

Van Gogh Museum - primigenus
http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en

======
colinramsay
Oh dear. This is a good example of something that should have been more
extensively tested before putting it out into the real world. It feels like
something that worked on the developers' computers but for me the frustrating
scrolling experience and the way it handles history made me close the tab
rather quickly.

Just because something is "all the rage" \- like this kind of scrolling
implementation - doesn't mean that it's actually good for your users. And if
you are going to implement a potentially frustrating feature like this, at
least make sure you've tested it to within an inch of its life.

Edit: a lot of my problems with this site were caused by Chrome's
"translation" bar popping up on every page transition, which was interfering
with the scrolling.

~~~
itry
I think the pages are quite beautiful.

But I agree about the scrolling. Even on an ipad, which I think is _the_
standard device these days, the scrolling is broken at times. Sometimes I
swipe up and a new page scrolls in. Ok. Sometimes I swipe up and some content
scrolls in from the side. Ok. But sometimes I swipe up and _nothing_ happens.
Thats a bit confusing.

~~~
MereInterest
>Even on an ipad, which I think is the standard device these days

I would want to see some statistics there. A quick google search yields the
following article from last year, which states that the PC is still the
majority ahead of any type of mobile device, let alone the ipad as a subset of
mobile devices.

[http://marketingland.com/report-nearly-40-percent-of-
interne...](http://marketingland.com/report-nearly-40-percent-of-internet-
time-now-on-mobile-devices-34639)

~~~
itry
You might be right. The traffic share of ipads is in the one digit range. I
just looked at the stats of a high traffic website. The ipad accounts for 5%
of the traffic.

However, when I want to look at a website to see how the designer planned it,
I always grasp my ipad and look at it.

Because even if he planned it for Chrome on the desktop (which accounts for
50% on that website) I dont know the OS, the resolution, if he thoguht about a
keyboard, a mousewheel, a mouse grasping the scroolbar or the trackpad of a
notebook having a scroll area.

But yeah, the world of devices is pretty fragmented. Looking at an ipad
doesn't mean too much.

------
hpaavola
Was this linked because of the design? If so, personally I hate when normal
pages do not scroll like normal pages.

~~~
hpaavola
Just backing away from sites like this is a pain. After scolling down few
pages, I need to click back button way too many times just to get back to HN.

~~~
vincentleeuwen
Would be solved if HN adopted the "open in a new tab" user model.

~~~
weavie
In Firefox, if you pin the tab then any links you click on open in a new tab.

------
lnanek2
On a macbook on Chrome here, can't scroll and the screen keeps bumping up and
down on its own. I think the "translate?" bar is trying to come down then the
web site must have some Javascript or something that fights it.

------
huuu
A nice article about the colors used by Van Gogh:
[http://asada0.tumblr.com/post/11517603099/the-day-i-saw-
van-...](http://asada0.tumblr.com/post/11517603099/the-day-i-saw-van-goghs-
genius-in-a-new-light)

 _" In our opinion, van Gogh surely had color vision deficiency."_

------
Springtime
I seem to be one of the few here who actually enjoyed the experience while
scrolling. Using back was broken, as it didn't scroll back up, but it was a
pleasantly presented page.

------
primigenus
Don't forget to check out the zoomable, hi-res paintings such as this one:
[http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0047V1962](http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0047V1962)

The site was developed by the same teams who created the Rijksmuseum website
last year and uses some of the same technology.

~~~
julien_c
Which teams are those? I'm very impressed at the result, especially coming
from a museum. Almost made me wonder if Google Art Institute had made the
website.

As an aside: I'm from Auvers-sur-Oise, the place where Van Gogh spent his last
2 months and is buried :)

~~~
primigenus
Designed by Fabrique ([http://fabrique.nl](http://fabrique.nl)) and developed
by Q42 ([http://q42.com](http://q42.com)). :)

------
desmondrd
One of the best museums I've ever been to. Highly recommend going - it's
better than the website :)

~~~
yellowbkpk
On the contrary, I just visited in June and it was a miserable experience. 2/3
of the museum was closed and the part that was open was packed full despite
the rather strict entrance timing that they seemed to be using. The story of
his life as told through pictures was interesting, but we were in and out in
an hour. Kind of a bummer after hearing all the hype.

------
dekhn
Great museum- I never really appreciated Van Gogh until I saw his paintings up
close (and lots in close quarters)-- the texture is amazing.

------
moretti
It's really cool that you can browse the entire collection and download the
paintings:
[http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/search/collection](http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/search/collection)

------
mcguire
It's neat, but it seems like more style than substance.

~~~
pidg
As someone who works in the cultural sector, and has seen a million terrible
arts/museum/heritage sites, I quite like it.

Yes, it has flaws - and not just the scrolling - stuff like having links
rendered without underlining and in the same colour as body text.

But I could find the location, opening hours, and ticket booking link almost
instantly, which is what 99 out of 100 of people visiting that site will want.
It's well-designed from that point of view.

------
vegasbrianc
Very frustrating to navigate with click and scroll. Clicking on the black box
in the upper right hand corner while using English reverts back to Dutch.

------
madaxe_again
This would work more nicely if they disabled google auto-translate, as on
chrome here it just strobes the bar off and on too quickly to hit cancel!

~~~
VMG
that is something you have to disable in the client

~~~
madaxe_again
Incorrect...

<meta name="google" value="notranslate" />

------
Tycho
thought this was going to be an Occulus thread

------
hoozter
I went to that museum schroomed out of my mind one time. Good times.

~~~
jacquesm
Thank you for providing an anecdotal bit of evidence for:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8218047](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8218047)

Personally I wished all those tourists that can't wait to get 'schroomed out
of their minds' stayed at home but making drug use illegal for tourists and
legal for the locals would be a legal and practical impossibility. They tried
doing that in some places, all it led to was enterprising locals becoming
either small time dealers or renting out their services to tourists.

Supply and demand. With drugs as long as it isn't legal everywhere I guess
we'll continue to see this pattern.

Hope you enjoyed the museum, even in that state of mind, van Gogh was an
amazing artist (and a substance abuser himself...).

~~~
jadc
Not refuting your point but it seems that other dutch cities are in the top 10
for drug use: [http://www.nltimes.nl/2014/05/27/three-dutch-cities-top-
ten-...](http://www.nltimes.nl/2014/05/27/three-dutch-cities-top-ten-drug-
use/)

Eindhoven and Utrecht are not touristy cities. However they do have large
"non-local" populations (expats in the first case, students in the second) so
perhaps your point still stands that it is not the locals regularly consuming.

~~~
jacquesm
I know plenty of dutch people (in the thousands) but know only very few that
are substance abusers. I know tons of people visiting NL too (mostly because I
don't mind showing people around and I'm in online contact with quite a few
people as well) and only a _very_ small number of them don't mention the fact
that drugs are legal and that this is one of their drivers for going there.

Especially in the 18-35 bracket, above that it gets a bit less wild
(naturally).

All the university cities have a relatively high proportion of substance abuse
and quite a lot of that will be locals in the student age bracket.

But when comparing locals to tourists the tourists definitely make up a
disproportionally large chunk of the drug users. And not all of them come for
a few days, quite a few people move to NL permanently because of the lax drugs
laws and end up in the social care system.

It's sad because really nobody wins there and there are no easy solutions. Re-
criminalizing drugs will be followed by a significant increase in crime and
the Dutch ability to influence the countries around them to adopt similar
legislation is without any chance of succeeding.

~~~
mbrock
"I know plenty of dutch people (in the thousands) but know only very few that
are substance abusers."

What do you mean by substance abuse? And, how much do you really know about
the drug habits of your thousands of acquaintances?

~~~
jacquesm
Live around Amsterdam long enough and you too will become an expert at
spotting junkies. As for the habits of my thousands of acquitances _because_
use is legal people are pretty open about it here if they use soft drugs.

The few people that I know that are into harder drugs would not advertise that
too openly but if there were no downsides to hard drug abuse that you can spot
relatively easily if the consumption lasts for longer than a trial period then
I don't think we'd have hard drug legislation to begin with.

In America for instance people would be a lots more circumspect about their
drug use (but those barriers evaporate as soon as they set foot on Dutch soil
and it is party time).

~~~
mbrock
It didn't seem like you were talking about "junkies" when you brought up
substance abuse in the context of a tourist eating mushrooms and visiting a
museum. And you say that many university students engage in substance abuse;
that also makes me wonder about your definition of the term, because in my
experience, while university life involves quite a lot of alcohol, I haven't
heard of that many students whom I would consider "substance abusers."

~~~
jacquesm
Substance abuse to me is defined as consuming any drug to such a level that it
interferes with your normal life.

Tourists visiting cities simply because of the novelty factor of drugs being
legal and then partaking in this out of curiosity are simply stupid, not
addicts (they are stupid because they are not in any way positioned to know
what they are buying and this results in quite a few trips to the ER each
year).

But drug addiction does exist and the number of foreigners that end up in
Dutch rehab programs and or shelters is huge.

It's even got a name here: drugs tourism.

Alcohol can be abused just like any other drug (and in fact, is probably the
most commonly abused drug).

~~~
mbrock
Hm, what do you mean they aren't positioned to know what they're buying? In
general?

If someone is curious about psychedelic drugs, and they visit Amsterdam
because they are decriminalized there, they are therefore stupid?

I can't really imagine that's what you mean, though that's what you wrote.

~~~
jacquesm
They are stupid because they don't have a supplier that they can trust nor do
they have the information to distinguish the 'real' stuff from stuff that will
make them simply ill or even (rare, fortunately) kill them.

The fact that it is decriminalized does not mean that people won't be trying
to take advantage of you.

Buying drugs is not quite buying a bottle of Sprite, it typically does not
come in a container with a brand name on it and as a tourist you won't be
hanging around long enough to work out which connections you can trust and
which to stay away from. The person selling it to you just wants your money,
_once_. For a repeat buyer the risks would go down considerably.

Feel free to ignore any and all of the above. We're off-topic far enough as
far as I'm concerned, if you feel that buying drugs abroad in one-off cash
transactions does not carry significant risk then I'm perfectly ok with that.

~~~
mbrock
Is there a significant risk of being sold poisonous mushrooms in an Amsterdam
smartshop? Or are you talking about other drugs?

(By the way, many products sold in such stores do in fact come in branded
containers including instruction booklets for safe usage, etc.)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Many national brands have some kind of inspection behind them - UL listed, or
FDA approved. I'm wondering what a 'brand' printed on a laser printer in
somebody's garage is worth, in terms of product safety.

~~~
mbrock
Yeah, that's an interesting question. But it seems weird to suggest that any
non-local buying psychedelic truffles in a smartshop is "stupid" because they
shouldn't trust the brand. I don't really see how it has anything to do with
whether you're local or a tourist.

