

HN-Books goes live with Version 1.0 - edw519
http://hn-books.com/v1.htm

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tptacek
You need a spinner (or if there already is one, you need a much more obvious
one) so I can tell the app is doing something when I click one of the "Filter
by" buttons on the right sidebar. Just go to ajaxload.info, get an animated
GIF, load it in the template display:none, and then $("#spinner").show() when
you make your call back to the server.

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jmulho
I am interested in the content of your site, but the performance is not
tolerable. The load time for the first page will cause some people to go away
and never come back, but that isn't the problem. The problem is that once it
loads, it’s not usable. I have no idea what you are doing in the JavaScript,
but it churns my CPU for about a minute as it consumes more and more memory,
eventually topping out at about 300 meg. Scrolling through the list of books
is too slow and jerky to tolerate.

I would suggest avoiding JavaScript altogether until you get to the root of
the problem. Also, test your site on a run of the mill platform like a five
year old Dell PC running Windows XP and IE7. You can probably find one of
these at your office or your parents’ house. If the site isn’t quick on that
platform, then half the world isn’t going come back after the first visit.

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samd
That's a great resource, thanks for putting that list together.

Some ideas for the next version:

\- Paginate the book listings. Most people probably aren't going to be looking
way down in the list anyways, no need to give them results they won't see.

\- Add a small blurb to the main page telling visitors what the site is about.
It doesn't need to be as detailed as the FAQ just something like: "Find great
books recommended by hackers!"

\- Give users some indication of how the books are sorted. It doesn't matter
that the ranking is opaque and subjective, even a small label that said "Sort
by: best" would be helpful.

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yters
Interesting idea, instead of a free for all forum format, Q&A takes the form
of book lists. Look forward to seeing how it works out.

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osopeludoso
I just searched in that page about Lisp and there are only two books, On Lisp
and Lisp in small pieces. The most recommended book is Practical Common Lisp
by Peter Seibel, this book is not on that page, so version 1.0 is very weak,
there is not land of lisp (new book), nothing about clojure, etc.

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sabat
Sounds like there is a useful set of books that you'd like to suggest --
suggest it on the (HN Books) site!

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DanielBMarkham
Improvements to the site since the beta a few weeks ago.

\- Added JQuery UI

\- Each book now has its own detail page

\- On the book detail page, you can see where other hackers all over the web
are talking about the book. Good for those who want to research books more
before buying

\- There's an "Ask Question" where you can ask a question. I tried to include
the standard questions we get over on HN, but if I missed one, here's the
place to add it

\- There's an "Answer Question" page. Don't like my list of books? Make your
own using drag and drop. Site creates an url with your lists of books to
answer a particular startup question. You can reuse the url in other places
(like HN)

\- Added a bunch of noscript text so folks without Javascript can still browse
the books

\- Spent way too long on load and response times (Always seems that way, eh?)
First hit on an empty cache still sucks, but return hits aren't so bad.

Also added several books based on HNers suggestions.

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chollida1
This looks great!

One suggestion I would have is to tell the users upfront about the affiliate
links. I don't have a problem with them but the amazon links are minified.

For example this is the link the user is shown: <http://amzn.to/bkB3gr> This
is what it expands to:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0688014291?ie=UTF8&tag=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0688014291?ie=UTF8&tag=whtofi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0688014291)

By not mentioning the affiliate link and only showing an obfuscated link it
gives the appearance that you are trying to pull something over on the user.

I think a statement on the front page saying that links are affiliate links,
or just putting the actual links on the pages would help with gaining the
user's trust.

Great site:)

 _edit_ I know see this on the site: external links to amazon are through
their affiliate program

Great:) Back to reviewing books to buy!

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DanielBMarkham
Fixed.

No deception was intended -- I just like being able to track links with Bit.ly
real-time instead of waiting overnight for Amazon reporting -- but I can see
your point. Hopefully the new text will clear that up.

Glad you liked it.

~~~
chollida1
> No deception was intended

I didn't mean to imply that there was. Your reputation here earned you the
benefit of the doubt:)

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shaggy
It would be great if the site was even a little useful without javascript
enabled.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I'm not sure what you mean.

I just turned javascript off and loaded the site -- and it's a big list of
books where you can read the descriptions and click for more information. The
book detail page suggests other books and provides you with a consensus and a
list of formats available. Is this what you see as well? Were you expecting
something else?

