Forum Tree (2009)

I created this project back in 2009 when I thought a horizontal tree-based forum layout was a good idea.

It parses the Hacker News API, and generates a tree style view. Unfortunately it was designed to run on AppEngine, and due to lack of maintenance no longer works. Here’s the only low-res picture I have of it.

Features

• Edges draw with Canvas (back when Internet Explorer didn’t support it)
• Used Javascript for layout (before we had Flexbox)
• It runs pretty fast even on slow browsers
• Responsive design (before we had media-queries)
• Runs on Tornado and Google App Engine

Lessons Learned

• It’s good for people who like to skim, the highest rated conversation path is shown first
• Horizontal layouts like this require too much clicking and scrolling
• Don’t optimize for speed before considering usability
• Be careful when investing in platforms

Here is the Github repo.