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Ask HN: Please review my side project
4 points by jwdalton on March 20, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 13 comments
www.sizecompare.com

It's a site for comparing sizes of things :) It was built for fun and practice. I've only shown it to a few people so far, and their feedback has been very helpful. Your comments are most welcome.




I like the font and layout. It's very slick. I'm not really sure of the purpose but it kept my attention for a few minutes trying to figure it out. I'm not sure how China is equal to only 1.03 Great Walls of China


Thanks! The site is more of an experiment in its early stages. I'm hoping we can add some features and make it even more interesting. You are very correct about China vs. Great Walls of China. Right now we are just comparing length, which sometimes gives us seemingly strange results.


I suspect it's because the wall is very twisty. Or wikipedia is incorrect about the wall's length :)


The site is a bit confusing to use. The first thing I looked for was how to put in whatever items I wanted.

How does the text box and the something random button work? Quite confused...


Thanks for checking it out! I'm going to try to make it easier/more apparent to add items. Right now there is a link at the bottom of the page to do this, but it isn't very obvious. The random button pulls out 2 items from the database, and the text box allows you to search for any particular item in the database. I'll probably be adding a search button to make the use of the text box more obvious.


It wasn't clear what was being compared until I tried to add an item and see that it is length. I would of assumed area based on the current design.


You're right, that is confusing. I'll try to make it more clear that only one dimension is currently supported. Thanks for the feedback. :)

Out of curiosity, what item did you try to add?


I didn't add anything... just clicked on it to see what what you were collecting.


I'm really confused as to when the top/bottom item is replaced.


The top item is always the larger of the items. Clicking on the 'Something bigger' button will replace it. Clicking on the smaller item (on the bottom) will cause it to become the top item.

The bottom item is always the smaller item, and clicking on the links on the right hand side (various smaller items) or on the 'Something smaller' button will cause that item to replace the bottom item.


I moved the buttons around, so hopefully it is a little more clear how to control the items ('Something bigger' replaces the top item, 'Something smaller' replaces the bottom item).


That's easier. But I still wish there was a way to go back and replace the top item with something smaller. Right now, if I get to China, there's nothing bigger, so the "Something bigger" button stops working, and I'm stuck on China forever. I could just use the back button, but I'm not sure that's intuitive. Anyway, just nitpicking.


Unfortunately China is the largest item that is currently in the database. I need to improve the response of the site when the expected result doesn't work (as in, you can't go bigger or smaller, maybe just disable the button in that case). As a side note, to replace the large item you can use 1 of three options: 1) Click on the smaller item 2) Click on the small links on the right hand side 3) Click on either 'Something random' or start typing in the text box I'll see if I can come up with a way of making these options more apparent.




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