Hacker News Reader

Comment by nailer | Hacker News Reader

Is there a demo online?

https://susam.github.io/spcss/

It boggles my mind how people keep forgetting to show what their visitors have come to their page to see. No one gives a fuck about a list of features until you explain what the damn thing is and show it.

I feel like having this sense of conciousness already gives you an edge over millions of landing pages that confuse the visitor. There isn't a better time to start a venture!

Thank you sharing the demo link from README. By the way, there is a "view demo" badge right at the top of the README that points to the URL you have shared, i.e., https://susam.github.io/spcss/.

However, this comment by @nailer is not the first one that asks about a demo. Others have asked for the demo link too despite the very first badge on the README being a "view demo" badge. That made me think that perhaps the "view demo" badge is not an optimal way to draw the reader's attention to an important link.

I guess, the readers ignore these badge-based links either because they associate badges with status displays (build status, coverage status, etc.), not links or because these badges are overused in many projects which could cause our minds to ignore them as noise.

In any case, I have added a text note to the README now, that says, "Note: A demo page is available [here][Demo URL]", to ensure that it becomes harder to miss the link to the demo page.

> I guess, the readers are ignoring the these badge-based links either because they associate badges with a status display

This, at least for me.

Me too - I expect those badges to provide dynamic status information, not just be static links. However, I found the "example" link just when I wanted it, as I'd finished reading the list of features. There are enough demo links now, imo.

> I guess, the readers ignore these badge-based links either because they associate badges with status displays (build status, coverage status, etc.), not links

I think that’s very likely; it will be a form of banner blindness:

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/banner-blindness-old-and-ne...

I honestly didn't see it at the top of the page, but only at the bottom. Thanks for responding and correcting the page, despite of my somewhat snarky comment.

Many projects place the demo link in the top right About box. Thats the first place I look at, demo first, readme second.

Thank you for the suggestion. Added the demo link in the About field too.

The lesson is you can’t communicate too much the “selling” part of the pitch which in this case is the demo. Screenshots in addition to the demo which are links to the demo and have a caption underneath that is a link to the demo might be helpful. Demo demo demo!

Thanks for adding a link.

Yes badges are for status.

Tests: passed

downloads: 500k

The link is better but you could also fix the link to be on 'demo page' not 'here'.

Done. Great suggestion. Thank you!

People don't read.

TBF I saw the demo right away, it is normally at the top of all github repo readme's

Huh? It says what it is and what it does on top of browser styles right there in the linked gh page, doesn't it? The question is more, like, why do we need to discuss those CSS "tricks" at all on a forum for "hackers"? I mean setting contrast and handling overflow of preformatted code text are as basic as it gets when it comes to text formatting. And come on, "prefer-color-scheme" as media query, really (when we have "the cascade" and user stylesheets, adding lots of overhead to CSS)? It appears CSS is made about as unhelpful and undiscoverable as possible.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com