Show HN: Please belittle and insult my free online notes and textbook platform

http://www.bookvoid.com/

54 27 14 years ago

Er, it sucks? Also, I don't understand what the product is or does?

This seems to be a common criticism. I have re-written the description dozens of times and I can't seem to get it right.

Many people tell me it's too long at there is too much text. Others tell me they don't see what it's for.

Even though I believe strongly in the value Bookvoid provides, the fact that I have difficulty articulating concisely this value is definitely a weakness.

One problem is that it was inspired by machine learning/ Bayesian probabilistic principles of how information should be organised and mathematical principles don't make good tag lines.

Maybe the whole thing is just too wonky. I don't know.

AznHisoka• 14 years ago

What problem or pain does it solve? How does it improve the quality of my life? Why should I care?

EwanG• 14 years ago

Seems interesting, but I really think you should start with a landing page that gives folks an idea of what the product is, and a couple sample use cases. Then a big button to "Start Using Bookvoid", and then drop them into your sample.

As has also been suggested, easy to see/use links to incorporate Evernote and other sharing platforms would also be a good idea.

FWIW...

craftsman• 14 years ago

An observation: your 'feature box' shows two things that I can do (create & read; add notes & highlights), and one mildly techie thing (tablet optimized).

Concentrate on what people can do on your site and what problem it solves. To be blunt, I don't care if it's been optimized for tablets, phones, or Big Chief notebooks. I want to know why I should spend any more time on your site.

Also: the navbar and title take up a lot of vertical space. Use that space to show and tell me how you can make my life better.

BenoitEssiambre7• 14 years ago

Seriously, I'm looking for harsh and honest criticism optimally of the constructive kind. I am having difficulty attracting users, especially content creators.

Is it something you could see yourself using? If not, why not?

It is currently compatible with Chrome, Safari, iOS and Android browsers.

trevelyan• 14 years ago

Ok... even with major improvements I could not see myself using this. This is why -- please do not take it personally:

(1) the core functionality already exists in the form of the hyperlink. HTML lets you easily reference external materials as well as handle inline footnotes. It is relatively easy to port existing content to HTML and vice-versa and mix-and-match reference styles. And people can dive into subjects in as much depth as they want on existing sites (look at Wikipedia). There are WYSIWYG editors. And content is portable. So why switch?

(2) if I care enough to write a book, I care about making it look good. The website does not look as good as a default blog, and the added functionality is intrusive and ugly. For one example, look at the way the down arrows occupy an entire vertical row, distorting the spacing of the text. The HTML design looks like it is using 1990s display defaults (no floats, no inlining), even though it is clearly more sophisticated once you check the source.

(3) teachers and educators very rarely put effort into creating content for institutional educational when it doesn't play into a larger project or effort initiated or supported by a school/grant. This might be a controversial statement, but which school started Wikipedia? Which school started the Khan Academy? Look at the limited number of open source textbooks almost twenty years after the web began making inroads and you can see your market does not really exist. Teachers will experiment with mass market platforms (like blogs, twitter) which have social reverb and cachet. They don't get institutional support for writing open source stuff on the web so there is more focus on fulfilling individual classroom needs than writing more general textbooks.

(4) compared to HTML, it's cognitively more difficult to have to always be thinking about what sort of stuff to leave out or minimize. Someone writing a textbook is already applying selection criteria. You are asking them to cognitively handle presentation-level data as well. This puts a higher bar on getting useful content even if someone starts writing.

(5) the triangles are too big and are on the right-hand side. The default is smaller triangles to the left which point to the left when closed and point down when open.

(6) "Bookvoid" is a problem. Even if someone out there hypothetically wants this, what keywords are going to bring them to your site and what metaphor will you use to explain what is happening? You don't have an organizing metaphor ("Wordpress for Teachers") that makes intuitive sense and helps your users figure out how to explain what you do to others.

(7) You would probably get better adoption with something like "Wordpress for Teachers" which simplified the install process, targets a specific market that wants your services, and includes default functionality that makes sense for teachers, such as easily converting their posts into a book format for distribution across the platforms they will care about (Amazon, iOS, eBooks, etc.). Not that I would enter this business, but....

tjr• 14 years ago

As soon as the page loads, Firefox tells me that this site is wanting to store data on my local disk. I'm not sure when I last saw a website wanting to do that. I don't know what exactly your site needs to do in this respect, but it might be good to not do that on the main page. Let your users learn more about who you are, what the site does, etc., before alarming them with stuff like that.

The site seems to break the back button. If I have to exert inordinate effort to browse backwards away from your site, I am unlikely to want to return to it.

BenoitEssiambre7• 14 years ago

That's interesting. I don't really support Firefox yet. I didn't know Firefox prompted users before allowing html5 offline storage. The webkit browsers don't have this behavior.

I use offline storage to sync books and make them available to read offline.

You are right that the back button behavior is a little weird. I completely missed this during my tests. Shame on me. The use of the history API was meant to allow people to bookmark places within books not to make "back" act all weird. I will have to reconsider how I do this.

Thanks for the feedback :-)

zitterbewegung• 14 years ago

I think you should make a landing page or demo page that doesn't use cache.manifest. This will probably solve that problem.

zubr1768• 14 years ago

Would be potentially useful if it could import or interface with an Evernote user account.

Morg2• 14 years ago

Annoying UI really . I hate the open close thingies, can't quite see the diff between one and the next inside, the I is either too big or ugly, and the fat grey bar in the bottom is ugly as well, prolly needs some rounding or whatever.

I know pale UI's are all the rage but you might want to consider a bit more color still - not very good at UIs myself it just felt really really grey.

Jun8• 14 years ago

The landing page is too wordy, I think. But other than that I won't use any such service unless I can download a local copy of the books and my notes for backup. I wouldn't want to waste hours creating notes and then having the service go away.

LarryMade4• 14 years ago

I don't like the font or spacing or something... something about the proportions kinda makes it hard to read comfortably (I'm on a mid rez LCD display)... Also might help having the border/background being a different color (hmmm, maybe a fabric book cover or endpaper texture? )

Option for author to "theme" thier book with 5 or so different layout themes so one would be fictional, another might be non-fiction (using some sans serif font), etc. Of course the reader can override if desired.

The book title at the top gets lost in the content.

The top menu symbols show up on the printout - might want to have the print version have a light BookVoid header showing... with the book title.

Maybe an option to border embedded graphics, that wake turbulence pic doesn't seem to rest well in the page... (can you caption it too? or have text wrapping options?)

When you go to settings the book content graphics disappear.

The navigation symbols are interesting but I would think trying to be a bit more conventional symbols (+/- magnifying glass, graphic of gate-fold, etc) would be worth a shot.

BookVoid? Sounds like limbo from books... Maybe instead of a word that reminds me of emptiness or clearing out, look for something growing or spreading... maybe look for Book[Word] combos relating to say garden, spring, sharing, inspiration,creativity?

LarryMade4• 14 years ago

Another thing - How do I delete a book I created?

BenoitEssiambre7• 14 years ago

I removed the book delete feature because I want to encourage people to delete only the content they really don't want anymore.

Since Bookvoid lets you create mashups where books can contain parts of other books, deleting an entire book risks making holes in other author's books. You can always empty all the sections and subsections of your book. It's not a bad idea to replace deleted content with a message explaining to readers why the content has disappeared and maybe linking to where they can find it if it's still somewhere.

LarryMade4• 14 years ago

I should also comment about the concept, I think its great! The big pluses are quick access to read and to create which simple, and folks could use it to make their own books.

As a comparison, I use Dokuwiki for my site, which is similar but a lot more prep to setup and get into (it's not a SAAS). I think if you take a quick look at it, it might give you some ideas for format concepts: http://portcommodore.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=larry:projects...

Print out one page to see how the layout differs from the screen.

BenoitEssiambre7• 14 years ago

This is all good stuff. Thank you.

Themes are a good idea. A printout mode is also on my list of wanted features. It's a bit tricky to implement because of the collapsed sections.

You are right, the book title is currently visually competing with the top graphic banner and it is a little awkward. This is the result of trying to do a landing page in a textbook oriented format. I should find a better solution to this.

As for the wake turbulence pic, Bookvoid allows me to float graphics left or right and have text wrap around them and it looks better on large devices. However, text wrapping around images sometimes end up squeezing text too much on smaller devices. I will try to find a solution, maybe conditional css or javascript that allows me to achieve best of both world. Good catch.

Interesting take on the Bookvoid name. I had difficulty finding a good name. In the end, the color scheme and name were inspired by an artist I like: Yves Klein http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Klein#The_Void

FreshCode• 14 years ago

What problem does this solve? Sell benefits, not features. Also, the spacing is terrible. I'd take a standard Twitter Bootstrap over this any day.

collypoo• 14 years ago

Have a look at tiddlywiki with the fold headdings plugin. It does a much better job.

shimsham2• 14 years ago

What is it? Seriously, what is it? If you can't describe what it is in 1 sentence, and not a long sentence, then you've lost your audience. Too many words and too many things to click. On my iPhone, I tried to read it, got bored cos I didn't get it, I scrolled then I scrolled then I decided to stick with it and ask what it is. Education, art, utility or something else?

Show HN: Please belittle and insult my free online notes and textbook platform

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