

Ask HN: Review my weekend project - Phras.in - fbnt

After 3 years without coding any web app, the last weekend I decided to hit the keyboard again, catch-up with webservers, css, jquery &#38; co. and make that little tool I've been meaning to build lately.<p>My mother tongue is italian, and as you can imagine, it's always been a bit frustrating for me to write in proper English, whether I was writing an important email or a forum post.<p>Of course you have spell checkers and dictionaries online, and they can help you check the text grammar, but in some cases you have to 'trust your ear' in order to estabilish if a phrase sounds good, and there's a possibility that your ear isn't as good as you think. I'm sure people who dosen't speak english as their first language knows what I'm talking about.<p>One thing that I find myself doing very often when I have nobody to proofread a text for me is to check google because I'm dubious about a phrase or expression, and I want to use the most common one, the one the better fits the context.<p>Usually I have to decide between two options I have in mind, so I google the first phrase, note the number of results, then I google the second phrase and check the results again to have my proof of popularity.<p>This is pretty much what Phras.in does, but it's quicker than using google and checks both phrases in one shot, try it.<p>You can also get results typing the phrases in the address bar, like this:<p>http://phras.in/having few beers/having a few beers<p>I know it's no rocket science, there isn't much technical work in there, but making Phras.in was a fun way to get back to web development and hopefully it will made my everyday life a tiny bit easier, and I hope you'll make use of it too.<p>Please, let me know what you think.
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sz
Don't know if you're still watching this thread, but I just wanted to let you
know that a week later I'm still using your URL input to check phrases I'm not
sure about. It's really awesome.

The only thing I would change is to make it _really_ obvious which one is
correct (highlighted in bright orange in 72pt font?) to shave milliseconds off
the time needed to visually process the results page.

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Juha
Nice clean design. Didn't find real-life usecase yet, but it's good to keep
this in mind. Maybe adding functionality to just get results for one word
would be useful too.

ps. there seems to be a bug when I input only one field and press button (in
chrome).

~~~
fbnt
Thanks for the design comment. Yes, it is a bug (only with chrome,
apparently). I'll investigate, thanks for letting me know.

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Fedons
I really like the design, and the service also is very useful. I would just
make more evident which is the most used expression...the two results are too
similar! I'm from Italy too, and I think I'll start using it (it was already
useful for my comment ;) )

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SHOwnsYou
On your "Why" page, it should read "Because spell checkers do only 80% of the
job." or "do only" could read "only do"

I like the idea (and the site). A lot. Not sure on monetization, but the idea
is great and very useful.

~~~
friendlyhacker
<http://phras.in/do%20only/only%20do>

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sz
I love the url interface. I just used it to post a comment on HN. Very
convenient.

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fbnt
Clickable: <http://phras.in>

