39 comments

  • Bilal MohammedBilal Mohammed, over 7 years ago

    But.. but it's not a sidebar anymore :(

    9 points
  • Tim Knight, over 7 years ago (edited over 7 years ago )

    Sacha, I absolutely love what you've done. I have a little bit of feedback however in terms of the filter bar on the right side.

    • Do future dates really need to be selectable since you know it'll only lead to failure? Perhaps future dates could be disabled?
    • Without selecting a filter, grouped links have their dates above them in the results. If you select a specific day it would be nice to see that above the results to show you the state of date selection.
    • Speaking of state, it would be nice if the currently selected tag(s) would have some type of highlight to show that it is currently selected.
    • Clicking on "Show All" doesn't seem to show all of the tags to me. It stops at "Learning" and "Logo".
    • Clicking on "Show All" when the view expands should probably toggle the button to a "Show Less" state as clicking a button that says "Show All" to close something feels weird for me.

    Anyway, just a few things that jumped out at me. I absolutely love the adjustment in styling and love what you're doing with the top bar starting at the bottom to show the featured links—it creates a really interesting paneled feel. Well done.

    4 points
  • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, over 7 years ago

    Webdesigner news is better.

    2 points
  • Geffrey van der BosGeffrey van der Bos, over 7 years ago

    I like how it seems everything is sponsored. That's not a bad thing, just my brain went 'manipulation!!'.

    1 point
  • Pierre de MillyPierre de Milly, over 7 years ago

    I liked the simplicity of the previous versions but I have to admit the new features are well thought, especially the tags :)

    I have but one suggestion: maybe you could make use of that extra space on the five daily featured to show even more about what it links to? Like and excerpt or popularity metric?

    1 point
  • Lubos Kmetko, over 7 years ago (edited over 7 years ago )

    I like the new website however I only read newsletter so I will comment on that. I'm sure I will get use to the new version but I still think the previous newsletter design was better. Here are the reasons:

    • it was quicker to process information in it because there was less information - no images, only text links
    • text sizes was bigger yet all 5 links fitted my screen, now I only see 3 links and need to scroll
    • images don't add much value and only increase data transferred
    • the orange header is too big, without adding any value to regular reader

    I could scan previous newsletter and decide which links to open in about 5 seconds, now I need maybe 15. That's doesn't look like big difference but certainly processing the new newsletter feels much slower which isn't the win when it comes to interactions in inbox.

    0 points
  • Max GlenisterMax Glenister, over 7 years ago (edited over 7 years ago )

    Lovely and finally not dog-slow!

    To be honest, I'd be happy with just the stream, rather than the "today" section at the top.

    The submitter names next to each item seems confusing as I first thought they were the author of the link/resource being linked to. Perhaps "submitted by ..." would help in this case.

    Another thing I've found weird is that you're using an orange tick to indicate that a link has been visited on the "today" section, and then for some reason all of the links in the subsequent days have ticks next to them.

    Perhaps not intentional, or something has gone awry?

    I've definitely not read all of these:

    screenshot

    0 points
    • Sacha GreifSacha Greif, over 7 years ago

      Oh you're right, I'm using the same orange ticks both to say "visited" in the top part and "featured" in the bottom one. I should fix that… maybe a ribbon to mean "featured"?

      0 points
      • Max GlenisterMax Glenister, over 7 years ago

        If everything is featured, then nothing is featured? I'm not sure what the smaller orange tick (or ribbon, or what have you) is adding here.

        0 points
        • Sacha GreifSacha Greif, over 7 years ago

          Well only five links per day are featured. But I guess I need to make that clearer.

          0 points
          • Max GlenisterMax Glenister, over 7 years ago (edited over 7 years ago )

            Ah I see! Yes that isn't clear, perhaps a count of how many links there are per day, or simply showing all of the links for the day rather than putting them behind a "Show more..." link.

            While I'm pointing out quirks, here are another couple of things to add to your list:

            • When viewing the site with a query parameter, as many people are from the link on DN, the category filter is "activated" -- this shouldn't happen unless "?cat=" or "&cat=" is in the query parameters.
            • Sometimes when loading the page there is an initial "Undefined" in the page before anything else renders.
            • The date picker allows you to go infinitely forward/backward in time, rather than being limited to the earliest date of the sidebar.io archive, and the current date.
            • It's possible to select a category that contains no links.
            • There are 58 categories currently, yet we can only see 9 in the sidebar. These are sorted alphabetically, rather than by popularity/number of items, meaning you see the same 9 always.
            • On some days there are duplicate links, where the same link has been submitted by multiple users (see Dropbox Productivity on the screenshot): https://i.imgur.com/S3NVmC2.png
            • The "user profile" pages shouldn't have the 5 featured links at the top (e.g. http://sidebar.io/users/sachagrief)

            Cheers!

            0 points
  • Stuart McCoyStuart McCoy, over 7 years ago

    You need a pinned tab icon for Safari users.

    0 points
  • Pino CeniccolaPino Ceniccola, over 7 years ago

    It looks very good! Just one thing: maybe it's just me but I find it irritating when you're forced to open a link in a new window/tab. Is there a particular reason why you choose this behavior?

    0 points
  • Hoku Ho, over 7 years ago

    Nice work Sacha, rebuilt with Nova?

    0 points
  • Ted McDonald, over 7 years ago

    This looks great Sacha. I really like the emphasis on the current day.

    The only thing I would change is the 'add link' button. I did not even notice it at first and wasn't sure what it did until I clicked it. Love the update otherwise :)

    0 points
  • Matthew BlodeMatthew Blode, over 7 years ago

    Hi Sacha, beautiful update and it loads a lot faster now. However, what is the purpose of the "Show More..." button for each day. The button feels redundant because there are only 1 or 2 more posts when you click it and you are already scrolling. Maybe it is unnecessary.

    0 points
    • Sacha GreifSacha Greif, over 7 years ago

      You're right, it does feel a bit unnecessary. I could increase the default limit to 10 posts and it would go away for most days. On the other hand, limiting it to 5 posts lets you scroll down to see all the featured links for each day… So I'm not sure!

      0 points
      • Matthew BlodeMatthew Blode, over 7 years ago

        Product Hunt, for example, keeps it to 10 posts and says "Show 34 More". I think it a better limit than 5 as 10 will show all the information for most days.

        0 points
  • Kim GoulbourneKim Goulbourne, over 7 years ago

    Love the idea of displaying the top 5 links in that hero space. It bothers me a bit that they get repeated once you scroll down but since you can load more for the same date, I couldn't think of any better solutions on the spot.

    Is the feed inspired by Product Hunt? ;)

    0 points
    • Sacha GreifSacha Greif, over 7 years ago

      Yes, same here, it also bothers me but I wasn't able to find a better way… And yeah the feed was inspired by Product Hunt. I think they found a really good pattern for daily feeds.

      0 points
      • Maxwell Ariss, over 7 years ago (edited over 7 years ago )

        Are the 5 featured posts in the hero sorted the same way as the top 5 posts in the main list of posts ? You should be able to offset the loop by 5 posts somehow, but at very least you could hide the top 5 posts in the list view with css (kind of dirty, but better then repetition). Really nice work though !

        Also, it looks like if the sidebar tags area is expanded, and the screen viewport isn't super tall, you get some nasty overlap: http://i.imgur.com/xB5CMwQ.png

        Since your sidebar's search bar is about 60px tall (with margins), and your calendar is about 250px tall (with margins), you could give your .sidebar-categories-expanded class a height of calc(100vh - 310px) and overflow-y: auto. There are probably more graceful approaches out there, but it's a start :)

        0 points
  • Sergi MiralSergi Miral, over 7 years ago

    Nice update, and also Telescope Nova rocks! By the way, do you have in mind to document the development process of sidebar.io?

    Just saying because I was playing around with Nova during the weekend and as awesome as it is, it took me a while to figure out a few things… It could be great to use sidebar.io as a showcase of how Telescope Nova works in real life

    0 points
    • Sacha GreifSacha Greif, over 7 years ago

      Thanks for trying out Nova! Yeah I need to document it more. I'll probably do a couple videos to explain the customizations I did for Sidebar, so stay tuned!

      1 point