

Show HN: I built a faster way to burn your money on Etsy.com - JonathanBouman
http://www.Scrollsy.com

======
JonathanBouman
Everything 100% clientside jQuery & JSONP. Hosted on Amazon Cloudfront so low
costs and no scalability issues.

Some examples you should check:

Regular search: <http://www.scrollsy.com/#s=nyan%20cat>

Treasury listings: <http://www.scrollsy.com/#l=treasury>

Shop: <http://www.scrollsy.com/#un=machelspencePHOTO>

Color search:
[http://www.scrollsy.com/#c=art&color=0A9600](http://www.scrollsy.com/#c=art&color=0A9600)

Would love to have some feedback!

~~~
ignoreme
You really should have a fallback page for browsers with no Javascript.
NoScript has become increasing popular and the "Javscript Free" page of a site
is the first page those users will see (even if they go on to temporarily
allow javascript for your app).

In your case, it is just a blank white page. Since you are asking for
suggestions, I would suggest you just make it display a message. One for
suggesting users with older browsers to download chrome or firefox and another
message directed at those with Javascript intentionally disabled which gives a
very brief outline of what your app does and why they should enable JS to play
with it.

e: I clicked through to the other mashups you have created which you linked in
your other comment. They all do the same thing, just bring me to a blank page.

ee: To those down-voting, what do you disagree with? Do you not think pure JS
web apps should have HTML fallback pages or do you disagree with the way I
said it?

~~~
johnnyn
I didn't downvote you but I personally never worry about users with JavaScript
disabled, and the companies I have worked for don't care either. The number of
people without JavaScript is most likely way to low to spend time on an HTML
fallback.

[http://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-Internet-users-
use-J...](http://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-Internet-users-use-
JavaScript-Is-it-safe-to-pretend-that-non-JavaScript-users-do-not-exist-when-
designing-your-website?redirected_qid=12124)

~~~
jerf
An adequate "fallback" is <noscript><p class='something_nice'>This site
requires Javascript to function</p></noscript>. It's not exactly hard, and
it's better than a blank white page.

It can also occur due to network problems on occasion or other technical
issues; if you have JS beyond just progressive enhancement on your site you
really ought to have a <noscript> tag in there somewhere.

------
djb_hackernews
So Pinterest.

I say that as a compliment. Great job.

Only thought is the constant Loading Items widget is annoying and isn't in
line with how most sites do dynamic scrolling.

~~~
JonathanBouman
Thanks for the compliment! The loader is something to re-code indeed. Anyone
here with a good example of a nice scrolling loader?

~~~
jmileham
I agree, your app looks dangerous in a good way.

I think the most important thing is that the loading animation be anchored to
the bottom of the loaded content so that it never obscures content that's
already loaded. If the user manages to outrace your loader and gets to the
bottom, some kind of indication that the app is churning away would no doubt
be welcome.

~~~
JonathanBouman
That's a good idea, got it on the list!

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natgordon
This is really great. I like the "exploding" treasuries a lot.

What was your motivation? If you're looking for more exposure you can write a
blog post for the Etsy blog. I did that for my app and it drove a lot of
traffic (<http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2011/handmade-code-babylist/>)

~~~
JonathanBouman
Thanks! The Treasuries view is a nice one indeed, took me a night to find a
good way to keep it stupid simple and fast.

My motivation is coming from previous mashups I did in the same style.
<http://Scrolldit.com> which was featured on TechCrunch
([http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/25/scrolldit-i-heard-you-
liked...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/25/scrolldit-i-heard-you-liked-
scrolling-reddit-so-i-put-scrolling-in-your-reddit/)) and another mashup I did
<http://www.ScrollFriends.com> (Facebook Scroller, no viral)

However Scrolldit is (most of the time) a pure timewaster, check this: 377.913
(unique visits) x 1.20 (avg minutes on the site) = 453495,6 minutes = an
impact of 314,93 wasted days on our world economy.

However with all those minutes wasted I felt the need to do something
productive, I think Scrollsy.com is a good try. Supporting all those small
shopkeepers, trying to give them more exposure.

Good idea to do the blog post, it's on the list!

~~~
herval
What's your motivation for all these mashups?

~~~
JonathanBouman
Multiple things: I love endless scrolling and visually rich designs, I want to
learn new techniques and ofcourse it's great to see other people using these
mashups. Btw this mashup was also some kind of compensation for the damage
I've done with <http://Scrolldit.com>

------
richcollins
The activity indicator is very intrusive. Why not make it small and place it
below the last item?

~~~
JonathanBouman
It's on the list to improve :)

~~~
mikehuffman
Along with everyone else's activity indicator complaint, I also think that
color coding the bottom "info bar" area of each item according to category
would be useful for quickly scanning and separating all of that info with the
eye.

~~~
JonathanBouman
Great idea, I'll put it on the list. Thanks.

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auxbuss
FYI: I get "Connection Timeout. Etsy.com is unreachable. Try again." in
Firefox 9.0.1 on Ubuntu, but all is good in Chrome.

I can image using this to gather ideas for gifts, and presumably buying a few
(if I was US-based). Nicely done.

~~~
JonathanBouman
I think you hit the API Limit. Just fixed a bug that used an old API key for
API calls (got lower limits).

Big chance you won't get that error if you retry it after 10 minutes (time
needed for Amazon Cloudfront to push the new version to all the edge
locations).

------
johnnyn
This is awesome man. The wife and I just spent 30 minutes scrolling around and
added quite a few items to my Favorites. You need to find a way to get an
affiliate fee as soon as possible!

The Pinterest-influenced UI is such a great way to explore. I'd much rather
browse around on your site than the actual Etsy site anyday. The new items
flying in from the left does catch me off guard sometimes and I think the
search input and browse dropdown need to be a bit larger but other that, very
well done.

~~~
JonathanBouman
Thanks for the kind words!

------
jwpeddle
I love browsing products like this. I assume inspired by Pinterest? A Toronto
startup is doing the same thing, but local shops/products.
<http://shopcastr.com/>

~~~
JonathanBouman
Inspired by masonry jquery plugin and after the success of
<http://Scrolldit.com> :)

------
dabent
I did an Etsy search similar to this, with "instant" search instead of
scrolling. I have to say I like your approach better.

A few questions about your Etsy API experience - can you now see who purchased
through your site? At the time they had no feedback loop and no sort of
affiliate program. Building my Etsy app was a lot of fun, but I had no way to
monetize my work. I'm a bit out of the Etsy API loop now, but I do hope
they've come up with some way to help devs make money.

~~~
JonathanBouman
I'm not sure if I could see who purchased through my site, as far as I know
shopkeepers see it. There is no sort of affiliate program. So I don't see any
monetizing options for this moment.

~~~
foolinator
What motivated you to use the Etsy API? I'm good friends with a number of
people there and worked a bit on their search too.

~~~
JonathanBouman
It's fast, it supports JSONP and their API team is great to work with (fast
replies on email). I could recommend anyone to build a mashup on top of the
Etsy API.

~~~
foolinator
That's great to hear, Jonathan. I personally know two of the people on that
team and they're brilliant programmers but never saw their view from the
outside. I'm glad to hear you're getting amazing support from them.

If you're enjoying it a lot and love to program, you should consider applying
there too.

------
shashashasha
Did you post this on HN before? It's still jarring how new items fly in from
the top left. It's also constantly loading items, which is annoying.

Otherwise, looks pretty cool. You should also take a look at other fashion
sites for the "Quick Look" interaction (using mouseover or some other light
interaction to provide more ui/information/larger image, vs opening a new
page), which would be pretty great on a purely visual site like this.

~~~
JonathanBouman
I posted it 5 hours ago on HN but had to delete it because of API limit I had
to resolve before risking a viral.

After they were resolved I posted it.

Trick: Click the about link in the top left box and flag the disable animation
checkbox.

Do you have any examples of those fashion sites?

~~~
lostsock
You should rename about to options (or make a second link).

Listing options in an about link is counter intuitive.

~~~
JonathanBouman
I'll make a second link, good idea.

------
akg
It would be really awesome if something liked this was done for the
recommended reading lists on Amazon.com, although, not sure if Amazon has an
easy API for that.

~~~
chaosmachine
I made something sort of similar for Amazon a few years ago:

<http://bigbooksearch.com/>

It's horizontal (like a bookshelf), instead of vertical, though.

~~~
akg
Nice! I could definitely see a simply iOS app for something like that that
makes use of the cover-flow animation. Could be a nice alternative to the
Amazon.com store app if you can hook it up to user accounts and Amazon's
personalized recommendations.

------
pkamb
Does Etsy have an affiliate/referral program?

~~~
JonathanBouman
No they doesn't, as far as I know.

~~~
patio11
A life lesson which was news to me: there is some scale at which _every_
commercial site has an affiliate program. (Varies based on the site.)

~~~
dabent
When I did an Etsy app, there was no affiliate program, which seemed to
largely stem from the fact that Etsy charged to little to sellers that they
were barely making a profit. The idea of giving a cut to ousters seemed like a
bad idea. I'm not sure if it's changed. But when one considers the number of
Etsy apps that have been made just for the joy of it, it would seem to be in
Etsy's favor to incentivize developers once they can get the numbers to work
out.

------
dreur
Noo why have you done that...

Seriously I like is a lot, very well thought.

Sorry have to go back on Scrollsy...

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hiptobecubic
Start the scroll-loading earlier, and make the loading notification at least
50% smaller. It's annoying.

------
ericingram
This is genius. I'm going to do something like this.

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riskish
doesn't pinterest already have a section where its exclusively etsy products?

------
kenrik
Nice Work!

I have been working a lot with JSONP lately it's a great way to bring content
Cross domain/into Apps. I just recently finished writing a Webservice/iPhone
implementation.

Something to consider, try preloading the content to give the user a smoother
experience. My UITableViews (iPhone) were a bit clunky until I got around to
pre-caching my JSON results.

Anyway, Keep up the good work!

~~~
JonathanBouman
Pre-caching JSON results is something I'm testing with, expect it within a
short time.

