[HN Gopher] Show HN: Vellum - An interactive list of nonfiction ...
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       Show HN: Vellum - An interactive list of nonfiction books reviewed
       by academics
        
       Author : pizzicato
       Score  : 72 points
       Date   : 2021-02-20 18:52 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (vellum.tachy.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (vellum.tachy.org)
        
       | pizzicato wrote:
       | Hello HN! This is a static website with a big interactive list of
       | nonfiction books that have been reviewed in Science, Nature, and
       | the LSE Review of Books. I like looking for nonfiction reviews in
       | places such as these to get an idea of how well researched a book
       | is, but going through their old posts is a bit of a pain.
       | 
       | The site is generated using 11ty from a couple of JSON files
       | containing the book data, which I collected with the help of a
       | few Python scripts. I used lozad.js and Isotope for lazy loading
       | and filtering respectively.
       | 
       | I'm not a dev, so please forgive the cludgy code! This is not a
       | product or service of any kind, but simply a hobby project I made
       | in my free time this week. I'd appreciate any feedback you can
       | offer :)
       | 
       | Some things I learned:
       | 
       | - I should try using LESS and SASS as my css file is a bit of a
       | mess.
       | 
       | - 11ty deserves all the hype it gets in the SSG scene. The docs
       | are a bit sparse for a novice like me, but I found a few
       | fantastic third-party tutorials that I didn't know about when I
       | first mucked about with 11ty.
       | 
       | - Install node and npm via nvm if on Linux to avoid permission
       | errors
       | 
       | - Web dev is hard
       | 
       | Some issues I'm aware of:
       | 
       | - Background scrolls when moving the modal (can't figure this
       | out).
       | 
       | - Some tags are misspelled and should be grouped further.
       | 
       | - The book covers are pretty awful quality.
       | 
       | - The site is quite large (~4 MB); I need to learn to integrate
       | minification into the build process.
       | 
       | Edit: List formatting
        
         | naves wrote:
         | I could not thank you enough for this. I regularly browse
         | Nature and Science myself to read the reviews and find my next
         | read. Simply amazing! Thank you, seriously.
        
           | pizzicato wrote:
           | I'm really glad you find it useful! I originally intended to
           | include the actual reviews like they do at
           | https://bookmarks.reviews but the journals' terms of service
           | are pretty clear about that sort of thing.
        
             | jasondoty wrote:
             | Just add a link to libgen and scihub :)
        
         | NotPavlovsDog wrote:
         | Great job! If you are not a developer, what is your motivation
         | for doing the tech side of the project? Are you looking to
         | become one? You appear to have invested time to learn the tech.
         | 
         | The reason I ask is HN is a great community that may provide
         | valid advice as towards the direction you would like to pursue
         | in dev ( if you so desire ).
         | 
         | I found a book that I've added to my list, so thanks again.
        
         | spicyusername wrote:
         | In regards to css, take a look at tailwind css. I've found it
         | to be pretty nice to use and very straightforward.
         | 
         | Great site, very simple and useful!
        
         | pps wrote:
         | It's really useful and doesn't need to be ideal. Well done,
         | especially if you're not a dev, thank you for sharing your work
         | :)
        
           | naves wrote:
           | Indeed :)
        
           | pizzicato wrote:
           | Thanks for the kind words!
        
       | andrewxhonson wrote:
       | Bookmarked! This is a great idea. I also really love the name--I
       | had considered using it as a name for one of my projects once and
       | was disappointed to feel like it didn't fit. It definitely fits
       | this project though!
        
       | kkaranth wrote:
       | This is great! Bookmarked.
       | 
       | One complaint I have is the low-res cover images. I'm on a 4K
       | screen and the cover images look really blurry. I can't make out
       | the subtitles of books.
       | 
       | Also, the double-click to close is a unintuitive. I'd much prefer
       | to use the back button
        
       | witherk wrote:
       | Really beautiful, too bad the covers are so blurry.
        
       | jsshah wrote:
       | This is amazing .. great work .. I am going to bookmark this
        
       | DC1350 wrote:
       | Nice site. How did you decide which books to include, or what
       | data source did you use?
        
       | sherr wrote:
       | This looks good and I'll bookmark and return to it as well. Well
       | done. The Economist might also be worth adding as a source on
       | your next iteration (assuming that's possible).
        
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       (page generated 2021-02-20 23:00 UTC)