[HN Gopher] Show HN: Mmm.page - Drag and drop personal website c...
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Show HN: Mmm.page - Drag and drop personal website creator
Author : xhfloz
Score : 507 points
Date : 2021-05-12 09:37 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (build.mmm.page)
(TXT) w3m dump (build.mmm.page)
| gregsadetsky wrote:
| Congrats, it's really great!
|
| A small comment:
|
| - Instagram has recently become much more aggressive in not
| showing anything to logged out users. Because of this, when you
| create a button (on your site) linking to an Instagram page, the
| button name ends up being "Login * Instagram" (that's because
| you're getting the Open Graph preview of the page you're
| redirected to, i.e. the login..!)
|
| You could probably have an exception for Instagram and when
| linking to instagram.com/<username>, force the button name to be
| @<username>. Not ideal, certainly, but maybe a bit better?
|
| Congrats again and happy launch!
|
| EDIT: I initially didn't see that the mobile viewport /is/
| visible when designing on desktop! my bad! I removed my original
| note
| ub99 wrote:
| Great job! The builder is fun and intuitive. I especially like
| how you handle responsiveness - very smooth. Do you basically use
| relative units (eg percentages) for all sizes and distances to
| accomplish that?
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| This is pretty fun, but I can't figure out how you do most of
| what you have on the home page. I'm not sure if it's just me or
| some of the coolest things are too hard to discover. A few
| examples: When I go to shapes they're all 2d and I can't find a
| way to make them 3d like yours are. I'm also not sure how to
| rotate objects, even if I click on the rotated YouTube video I
| can't figure out how to do it/how I can change its rotation.
|
| Also is this a typo? "Every page is mindlessly responsive so they
| work across screen sizes" Should mindlessly be automatically?
| tyingq wrote:
| The 3d shapes are images, so "Add Image" rather than "Add
| Shape". You would have to find your own images.
|
| To rotate, click on something and move your cursor just to the
| outside of one of the corners. Your cursor will change to a
| curved arrow, and you can rotate.
| Kiro wrote:
| Very nice but don't really understand "Every page is mindlessly
| responsive so they work across screen sizes". Doesn't seem to do
| anything to make it responsive unless I misunderstand something
| (just tried to resize the window and anything not in the narrow
| column in the middle ended up outside the screen).
|
| I would like to add "breakpoints" and make adjustments just for
| the screen size I'm currently viewing it in.
| JMill wrote:
| While my inner webdev agrees with you, my interpretation of the
| mmm.page philosophy is that planning "breakpoints" etc takes
| too much thought, and hence runs against the "mindless" aspect.
|
| "Mindlessly responsive" -> When the content is outside the
| demarcated safe zone, it's not visible on little screens.
| Simple ruleset, no brain required. If I just want to get some
| fun content on a webpage, I either paint in the lines or
| intentionally paint beyond them.
| breck wrote:
| Reminds me of a site a while ago called NewHive.
| schmorptron wrote:
| Hey, I really liked the registration process - getting the email
| verification in first and then having really simple onboarding
| makes for a great experience. Also, the aesthetic is so fun!
| catchmeifyoucan wrote:
| This was fun! I might consider making my personal site in this. I
| do have a blog, so maybe even a way to export as HTML would be
| awesome :)
|
| One feature request that would help a lot is instead of uploading
| an image, providing the image source.
| rchaud wrote:
| This looks like a lot of fun, speaking as someone who loves the
| weirdness of the old web, but understands the challenges of re-
| creating such 'messy by design' sites with pure HTML/CSS.
|
| Wordpress has moved in this direction with Gutenberg (where you
| can add 'blocks' inside the <article> element for things like
| columns, tables, images, iframes. Full Site Editing has been
| "coming soon" for a while however.
|
| But even so, Wordpress (or Wix or Squarespace) isn't offering the
| "Clippy meets PowerPoint" level of drag and drop that can result
| in fun sites. For example, rotating an element so it appears a
| little off-centre and askew isn't supported out of the box in WP
| Gutenberg. You have to be able to edit your CSS file to do this.
| Whereas in PowerPoint, you can rotate and scale elements easily.
| tzekid wrote:
| All apple gestures (pinch to zoom, 2 finger swipe for navigation)
| don't work at all. That's kind of a deal breaker for me ...
| mat111 wrote:
| I would rather pay $79 USD a month for this than what I get with
| leadpages that I mostly use for easy editing/creation. One click
| editing was awesome right on the homepage. Love this and can
| imagine using it for a number of quick things.
|
| If I were leadpages or a similar company I'd buy this outright
| right now before y'all build up your own community and the price
| reflects that.
|
| If you're thinking of a model I'd suggest doing pay per export
| for source code/external host, let people build & then export
| full css/html/etc for like $9 a project. Keep the hosted on your
| domain free or mostly free and you'll make an industry of people
| who will justify the small project cost for the time savings of a
| true drag & drop editor
| xhfloz wrote:
| hey! want to DM me @xhfloz, or email me at xh at mmm dot page
| -- would love to discuss this with you
| uncomputation wrote:
| > export full css/html/etc for like $9 a project
|
| What about View Page Source > mypage.html? I like the idea of
| paying per project somehow but this particular method seems not
| strong
| canada_dry wrote:
| > I'd pay $79 USD a month for this
|
| Uh... wow.
| throwaway_isms wrote:
| https://mmm.page/Geocities.Geocities
| mfkp wrote:
| The layout is ... slightly broken on Edge browser on Android.
| (And zoom is disabled)
|
| https://i.imgur.com/2RoR52Y.jpg
| dubcanada wrote:
| This is so cool! I found it extremely easy to edit a site on
| mobile, which is probably the hardest thing to get right.
|
| Very well done!
|
| One note though, keyboard shortcuts don't work (pressing delete
| after clicking on a element doesn't delete it for example)
| dalmo3 wrote:
| Just a tiny detail that all pages return 404, even though they
| open fine.
| seabass wrote:
| Is there anywhere we can view examples or demo sites?
| Closi wrote:
| I 100% love it - this is super fun!
| heuristo wrote:
| This is really fun and cool. I haven't said that about a web tool
| in years. I think some other outfit, maybe it was ".me" or
| something had something personal but it wasn't fun. Great job!
| Hope you can keep it going!
| readingnews wrote:
| This does feel quite myspace-y, but the burning question would
| be... is this all just like myspace. e.g. if I leave or spend
| hours creating something, it is nearly impossible to move it or
| back it up to something else?
| syx wrote:
| Great stuff! love the idea, design and animations are slick!
| Everything is so simple and smooth!
|
| A few things that come to my mind if you'd like to continue
| developing this project:
|
| - if a user enters a link to a subpage owned by the same user I
| think there shouldn't be a `target="_blank"`
|
| - maybe add a button to disable the layout red lines tips as it
| could get annoying when you have lots of overlapped objects,
| although it might be an edge case [1]
|
| - one minor advice is some folks are probably going to complain
| about collection of the user emails for the sign-up so I'd
| suggest making some privacy policy just to be transparent.
|
| [1] https://mmm.page/simone.computer
| hailpixel wrote:
| I love this app's approach to responsive design: just show the
| "safe" area and let people throw elements where ever. So
| liberating.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| Eh, as a desktop user it sucks to still get the same
| patronising and space-wasting mobile design.
| Gys wrote:
| First impression is very good. However, it requires signup to
| actually try / use. I have several websites, but currently have
| no need for such so I just left again. Probably to never return
| because I never remember sites that I only visit a few seconds.
| Would be better to let my try and get me hooked, to get ideas for
| remodeling one of my existing websites.
| john-doe wrote:
| > it requires signup to actually try / use
|
| Just hit the bottom right "edit" button
| AltF4me wrote:
| Nice. Maybe edit should be the CTA rather than sign up?
| Kuraj wrote:
| I would have never discovered it if it wasn't for your
| comment
| Gys wrote:
| Thanks. Saw it but did not click because I thought it to be
| for chat.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| I found it amusing that the 'stroke' tab of the sticker presets
| gives you a variety of random brush strokes, smudges etc.
|
| It also gives you a single sticker of a brain flashing 'aphasia',
| which is a literal type of medical stroke that causes brain
| damage and possibly insensitive on that tab!
| jtvjan wrote:
| Looks like it just searches giphy.com for transparent GIFs.
| dana321 wrote:
| Really cool stuff, here is my microsite i made for the music i
| made that i uploaded to youtube: https://mmm.page/danstar.main
| rchaud wrote:
| If I could make a suggestion, I'd be more likely to click on
| the video links if you added a little bit about yourself.
|
| Where are you from? What music inspired you? Why did you choose
| to remix this or that song?
|
| I did click anyway as I'm a fan of the Prodigy and saw a
| Climbatize remix.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| that's incredible! Good job bringing back the fun of Geocities
| yet making everything modern
| osetinsky wrote:
| this is excellent - great work!
| domano wrote:
| I love it! Especially the editability of the landing page itself!
|
| I really hope this takes off - so much more creativity-inducing
| than squarespace or whatever!
|
| Does not really work for me since i am not really the target
| audience, but i really hope this gets a lot of exposure.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| Wait.... did Hacker News just create Geocities?
| slmjkdbtl wrote:
| upvote for the "messy encouraged" a lot of times tools decide how
| the works will generally look like, hope people can really make
| something wildly different with this
| Deukhoofd wrote:
| It looks very nice! I played around with it a bit, and one of the
| main things I missed is some kind of hierarchy/grouping.
|
| If some text is inside a box, and I drag the box around I'd want
| the text to move with it. Currently I have to drag each
| individual part of a group to move it.
| kickscondor wrote:
| Too fun! https://mmm.page/kicks.condor
|
| Anyone else making a page out there?
| b212 wrote:
| That Recycle Bin though... Simply perfect.
| digitalsin wrote:
| https://mmm.page/keith.main
| swyx wrote:
| https://mmm.page/swyx.io
| mvexel wrote:
| <marquee>https://mmm.page/maps.main</marquee>
| vesche wrote:
| https://mmm.page/vesche.main
| Rphad wrote:
| https://mmm.page/Rphad.yolo
| Aulig wrote:
| Hey - you shouldn't hate yourself. I'll gladly be your fan :)
| kickscondor wrote:
| Yay! (>=*<=) Let's see how long this lasts.
| tmountain wrote:
| https://mmm.page/chedraui.main
| xhfloz wrote:
| Hey HN! Been thinking about something like this for a long time,
| and finally decided to work on it three months ago. Excited to
| show everyone today!
|
| .
|
| -------- TLDR --------
|
| I built a website builder (works on desktop & mobile) that makes
| it easy to create automatically-responsive, collage-like websites
| -- websites that allow you to overlap text, images, GIFs, YouTube
| videos, etc. etc.
|
| Check it out @ https://build.mmm.page
|
| Feel free to RT
| https://twitter.com/xhfloz/status/1392438711367909376 to help :)
|
| .
|
| -------- Nitty Gritty Details --------
|
| * Every page is automatically responsive (a demonstration of how
| is shown on the homepage).
|
| * Allow text, images, GIFs, shapes, YouTube videos to start (much
| more planned).
|
| * Everybody gets their own URL/namespace @ mmm.page/USERNAME
|
| * _Actual_ drag and drop! No grid-locking (though there are
| layout alignment guides).
|
| * Tiny cool thing -- try pinching and zooming on your touchpad
| (rotate works on Safari too).
|
| .
|
| -------- Motivation --------
|
| There seems to be fewer and fewer personal websites -- many of
| which now look increasingly similar -- and, yet, more people than
| ever have some Graphic Design Lite experience (a la Snapchat &
| Instagram), so I figured, it could be interesting to see websites
| made with a similar style, WYSIWYG composer as Snapchat/IG.
| (That, and the math to do these layouts manually is always too
| much hassle for me.)
|
| .
|
| -------- Updates to Come --------
|
| A lot still needs to be done, but wanted to share today to gather
| some feedback -- hope you find it useful!
|
| Feel free to follow me on Twitter for updates
| (https://twitter.com/xhfloz)
|
| .
|
| -- XH (https://mmm.page/xh.main)
| john-doe wrote:
| Something that could be great, and aligns with the general
| "collage" vibe, would be to allow (sandboxed) iframes...
|
| (by the way, I'm glad you're using "nocookie" for youtube)
| densekernel wrote:
| Awesome! On trend with the aesthetic.
|
| How did you accomplish the responsiveness with such a flexible
| layout?
| kickscondor wrote:
| Not the creator, but looking at the source - everything is
| sized using 'rem' units. (Height, width, positioning of all
| the elements.) Kind of like using a percentage.
| style="height: 0.160992rem; width: 1.00383rem; left: 0.5rem;
| top: 0.273827rem; ..."
|
| This can be used because `font-size` on the root html tag is
| set to the width in pixels of the screen - or 600px maximum.
|
| And then font sizes for all the elements are specified
| individually.
| input_sh wrote:
| FYI nothing happens after clicking on Chaos Monkey - Proceed. I
| thought it was because uBO blocks sentry requests, but even
| when whitelisted, requests are made, but nothing happens.
| dangoor wrote:
| I'd love to be able to use this sort of editor to produce a
| static site that I control. My websites are currently static
| and deployed via netlify, but it would be awesome to create
| some pages with a tool like this.
| eevahr wrote:
| Very cool, interested to see whats behind the editor!
| delibes wrote:
| It looks fun. Well done!
|
| One thought I had ... it'd be useful if you can add some
| features to support accessibility.
| michaelbrooks wrote:
| Awesome work, I really like what you're doing with this.
|
| I created my own personal page and followed each of the steps.
| However, I can't update the email, Twitter and IG links on each
| button. Am I missing something, or is this a bug? I'm on
| desktop using FF.
| easton wrote:
| Those buttons are filler buttons, you have to drag a new
| button out to customize it (it showed a message about this
| for me, perhaps the developer updated it since your comment?)
| michaelbrooks wrote:
| Ah, I must have missed that and deleted the label. Thank
| you so much for your help.
| HugoDaniel wrote:
| awesome work! I love the flow, the simple concept of
| toolbar+modals for the UI, the premade sensible options. Oh and
| those menus and icons are very cool, did you use any special
| frontend framework?
|
| anyway, keep it up! this is great :)
| SamWhited wrote:
| I hate making a new login that I have to remember for things I
| might not even use. It would be nice if you could create the
| website _first_ , then only sign up if you liked it and wanted to
| save it. This stops me from testing cool looking projects like
| this all the time :(
|
| EDIT: that being said, I _love_ that you can edit the landing
| page itself, that at least gives me some idea of how it works,
| although then if I turn it into something interesting I have to
| start over when I sign up.
| [deleted]
| PinkPigeon wrote:
| So I think this is an excellent point. I'd love to do something
| like that for my product as well.
|
| However, there are a few considerations, some of bigger
| consequence than others:
|
| - How do you keep users from losing their data when they leave
| and come back? Cookies with an ID are a brittle solution. You
| could have a unique link, where the user's work is saved right
| up until they want to register
|
| - How do you deal with the inevitable onslaught of people using
| an open system? If you're bootstrapping like me, I don't think
| I could possibly handle the influx of an HN frontpage's worth
| of people simultaneously hammering the system
|
| - When do you clean house? You won't necessarily know whether
| someone wants to build a site, disappear for a month and then
| come back to it. Feels unlikely, but it's still possible.
|
| All of this would be solved by having (at the very least) a
| quick email-only signup, which auto-generates a password and a
| welcome email, but also takes you straight into the system.
| It's a small barrier to entry, but perhaps one that's worth
| putting in place to avoid hammering the server(s) too much?
|
| What do you think of video content showing off the system,
| could that help as a sort of interim solution?
| szhu wrote:
| You could require a login after someone has added at least 5
| objects and/or spent at least 5 minutes making edits. This
| makes sure that if data is lost, it's nothing that can't be
| easily recreated.
|
| After at least 30 seconds of activity, you can display a
| prominent banner at the top of the page that says "make a
| free account to ensure your work is saved". Then it's clear
| that your ability to retrieve their data upon their next
| visit is a favor and not something they're obligated to. It's
| not exactly the same, but you can look at CoderPad's sandbox
| notice as inspiration for how to word this:
| https://app.coderpad.io/launch-sandbox (Note: you'll only be
| able to make one sandbox per cookie, so visit this in
| incognito mode)
|
| To address scaling, you can probably limit the total number
| of "logged-out users" who are currently editing. If more
| users visit the site during the same time period, require
| them to make an account, just like you are now. If you're
| worried about users expecting a playground and getting
| confused, you can look at Google Docs's "This is getting a
| lot of traffic, you're in read only mode" notice that appears
| when more than 50 people are visiting a doc as an example of
| how explain the situation in an easily understandable way.
|
| Now that you've properly set user expectations, you can clean
| house whenever and it should be okay.
|
| btw, I just tried out this tool and I think it's awesome for
| a lot of the reasons mentioned in the top replies. Hope some
| of this is helpful + wishing you best of luck!
| gameshot911 wrote:
| These are all really good, creative ideas!
| SamWhited wrote:
| I never watch videos personally, but that's more because most
| of them are terrible and don't help than anything (they
| either just talk about it and never show the actual product,
| or take 5 minutes introducing themselves before the 1 minute
| demo, etc.). I'm sure it could be done right though, but I'd
| bet other people have also been trained not to click videos.
|
| The email gate sounds good (except don't generate a password
| that will then be visible in plain text, generate a one-time
| login that can't be reused after a certain amount of time and
| give the user the option to set a password later if they want
| one); sites could expire after a bit and a real account
| (where the site doesn't expire) could only be created if/when
| the user chooses to create a password and you can't save or
| use features that could trigger emails until you've verified
| your email or something.
| debaserab2 wrote:
| Serializing the user's session state to LocalStorage comes to
| mind as a reasonable solution. Comes with it's own caveats,
| of course (you now have a state versioning problem), but
| addresses all the points you bring up pretty adequately:
|
| 1. As long as their on the same device/browser, they lose
| zero data. This is a pretty reliable happy-path use case.
|
| 2. The only onslaught you'll deal with is simple pageviews
| since everything in the trial is stored client side, which
| also makes #3 no problem.
| WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote:
| Hit the edit button, bottom right for a small sample.
|
| Agree on onboarding.
|
| You also have to re-enter your email after you click your email
| link which was annoying.
|
| But... this is 100% nitpicking. I think they crushed launch at
| making this appealing.
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| > Hit the edit button, bottom right for a small sample.
|
| I didn't even notice that! What a cool idea to be able to
| test out the site by editing the home page itself
| WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote:
| Would be disgusting chaos but also would be cool to let
| anyone edit the page so it is forever changing -- obviously
| working out the issues of blocking/hiding texts.
|
| Or social, imagine how much fun it would be to leave
| stickers/stamps on approved friend's websites.
| [deleted]
| herunan wrote:
| I really do hope this 'scrappy' approach to websites keeps
| growing. Bit tired of the homogenisation of the web lately.
| The_rationalist wrote:
| I miss geocities..
| alexobenauer wrote:
| This is fantastic. Nice work.
|
| Just because of Geocities-era sites, I really wanted there to be
| graphical visit counter elements I could add to a page.
| shtack wrote:
| This is awesome, I've been looking for something like this
| (particularly for mobile) for a while. One small issue I came
| across is a photo I uploaded came out with the wrong aspect ratio
| and I can't seem to fix it.
| G4BB3R wrote:
| I played for a few minutes, and when I refreshed my page my
| entire progress was lost.
| BeniBoy wrote:
| Looks great, but little bug on my system (Firefox 87 for Android
| 11), scroll does not work.. But on my computer, it sure looks
| good, will recommend to my less tech-savy friends!
| xhfloz wrote:
| can you try it again? this should be resolved
| BeniBoy wrote:
| Yep, it's fixed. Congrats on the launch!
| Rphad wrote:
| Damn, I didn't think I'd spend so much time on it, it's awesome.
| There are basic features lacking imo but it's great ! Oh and you
| can check my page here : https://mmm.page/Rphad.yolo
| jimbler wrote:
| This is going to get some love. Its the right product
| insight(even the simplest template driven sites are too hard once
| you get past the basics). You're working off a good consumer
| insight ("i _want_ this site to look very different "). I like
| the details (chaos monkey). Super simple to understand and use.
| PeterBarrett wrote:
| Great alternative to the likes of linktree. Nice and intuitive
| too.
| gwph wrote:
| This is so much more expressive than the other wysiwyg editors
| I've used. Great job!
| lalo2302 wrote:
| Great stuff! I'd recommend making the "Edit" button a bit more
| noticeable, took me a while to find it.
|
| Also do you have planned custom domains?
|
| Great job!
| digitalsin wrote:
| This is a lot of fun!
| adventured wrote:
| Messed with editing the landing page for a bit. I like it, well
| done. Editing is intuitive, not much of a hassle. Things react &
| do what I expect they should.
|
| As others have mentioned, definitely add a random mmm link, to
| see other mmms, or otherwise add a spotlight to show off what
| people can / have done with it.
|
| Also make it more obvious you can edit the landing page, maybe
| provide a clickable link in the text that points out that you can
| edit the page (below the signup button at the top). And then
| provide a blank canvas page where people can screw around; if
| they like their mess, they can sign up and save it.
| dmje wrote:
| Love it.
| prismatix wrote:
| Really awesome tool and just what I was looking for. As someone
| with a design background, I do miss some tools that I'm used to
| having - like the eyedropper for example. One thing that would be
| cool to see in iteration would be responsiveness instead of just
| showing the mobile cutoff, but overall for a first-pass I think
| this is a great tool! Nice job.
| CyanDeparture wrote:
| After reading that article on Corporate Memphis yesterday, I
| can't decribe how much I love the design of this landing page.
| Jonovono wrote:
| It's cool, but whats your main draw over E.gg by Instagram or
| Universe Web Builder
| kickscondor wrote:
| e.gg never actually launched, right? And the others just don't
| have the same flare at all...
| Jonovono wrote:
| It's on iOS: https://e.gg. Agree, I do think the vibes of
| this are a bit better.
| mvexel wrote:
| Fantastic! I do think it needs webrings.
| kome wrote:
| https://mmm.page/oo.main
|
| I like it :)
| oefrha wrote:
| > 12.6 MB transferred, 21.8 MB resources
|
| Personally I much prefer websites that don't use up that much
| bandwidth.
|
| Let's take
| https://asset.mmm.page/77/a05aa5533e4f3a97080c63f9b70189/04-....
| 4,748,611 bytes, 2602x4336 pixels, actually rendered at a
| ~150x250px size. Do you really need to ship that many pixels?
|
| I hope more people pay attention to reducing bloat than looking
| campy, kitschy, messy, imperfect.
| chadlavi wrote:
| The editable landing page is a great intro to the product, but it
| would maybe be good to have a big CTA button above the fold
| that's like "Edit this page". Much more noticeable than the
| bottom right corner pencil button.
|
| EDIT: though of course your main CTA is to drive signups. That
| makes sense too. Maybe this is a secondary CTA right under the
| signup button?
|
| Also the signup button is below the fold on smaller windows,
| might want to reconsider the size of the text above it (at least
| on viewports that are <700px tall?)
| cwmartin wrote:
| This feels like it's in the same family as straw.page[1]. Both
| are a really refreshing break from homogeneous minimalist web
| design that's taken hold over the past few years.
|
| [1]: https://straw.page/start /
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26124581
| swyx wrote:
| this reminds me of https://e.gg/ by facebook NPE too
| snarkypixel wrote:
| So cool! The UX is amazing, will definitely recommend to my
| little cousins.
| twoslide wrote:
| I found it unusable on Firefox 81 (including with No addons).
| Clicks don't work at all - seems to work fine on Chromium. I
| suggest testing on a broader range of browsers.
|
| Edit: It's just my version, not an issue with the site.
| dubcanada wrote:
| The issue on Firefox 81 seems to be a z-index issue with the
| edit toggle button. Setting it up a 100 fixes it. On Firefox 81
| the z-index seems to be calculated to z-index: -2147483648;
|
| Is there a particular reason you are using a 1 year old version
| of Firefox?
| xhfloz wrote:
| Sorry haven't been good @ replying, but just fixed this bug!
| likeafox wrote:
| It's running surprisingly fast on FF 88 for me, just for the
| record.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| I am using Firefox 88 (std, auto update) and it works fine.
| Most polyfill libraries only support the last 2 major versions
| on greenfield browsers because they update themselves --
| perhaps there is a problem with your auto updater?
| twoslide wrote:
| Probably - stupid "managed" updates from my organization.
| Probably should just uninstall the managed version and
| install the normal version from the web.
| tmountain wrote:
| I love the concept, and I was having a lot of fun building my
| first page; however, I had to restart my computer after adding
| about half a dozen page elements, and all my progress was lost.
| It'd be great if work was saved as it was edited on the page.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| The ease of editing scratches an itch I didn't know I had.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Editing the very landing page feels naughty! It's fun!
| thih9 wrote:
| I wish the "edit" button was more visible. I noticed it only on
| my second visit. After I found it, I enjoyed playing with the
| page and the first hand experience a lot more than reading about
| it. During my first visit I wasn't impressed but now the product
| looks cool to me.
| vidarh wrote:
| I was about to say the same. Make it bigger. Make it pulse.
| Mention high up in the text.... Or something. I scanned through
| the page and was annoyed there didn't seem to be a way of
| testing it without signing up and was about to leave when I
| spotted the edit button.
| ageitgey wrote:
| I mean honestly, this is pretty good stuff. Nice job!
| unilynx wrote:
| I miss a 'Jump to random mmm.page'. No time or creativity to add
| something myself, but I'd like to get a few impressions on the
| jumbly messy things that are being made..
| xhfloz wrote:
| gallery coming soon -- i've been resharing some nice pages on
| https://twitter.com/xhfloz in the meantime!
| rchaud wrote:
| Great idea, would be good to see what users have created. It
| shouldn't be totally random though, as that could just go to a
| bunch of incomplete sites. It should be curated a little bit.
| paulpauper wrote:
| drag and drop tends to create major code bloat. i dunno if this
| is different.
| Zetaphor wrote:
| The target audience for a site like this generally isn't aware
| of or concerned with things like code bloat.
| crazypython wrote:
| I love that it fuels creative freedom, but this seems to be
| proprietary, which means freedom is still restricted.
|
| Consider releasing code under AGPLv3 and styling/pictures
| GFDLv1.3? (GFDL has very strong attribution requirements: you
| must keep it as part of the title and include other parts.)
| bencoder wrote:
| This is really great!
| Joe8Bit wrote:
| > Websites shouldn't all look the same. We prefer campy, kitschy,
| messy, imperfect.
|
| I really like the design aesthethic this product encourages.
| There's so much charm and fun and eccentricity that's lost in a
| web where full-height responsive image backgrounds and blocky
| design frameworks are ubiquitous.
|
| If this can help people express just a little bit of the wild
| creativity of things like early 2000's MySpace layouts or
| GeoCities pages I'll be a big fan!
| duxup wrote:
| Is there a way to ...see this design aesthetic outside their
| main page?
| rchaud wrote:
| Not sure if this is what you mean, but I thought Basecamp's
| homepage kinda resembles MMM's landing page:
|
| https://basecamp.com/
| duxup wrote:
| Thank you, feels very friendly.
| benbristow wrote:
| Reminds me of Piczo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piczo)
|
| Was a website in the mid 00's where you could build your own
| website (anameofyourchoosing.piczo.com) and then decorate it
| using a WYSIWYG editor via drag and drop. Was really popular
| with kids when I was in primary school (including myself).
|
| There were no templates or any grid systems etc, you'd start
| with a totally blank white page and you'd just add different
| premade widgets or HTML snippets to the page, customise the
| background etc. etc.
|
| Made for some interesting designs to say the least. You'd have
| to be pretty good at it to make anything that looked
| professional due to the impreciseness of it all though.
|
| Shame there doesn't seem to be really much archived of the
| service or any of the sites, unlike Geocities. You can see some
| examples of sites if you look on Google Images though.
| open-source-ux wrote:
| " _There 's so much charm and fun and eccentricity that's lost
| in a web where full-height responsive image backgrounds and
| blocky design frameworks are ubiquitous._"
|
| This reminds me of this web design "meme" from 2016: _Which one
| of the two possible websites are you currently designing?_
|
| https://twitter.com/jongold/status/694591217523363840
|
| Five years on, and it still holds true today.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| I don't know, on the other hand, "random" is kind of a tired
| aesthetic.
|
| Little inspires less confidence about someone's creativity than
| schizophrenic jumbles of gifs.
|
| Besides, there wasn't a reduction in fun and eccentricity. So
| lets permit for a second that being "random" and being fun and
| eccentric are the same thing (they're not). Part of fun and
| eccentric moved to video games, the real safe space on the
| Internet for it. Part of it went away because personal websites
| became public facing destinations in a way MySpace and
| Geocities pages never really were.
|
| And before you say that MySpace _was_ a public facing
| destination, it is proving my point that musicians rapidly
| moved away from it long before Spotify homogenized the way we
| access music - it wasn 't a music industry thing. It's that
| Instagram does a better job at doing what MySpace did, and it's
| because non-random people just communicate with pictures of
| themselves, particularly their bodies, as the lowest common
| denominator.
|
| Why is the loss of "wild creativity" no real great loss?
| Ultimately we can appreciate how hard it is to design nice
| looking stuff a lot more. Even nostalgia for that old Internet
| you're talking about is kind of toxic, especially to people who
| are genuinely random, because nostalgia is a huge obstacle to
| getting people to try new things. And that's why maybe those
| blocky design frameworks are here to stay - because stuff that
| feels visually familiar on something that doesn't really
| matter, like a website, convinces the visitor to try something
| new that does matter - whatever you're writing, composing,
| making, etc. that you're putting on the web in the first place.
| keithnz wrote:
| I think now that many live in a
| youtube/twitter/twitch/facebook/insta sandbox where you can't
| customize your "space" very much, those days of people crafting
| their own corner of the internet is really gone.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| I can imagine that this product would transition very well
| into a social network that creatives, artists and such would
| find very appealing.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Yes!! Why not, the website as art? As the medium and the
| message? A network of creative expression? Or as a "diary"
| where every entry is more scrapbook-y and less uniform
| blog?
|
| Could be fun. We need more fun.
| indigochill wrote:
| Honestly, because it takes work. I'm not even talking
| about technical work, but creative work. To do this well,
| you want to think about your message and then about how
| to convey that message not just in the content, but in
| how the content is presented (sometimes geocities-esque
| chaos isn't quite the right vibe). Then you need to
| figure out how to fit that presentation into the
| assumptions of your web technology (I personally feel
| like the DOM is a straitjacket, but I'll concede since I
| don't work heavily in the front-end myself, maybe there
| are cute hacks that make it less so, short of just making
| the page a full canvas for something else like three.js)
|
| Anyway, I've developed two "fun" pages myself, playing
| around with alternative ways to present content on the
| web:
|
| 1. https://maxsond.github.io/ (website traversal as
| interactive fiction)
|
| 2. http://tilde.town/~indigo/ (website traversal as
| pseudo-CLI)
|
| Neither of them really flesh it out to what one might
| consider a full website, but are more light-weight
| experiments in alternative ways webpages can present
| content.
| rchaud wrote:
| > To do this well, you want to think about your message
| and then about how to convey that message
|
| We all have to do some version of this in PowerPoint for
| school or for our jobs. We can go nuts with PPT
| transitions and animations, but we usually don't.
|
| This is the same principle. You can use it to make a nice
| Squarespace like site, or go full lo-fi punk rock zine if
| you want. IMO that's what computers promised in the '80s
| and later with desktop publishing software. It's been
| missing from the web for far too long.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Work? Or time? Hobbies aren't "work"? Time sucked up by
| FB or Tw isn't work? If that tool / platform gives me a
| way to expess myself and I want to express myself, that's
| not work.
| tkgally wrote:
| My daughter is a professional illustrator. I don't often
| show her things I learned about on HN, but I just showed
| her this site and she loves it. She has already signed up
| and is playing with her new site now.
| swashbuck1r wrote:
| The flexible WYSIWYG editing is top-notch! I'm sure you'll get a
| thousand feedback ideas, but... if a next goal was to get folks
| to make it an expression/view of themselves, it would be good to
| help them connect content that they are already making back into
| their page. Being able to drop in a API feed of their tweets,
| blog posts or videos -- and then applying some of your kitschy
| formatting to it -- might bring back even more of that MySpace
| feel...
| offtop5 wrote:
| Love it, add custom URLS!
|
| The next time I start a new project, I might use this for a
| landing page !
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(page generated 2021-05-12 23:01 UTC)