

Show HN: Annotate PG, our YC application demo - julien_c
http://www.annotatepg.com/#0 - How to Get Startup Ideas.html

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mediumdeviation
Normally I don't comment (at all) on posts like this, but this is just bad.

The comments overlay cover up the very text that you're suppose to be reading.
This disrupts the reading flow, making it hard to find my way back to where I
was reading, especially comments are merely secondary to the actual article.
To get back to the article I have to press this tiny close button on the top
left corner of the comments overlay. Plus, there's a huge amount of whitespace
to the right of the article which you're not using
<http://i.imgur.com/1JvLWQP.png> \- why cover important content, leaving large
amount of screen space unused when there's perfectly good unused space on the
right?

The pagination scheme is terrible. The article is a blog post, not a book. And
even if it were, no one would want to read something on screens. (Edit:
Firefox 21 beta. I see Chrome that has transitions, which means this is not
actually poor performance, but simply missing transitions. I still don't see
any reason why Firefox shouldn't have transitions, though) The performance is
terrible. I can count seconds between me clicking on the next page button and
the next page actually showing up, with no feedback whatsoever that the page
is loading.

Document annotation and comment UI isn't hard. When Microsoft Word has you
beat in terms of UI, you're probably doing something very wrong.

~~~
julien_c
Interesting points, thanks. I'd disagree with comments being merely secondary
to the actual article though. Our point is that inline commentary, if done
well, should be as important as the content itself.

~~~
calinet6
This is a false assumption; the original content is the most important part.

~~~
Jasber
This seems like it'd usually be true, but what about Hacker News comments that
are more insightful than the original article?

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woah
You guys should check out <https://test.hypothes.is>. Non profit open source
project that does this for the entire web. Here's the github:
<https://github.com/hypothesis/h>

Randall, the lead developer, is one of the authors of the open annotation
spec: <http://www.openannotation.org>

Dan, the founder, recently put together the I Annotate conference, which
brought together all the individuals and groups who have been applying
annotation to their problem domains for the past few years.

I designed the interface.

Annotation should be open source, standardized, and portable, not locked into
little silos. Also, I'm not pg, but if I was, I would find this a bit... odd.

~~~
mnicole
Nothing to add other than to say I'm a huge supporter of the work you guys
have been doing. Can't wait until it is fully realized. Let me know if you
plan on implementing different "styles" for the interface and want some
contributions.

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rdl
Interesting idea. Probably would be a stronger demo if you pre-populated it
with some actually worthwhile comments.

Really don't like the pagination. Scrolling is how this is done on the web.
Arbitrary page breaks and non-intuitive scrolling breaks this.

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bdr
This would be nice if not for the pagination. It's slow, unpredictable, and
unnecessary.

For another approach to annotation, check out fixjam.com. I never took this
past the 1-day hack stage, but I'd like to revisit it at some point. You can
try it by clicking the bookmarklet and highlighting some text.

~~~
cabalamat
> This would be nice if not for the pagination

I came here to say that. The web already has a way of dealing with the
situation where the text doesn't fit on the screen: it's called scrolling.
Scolling is a much better solution than pagination, firstly because it's what
people expect (and is therefore easier to use) but also because it gives the
user more control over what part of the text they see.

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alanctgardner2
It's a cool concept, but I can see everyone comparing it to RapGenius (several
people in the thread already have). RapGenius has a bunch of features that
seem to be missing here, you'll probably have to justify their absence.

The biggest problem I see, however, is the slideout pane from the right when
you click an annotation. RG does this without taking up the whole reading
area; it seems a bit silly to reproduce the whole sentence being annotated and
cover up the rest of text for one heavily padded tweet. Personally I would
find a two-mode interface more useful: hover to see a small dialog with the
top/newest tweets and a summary of the annotation activity, and click to get a
larger overlay if there's too many tweets for the small view.

Finally, I think using pg's essays might actually hurt you. I get that it's a
gimmick, and the HN crowd might like it, but I think the man himself might be
less flattered and more put off if it seems like you're trying to make up for
technical shortcomings by flattering him.

------
siong1987
I actually prefer the Medium's implementation of sidebar annotations/comments.
For example: <https://medium.com/design-ux/926eb80d64e3>

At least, the content isn't blocked when the annotations/comments are
activated.

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mh-
Echoing other comments about the scrolling, but wanted to add that I'm not
strictly against the pagination.

For me, it's simply that the trigger is both unpredictable and way too
insensitive. It takes two very large scrolls of the entire height of the
trackpad on my MBP, and it doesn't respect the scrolling momentum. It just
feels very non-native.

Overall, I like the design.

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saravk
I love the responsive design of your navigation menus. But it feels redundant
when i see your page on my laptop. Both the left navigation pane and the TOC
button display the same list of articles.

Instead you could perhaps make the TOC button display the chapters within the
current article on a wider display and revert to the current behaviour on
phone/tablet.

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mkilling
I agree with rdl, I think classical scrolling would work better here. Also,
could you make the app utilize the full width of the browser window? The
comment box obscures the text on my 1680x1050 display, even though there would
be enough space to display it next to it.

~~~
julien_c
Yes. Great feedback, thanks.

------
xtacy
It reminds me of Django book's early days when it was being written
(<http://www.djangobook.com>). Each paragraph could be commented upon and it
led to a really fantastic collaboration.

------
Felix21
Is this not how Medium comments work? And the pagination is a bit annoying.

That aside, What's the use case of this app? Is it like an alternative to
disqus for my blog?

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crisnoble
Great concept, I noticed Medium.com is doing something very similar in their
stories now. See: <https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/265cc8a17432> They don't cover
the text up, but push it left which is something you should consider. Best of
luck with your application.

------
julien_c
We posted this two weeks ago, and we've improved the demo in response to the
initial feedback. Thanks for your feedback!

~~~
Hitchhiker
Just out of curiosity, how do you differentiate with <http://rapgenius.com> ?

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mceoin
So it's a content creation play on the annotation ideal? Like: tumblr +
annotation features.

I'd be curious to see how this goes after watching browser plugins struggle to
achieve lasting popularity.

I'm guessing this is where Rapgenius is headed, one community at a time.

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dools
Where a full stop/period is preceded by a single letter you should treat it as
an acronym rather than the end of a sentence (I can't think of a valid
sentence ending that has a single letter in it ... )

I just noticed that you're splitting up m.o into separate sentences.

~~~
trumbitta2
I can't think of a valid sentence ending that has a single letter in it,
except for when that valid sentence ends with a single letter like x.

~~~
dools
In that case, you should have quoted the letter. For example, if I wanted to
end this sentence with the letter "x" then I would put it in double quotes to
show that I'm referring to the letter "x".

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rtexal
You need to cater to people who doesn't want to share the full sentence.
Allowing for inline editing in the overlay section might be great, or allow
for selection of a partial sentence instead.

