

HN Bookmarklet: Show PG's essay footnotes in-line on hover - vnorby
https://gist.github.com/4116565

======
vnorby
#FirstWorldProblem: Reading footnotes on PG's essays makes you lose your
place, so if you're like me you never read them until you get to the bottom.
Solution: Bookmarklet.

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kirillzubovsky
What's really amazing is that every now and again someone makes HN easier to
read and use, and every time after about an hour, no one cares again. Simple
text with simple styles just works, because the content is unbelievably good.
Everything else is just bells and whistles.

Good job on the bookmarklet, though I am not sure if anyone will actually use
it :) I think it's one of those things where you think it's a good idea, but
really it's not quote as big of a problem as it seems.

~~~
vnorby
What you're saying is true. It's a small problem and people will forget; they
always do. My real intention was to make it easy enough that there was a
chance (a very small one indeed) PG would stick it at the bottom of the page
and never have to think about it again.

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scscsc
Another possibility would be to place them as side-notes (the essays only take
very little horizontal space -- the rest could be used for notes).

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ggchappell
This is attacking a problem that needs a lot more attention: how should
footnotes (or endnotes or whatever) be handled? In other words, what is a good
way to handle the addition of optional material in an otherwise linear text?

That said, looks like a nice idea. Not sure how much I like this particular
solution yet. Thanks for posting.

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byoung2
As an English major, I read a lot of Shakespeare plays, and I liked the
versions that had sidenotes, so that the note appeared at the same level of
the line it referred to. This technique translates well to the browser using a
hover or click, as seen here: <http://rapgenius.com/Drake-the-motto-lyrics>

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pg
The Back button works for links within a page, incidentally.

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raldi
It's nice to be able to see the footnote and the main text at the same time.
(I usually open side-by-side windows to read your essays.)

~~~
diminish
I was also thinking about the footnote problem, while reading PG's most recent
essay [1]. Maybe, it is time to kill or supersede footnotes on the web which
are one of the examples of the paper text format skeuomorphisms, more common
in scientific writing. Footnotes give the serious feeling of a well planned
and well thought attire to essays where the main point is elaborated and the
distractions are left out, for a delayed, independent, optional reading.
However they make the deep readers'[2] experience worse; mainly they prefer to
follow the true thought-flow of the writer, and evaluate each footnote in its
context rather than separate from the main text.

[1] How to get startup ideas <http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html>

[2] By deep readers, I mean people who don't want to miss a single idea in the
essay.

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georgeorwell
PG's blog posts would be somewhat more navigable if the footnote number at the
bottom was linked back to the original citation / reference.

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jarek
But that would bring them out of the 90s. Unacceptable bloat in an otherwise
MVP

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jakub_g
For this kind of problems, I prefer userscripts solutions over bookmarklets as
they don't require any intervention from my side -- they auto-load, which is
great. This is the typical scenario for a userscripts -- predictable URL sets
on where they should fire.

Think about adding this to <http://userscripts.org/>. Userscripts are handled
via GreaseMonkey extension in Firefox and from what I know, natively by Chrome
but I never checked.

\--

Side note: believe me or not, but I stopped using bookmarks toolbar in my
Firefox a year ago or two; I store bookmarks with short memorable names and
use kbd to launch them; CTRL-T/CTRL-L, type, ENTER. I abandoned having a
toolbar since I was never able to keep visual order in it after constantly
adding new items.

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napoleond
Awesome. I always tell myself I'm going to make something like this when
reading pg's essays (I specifically remember re-thinking it during the last
one) and then never do. Now I don't have to--thanks! :)

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saturdayplace
A couple years ago, the Django Advent had a nifty JS enhancement for
footnotes. I thought it worked so well I stole it for a personal project of
mine. I would've linked to the original but they're now offline, so if you'll
pardon the personal plug you can see it in action at <http://sonsofterra.com/>

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username3
<http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html>

