [Facebook part     ]      Hmm… ok…
    
      [GO SLOWER         ]      Yeah!
      |-----   .... ---- |      YEAh!
      |.. ..... ------- .|      YEAH!
      
      [Make it meaningful]      Yeah!
      |.. ..... ---- .. .|      YEAH!
      
      [Join              ]      Wait… what? Join… your app?
    

I thought this was about hand-crafting. This is just another ad for a service
that will be acquihired in 2 months?

FUCK.THAT.

~~~
kateray
these are the ideas behind scroll kit and i'm glad you agree with them. but
we'd be some pretty shitty hackers if we just talked about them and weren't
trying to actually DO something to change things.

~~~
notJim
Absolutely. We seek to solve the problems we see in the world through
technology.

I feel your message would be more honest if you went for an approach like
WordPress did: with an open-source tool. You make money by providing a hosting
platform for the less technically inclined.

And think about it. Wordpress _actually did_ revolutionize publishing.

~~~
mcantor
What's wrong with making money by providing a service to someone happy to pay
for it?

~~~
notJim
Nothing, but calling it a movement aimed to fix broken publishing when it's
just another walled garden that will disappear at the first buyout offer is
disingenuous.

To clarify a bit: I am annoyed not by what the product is, but by the way it's
marketed.

~~~
codybrown
The editor produces vanilla html/css that can be transfered and hosted
anywhere.

And I'm glad that you think its worth buying but we're not for sale.

------
rbellio
I like the thought behind this. There is a disparity between the layouts of
the print word and the web, though, I think there are a lot of reasons that
this is true.

For one, the technology that allows this coupling of design and copy has been
slowly maturing and at times has been very cumbersome. In the past, sites that
tried to break the tabular, "only text" mold were often slow to load and broke
without third party libraries.

As internet speeds improved so did third party support and the design process
for this new technical media. The interoperability of the technologies could
still lead to a lot of pain when developing for everyone and doing so in a
fashionable way.

Now, we're at that fork where everything has matured enough that it's opened
up the ability to infuse more character and creativity into our designs and
the technology allows the feasibility. However, I think there's still a gap.
There's a gap between the idea and the effort required in order to achieve it.
There is still transition between the idea, the design and the realization and
often we see a loss of inspiration as it comes to that fruition.

I think there is still headway to make on the fluidity and experience of the
digital domain. That visceral reaction that many of us enjoy when rifling
through the pages of a book or glancing through the glossy pages of a magazine
have yet to be duplicated, even if this site makes a great stab at it. To
remove the consciousness of the square portal of emitted light is going to be
the next frontier though.

------
ktsmith
This team page reminds me of geocities from the late 90s.
<https://www.scrollkit.com/s/iaJos01>

~~~
creamyhorror
I like it. Lots of personality, you know they're there to make it fun.

We could do with a return of the GeoCities self-made-page aesthetic (with
improved aesthetic sense, of course) on a web where everything on the big
sites is neatly templated and identical in layout. Amidst all the consistency,
I've been missing the touches that used to make personal sites unique. All
people do on their blogs now is throw on funny pictures; the format/layout is
never broken, or it simply can't be.

This is a good reminder to us to break the mould whenever we feel it's
appropriate (or whenever we feel like it).

~~~
ktsmith
I feel the opposite and don't particularly care for it. The page is basically
content free has some content that is difficult to read and contains seizure
inducing animation.

~~~
ShawnBird
Exactly, anyone who thinks this is an improvement is not thinking it through.

------
MatthewPhillips
Blame the move toward blogging systems that separated content from
presentation. Blame advertising which has to be front-and-center at all times.

I wonder how advertising would work on the web if you didn't have omni-present
ads but instead sometimes the viewport contained no ads, sometimes it contains
big huge ads that take up the entire viewport (like a full-page ad in a
magazine). Would that make up for them not being visible at all times? Anyone
tried this?

~~~
ImprovedSilence
Your idea sounds similar to some websites that show a full page banner with an
x in the corner before visiting a certain page.

~~~
sdoering
Interesting thought. Never thought about it this way (and working in an
environment, where it might fit).

Not trying to defend the practice of ads like they are today, but thinking
twice brings one thought to my head:

Why recreate the style of an old medium in a new one. When the printing press
was developed - for the first decades books just looked like before. looked
like they were handwritten by scribes. Gradually books evolved into something
more of their own.

So why build digital copies of magazine-layout? I really do not have a better
solution - I am merely asking the question, that keeps bugging me all the
time, when I think about the evolution of the web.

------
petercooper
The ethos here reminds me a lot of the edgier elements of the Web design
community in the 1997-2002 period. For some reason, a lot of it died out after
that, but there was a real enthusiasm to do some magical stuff and large
collectives like the Swank Army were putting out amazing and experimental work
(often leaning on early CSS and gigantic nests of tables). I'd love to see
that culture come back to the Web in a big way.

~~~
tdonia
Anyone remember dreamless? This reminds me of the meaningless css wars. In a
good way.

~~~
state
Yeah, I remember. Dreamless was a truly ad-hoc institution though, and the
tools people used to participate were all freely available and took some
effort to use and understand. The aesthetic is similar, but I think the
sentiment here is really different.

------
anigbrowl
You had me until 'Login with Facebook'. It's the new 'Connect with us on AOL'.

------
reaktivo
I really like what ReadyMag <http://readymag.com> is proposing in this area.

~~~
creamyhorror
Wow, this is kind of wonderful. It somehow does "vibrant yet professional"
really well, in contrast with the "genuine amateur" feel of scrollkit. They
have one hell of a designer, that's for sure. Seems like they're proposing a
Photoshop/Flash-like rich-app design interface for webpages?

I'd like to play around with the app but the Team slide is causing my browser
to hang.

~~~
irollboozers
Shame, their team page is brilliant. You can so clearly tell who the designers
vs. coders are by their shoes.

Definitely hipster enough, but with a more professional European style than
the NYU-Hipster Runoff style of ScrollKit. I personally prefer Readymag
actually.

------
splatcollision
Edit Room inspired? Be honest... <http://www.edit-room.com> Also template-free
blank canvas web design, a little more professional maybe?

~~~
mnicole
I'd substitute the gradients on your site for solid colors, they're a little
too intense. Also the signup password field being in plaintext isn't quite
right.

I like what Edit Room tries to do but I think you need to look into finding a
UX or UI person that understands web design/development because it is a little
too geeky/subtle in implementation for the user that this is targeted for.
However, I like how it focuses you in on the content and content-type before
you get into designing around it.

~~~
splatcollision
Thanks very much! I've been working hard on making the UX better, and will
have a nice solid update shortly, that should address your concerns. I'll let
HN know as soon as the improvements are ready.

One nice thing that's coming is being able to design for different screen
widths with a built-in breakpoint tool that creates media queries for you from
your design.

------
jval
I really like this idea.

Isn't HN meant to be the kind of place to share this stuff? I love the
philosophy behind it, I feel like these guys are having a serious crack at
building something that ordinary designers can use to make really beautiful
pages without needing to know how to code.

The design of that page is really compelling and tasteful. Neatly showcases
what the platform can do while retaining your attention.

And as for the haters, all I can say is - if you made it to the bottom of the
page then they are definitely doing something right. I'm sure if you were part
of their target market the final flourish would work too and you would be keen
to sign up.

------
nollidge
This one reason I don't read blog articles in an RSS feed. I aggregate them
with one, but follow links to the blog owner's site so that I'm reading their
content _as they designed it_.

~~~
wmeredith
I did the same thing until I found Newsblur. It lets you read them all in one
place, but retains original formatting. It's sick.

~~~
thebigshane

      It's sick
    

Sometimes I really hate the English language. I think in highschool I
remembered which adjectives meant good and which meant bad, but now they all
completely confuse me. Hella, bad, the sarcastic awesome, wicked, twisted, ...

\-- a twenty-something curmudgeon.

------
sequoia
I didn't get the CTA at the end. Join... what? I'm totally unclear about what
I'm joining. I like the sentiment of the project: "back to DIY, one-off,
unique pages- like in magazines!" but I don't understand how signing up for...
something (?) will help me do this.

Throw me a bone: show me a bit -at least a video- of what you're offering
before asking me to sign up.

~~~
codybrown
the video is right above the join button.

~~~
sequoia
There is a youtube link with a thumbnail of a bear and some fire and lasers or
something, I assumed it was decorative because most of the visual aspects of
the site are.

Upon further investigation you can try the tool right on the page, I just
didn't know this because there was no CTA for it, as there was no "See it in
action!" CTA over the video. Startupers pitching your project to users: make
it as simple as possible to see your value prop- don't make me work for it :)

~~~
codybrown
thanks for the feedback. I drew an arrow to the video and changed the copy on
the button.

------
seangransee
the page itself makes this look like a step forward for the web, but the video
at the bottom makes it look like a step backward.

~~~
druidsbane
The heart wants what it wants. You can't run from that!

------
cgil
It's a very nice idea, I would love to see more creativity in the web, but I
don't think I agree with the implementation or what I see as the user base.
Every blog page is not just a template, it's someone's vision of the world.
It's an identity and a brand that the blogger tries to create and extend to
its users. Using this new style the blogger would completely lose any form of
identity and become more of a sparkling instagram knockoff than a medium to
share rich content to its user base.

------
markshead
"The web is the most advanced publishing system we've ever had but the process
in which most people publish is backwards next to print."

There were probably similar things said about the shift from hand copied books
to using printing presses.

~~~
icebraining
Yes, so? Early printing press probably _was_ less developed than hand copied
books in terms of design, but it evolved, which is what they're proposing we
do on the web. I don't get your point.

------
ggreiner
People hate scrolling or parallax scrolling pages would be much more wide
spread, they're easy to make and awesome looking.

Relying on the user scrolling I don't believe is a good idea, but the rest of
it I definitely agree with.

------
cws
Yeah. One thing scroll kit does really well is allows the screen to be filled
with a single idea/image/composition. I haven't seen a lot of sites experiment
with serving ads that way though.

------
Swizec
Love the "Go slower" idea. Would be very refreshing, if more people started
doing this.

Then again, I am very much at fault for talking too much and too quickly on
twitter.

However, I'm not actually certain what your product _does_.

~~~
kateray
We're a tool for people to make webpages without using a template, so they can
start from scratch with a totally blank canvas. You can see the sort of things
people are making here: <http://www.scrollkit.com/s/I6QWRuK/>

~~~
chalst
Scrolling through those -- I don't know if I should be impressed or not: how
much effort are these to make? -- I saw one that doesn't render well for me:

<https://www.scrollkit.com/s/gBbcZ8v>

(on an old version of Chromium, 6.0.472.63 - for some reason I am browsing on
a stable Debian, but the rendering of css/tables on that version of Chromium
seems pretty solid).

Aside from uncertainty, I did have a positive impression: these are pages that
aren't instrumented with cruft around the edges, and that makes a huge
difference.

------
d0m
Please, change the music of the video describing the product.. I had to shut
down the volume after 30 seconds of listening to it.

~~~
petercooper
I didn't have a problem with the music _musically_ but it seems to have a
really odd, phased effect which sounds like fake 3D or something..

------
digitalengineer
Reminds me of Easel: <https://www.easel.io/> Nice.

------
jff
I certainly go slower when I try to scroll down a scrollkit page!

------
evanlivingston
Wait, Is there really a picture of blonde girl standing in front of a bunch of
Asians with the title 'Make it meaningful'? What message is being conveyed
here?

