On: Show HN: An Isomorphic JavaScript Framework Faster Than React

[bshimmin]

Top article on the front page of Hacker News as I write this, and not a single positive comment below. Great job, guys...

To the author: I think the homepage looks great, the examples are clear and informative, and I would definitely give this a try if I weren't wed to a couple of other frameworks right now.

[rattray → bshimmin]

I think a lot of the negativity has to do with the marketing. This isn't being sold as "a cool thing I made", but "Better MV-ish Framework" and "Faster than React". If you try to position it as better than existing alternatives, HN commenters will tear it down if they don't think it makes the cut. If you put it out as "exploring interesting new approaches", I think you're likely to see a lot less negativity here.

Compare to the launch of Mithril: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7421652

EDIT: Actually, revisiting this, the problem may be more with the fact that it hit the front page than the fact it has a lot of negative comments. If nobody here seems to like it, how did it get 182 upvotes? That seems like a problem with our community, eg; upvoting before actually looking at the article. (Note: I don't mean to comment on whether this is a good framework, just that the HN community doesn't seem to like it much).

[rattray → rattray]

@dang, if you're listening, an idea:

make the "upvote" buttons invisible on stories that the user hasn't visited before. This could be done like so:

    // css
    a.upvote-botton:visited { visibility: hidden };


    <!-- in html -->
    <a href="{article_link}" onclick="perform_upvote()" class="upvote-button">upvote triangle</a>

The href & onclick handlers would need to be added in javascript so as not to affect hn for non-js users.

[svl → rattray]

That doesn't actually work in pretty much any browser, since it allows for history-mining by a malicious site. :visited styling changed a couple of years ago to only honor color changes, thus preventing most ways of exploiting that issue.

http://dbaron.org/mozilla/visited-privacy is one of the better resources explaining the issue more fully.

I guess you could create the triangle solely with CSS borders, and then style the border-color to be the same color as the background when not :visited

[kansface → svl]

Could you not just render the anchor out of the view port and look at its color?

[rattray → svl]

Ah, good catch. You would just do `color: white` then, no?

[spdionis → rattray]

I think upvoting means promoting discussion, not necessarily liking the article linked.

[bshimmin → rattray]

Absolutely fair points.

Another one: the general weariness with which new JS frameworks are greeted has increased massively in the 433 days since Mithril was posted here.

[alexc05 → rattray]

on record: I loved working in Mithril and am a huge fan of Leo one of the nicest guys around.

[astoilkov → rattray]

You are totally correct. I believe it could have taken another direction if I have done this. It is hard to be compared to React built by Facebook but I started first. :)