

Show HN: Please belittle and insult my free online notes and textbook platform - BenoitEssiambre
http://www.bookvoid.com/

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tjr
As soon as the page loads, Firefox tells me that this site is wanting to store
data on my local disk. I'm not sure when I last saw a website wanting to do
that. I don't know what exactly your site needs to do in this respect, but it
might be good to _not_ do that on the main page. Let your users learn more
about who you are, what the site does, etc., before alarming them with stuff
like that.

The site seems to break the back button. If I have to exert inordinate effort
to browse backwards away from your site, I am unlikely to want to return to
it.

~~~
BenoitEssiambre
That's interesting. I don't really support Firefox yet. I didn't know Firefox
prompted users before allowing html5 offline storage. The webkit browsers
don't have this behavior.

I use offline storage to sync books and make them available to read offline.

You are right that the back button behavior is a little weird. I completely
missed this during my tests. Shame on me. The use of the history API was meant
to allow people to bookmark places within books not to make "back" act all
weird. I will have to reconsider how I do this.

Thanks for the feedback :-)

~~~
zitterbewegung
I think you should make a landing page or demo page that doesn't use
cache.manifest. This will probably solve that problem.

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BenoitEssiambre
Seriously, I'm looking for harsh and honest criticism optimally of the
constructive kind. I am having difficulty attracting users, especially content
creators.

Is it something you could see yourself using? If not, why not?

It is currently compatible with Chrome, Safari, iOS and Android browsers.

~~~
trevelyan
Ok... even with major improvements I could not see myself using this. This is
why -- please do not take it personally:

(1) the core functionality already exists in the form of the hyperlink. HTML
lets you easily reference external materials as well as handle inline
footnotes. It is relatively easy to port existing content to HTML and vice-
versa and mix-and-match reference styles. And people can dive into subjects in
as much depth as they want on existing sites (look at Wikipedia). There are
WYSIWYG editors. And content is portable. So why switch?

(2) if I care enough to write a book, I care about making it look good. The
website does not look as good as a default blog, and the added functionality
is intrusive and ugly. For one example, look at the way the down arrows occupy
an entire vertical row, distorting the spacing of the text. The HTML design
looks like it is using 1990s display defaults (no floats, no inlining), even
though it is clearly more sophisticated once you check the source.

(3) teachers and educators very rarely put effort into creating content for
institutional educational when it doesn't play into a larger project or effort
initiated or supported by a school/grant. This might be a controversial
statement, but which school started Wikipedia? Which school started the Khan
Academy? Look at the limited number of open source textbooks almost twenty
years after the web began making inroads and you can see your market does not
really exist. Teachers will experiment with mass market platforms (like blogs,
twitter) which have social reverb and cachet. They don't get institutional
support for writing open source stuff on the web so there is more focus on
fulfilling individual classroom needs than writing more general textbooks.

(4) compared to HTML, it's cognitively more difficult to have to always be
thinking about what sort of stuff to leave out or minimize. Someone writing a
textbook is already applying selection criteria. You are asking them to
cognitively handle presentation-level data as well. This puts a higher bar on
getting useful content even if someone starts writing.

(5) the triangles are too big and are on the right-hand side. The default is
smaller triangles to the left which point to the left when closed and point
down when open.

(6) "Bookvoid" is a problem. Even if someone out there hypothetically wants
this, what keywords are going to bring them to your site and what metaphor
will you use to explain what is happening? You don't have an organizing
metaphor ("Wordpress for Teachers") that makes intuitive sense and helps your
users figure out how to explain what you do to others.

(7) You would probably get better adoption with something like "Wordpress for
Teachers" which simplified the install process, targets a specific market that
wants your services, and includes default functionality that makes sense for
teachers, such as easily converting their posts into a book format for
distribution across the platforms they will care about (Amazon, iOS, eBooks,
etc.). Not that I would enter this business, but....

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LarryMade
I don't like the font or spacing or something... something about the
proportions kinda makes it hard to read comfortably (I'm on a mid rez LCD
display)... Also might help having the border/background being a different
color (hmmm, maybe a fabric book cover or endpaper texture? )

Option for author to "theme" thier book with 5 or so different layout themes
so one would be fictional, another might be non-fiction (using some sans serif
font), etc. Of course the reader can override if desired.

The book title at the top gets lost in the content.

The top menu symbols show up on the printout - might want to have the print
version have a light BookVoid header showing... with the book title.

Maybe an option to border embedded graphics, that wake turbulence pic doesn't
seem to rest well in the page... (can you caption it too? or have text
wrapping options?)

When you go to settings the book content graphics disappear.

The navigation symbols are interesting but I would think trying to be a bit
more conventional symbols (+/- magnifying glass, graphic of gate-fold, etc)
would be worth a shot.

BookVoid? Sounds like limbo from books... Maybe instead of a word that reminds
me of emptiness or clearing out, look for something growing or spreading...
maybe look for Book[Word] combos relating to say garden, spring, sharing,
inspiration,creativity?

~~~
LarryMade
Another thing - How do I delete a book I created?

~~~
BenoitEssiambre
I removed the book delete feature because I want to encourage people to delete
only the content they really don't want anymore.

Since Bookvoid lets you create mashups where books can contain parts of other
books, deleting an entire book risks making holes in other author's books. You
can always empty all the sections and subsections of your book. It's not a bad
idea to replace deleted content with a message explaining to readers why the
content has disappeared and maybe linking to where they can find it if it's
still somewhere.

~~~
LarryMade
How about at least a setup where authors have the first 24 hours from creation
to easily delete their book, that will give lookie-loos like me a chance to
cleanup after toying with the site.

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shimsham
What is it? Seriously, what is it? If you can't describe what it is in 1
sentence, and not a long sentence, then you've lost your audience. Too many
words and too many things to click. On my iPhone, I tried to read it, got
bored cos I didn't get it, I scrolled then I scrolled then I decided to stick
with it and ask what it is. Education, art, utility or something else?

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Jun8
The landing page is too wordy, I think. But other than that I won't use any
such service unless I can download a local copy of the books and my notes for
backup. I wouldn't want to waste hours creating notes and then having the
service go away.

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zubr1768
Would be potentially useful if it could import or interface with an Evernote
user account.

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FreshCode
What problem does this solve? Sell benefits, not features. Also, the spacing
is terrible. I'd take a standard Twitter Bootstrap over this any day.

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collypoo
Have a look at tiddlywiki with the fold headdings plugin. It does a much
better job.

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petervandijck
Er, it sucks? Also, I don't understand what the product is or does?

~~~
BenoitEssiambre
This seems to be a common criticism. I have re-written the description dozens
of times and I can't seem to get it right.

Many people tell me it's too long at there is too much text. Others tell me
they don't see what it's for.

Even though I believe strongly in the value Bookvoid provides, the fact that I
have difficulty articulating concisely this value is definitely a weakness.

One problem is that it was inspired by machine learning/ Bayesian
probabilistic principles of how information should be organised and
mathematical principles don't make good tag lines.

Maybe the whole thing is just too wonky. I don't know.

~~~
AznHisoka
What problem or pain does it solve? How does it improve the quality of my
life? Why should I care?

~~~
BenoitEssiambre
This is another common question I get. Let me try to answer it again (I need
the practice).

For readers:

-Optimizes learning of complex concepts.

-Books are like web pages with links that open inline. This prevents readers from having to manage dozens of browser tabs. This often happens to me, for example, when browsing wikipedia.

-Makes books available on more devices than native apps.

-Features such as word highlighting, starring etc.

For content creators

-books can easily include inline sections from other bookvoid books. The author's job becomes part authoring part curation and it saves him or her from writing suff that has already been written.

It is all based on optimal principles of hierarchical information
organisation. In my view, there are very fundament ontological principles,
rooted in mathematics and philosophy, that make this kind of hierarchical
linking of concepts optimal to human reasoning.

I see it as solving some of the problems that wikis have by providing the
enforcement of hierarchy, the inclusion of different levels of details about
subjects in a single text and the ability to maintain a chain of trust on
material. Anyone can't edit everything like in wikis. If your own books is not
popular, you have to have been curated-in by more popular author to gain
visibility. You can't simply insert yourself in a popular page like in wikis.

edit: formatting

~~~
shimsham
That was too wordy.

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Morg
Annoying UI really . I hate the open close thingies, can't quite see the diff
between one and the next inside, the I is either too big or ugly, and the fat
grey bar in the bottom is ugly as well, prolly needs some rounding or
whatever.

I know pale UI's are all the rage but you might want to consider a bit more
color still - not very good at UIs myself it just felt really really grey.

