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Top Inventions at Browserling (catonmat.net)
121 points by bpierre on March 24, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 18 comments



For some reason I really really love the web design of this entire site. It makes me smile.

It's not exactly retro, but it has a happy carefree hacker feel to it. And it's positive and not ironic or cynical in tone. Perhaps it's because the logos haven't been touched by your typical SV design bod!

Also, Browserling is very nice.


Websites that hackers enjoy looking at often use bright colors overall + blue + stricter hierarchy than most (e.g. lots of boxes and a firm plan for nesting information). You might also enjoy: http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/

Blue has been discussed to death, and bright colors are never ideal to everybody, but the sense of hierarchy is the standout requirement to me. Hackers can't get enough of it. I'd guess this is because of the typical ST personality type (Meyers-Briggs).


Thank you!


With every "invention", framework that attempts to cover or correct a (of many) Javascript failing, I'm inclined to give Dart (or other clean slate language) a real shot. Pulling node into the client to get dependency support is clever, but suggests there must a better way.

I like Javascript for my own stuff, but it's a crap foundation for the future of computing (and I wouldn't want to support it for large systems).


I don't see what's wrong with JavaScript?


There's been much ink spilled over Javascript's failings (eg. http://rdallasgray.github.io/blog/2013/06/09/whats-wrong-wit...), but my high-level complaints:

1. becomes difficult to maintain large codebases for language-induced problems without multiple external libraries/frameworks/systems and/or expert practitioners.

2. code readability is all over the place (in contrast to, say, Python or Java). In fact, the best written JS I find to largely inscrutable. This is likely a personal failing, but I'm the one writing this list.

3. you have to write in a different language to get Object Oriented capabilities (eg. Typescript, Coffeescript). I'm inclined toward OO, so if I'm going to write in a different language, I might as well go all the way.

In short, amazing things have been in spite of Javascript, not because of it (not strictly true, since you can go nuts with the meta-meta generic programming in JS).


"Browserling lets you interactively test websites in all the browsers - IE, FireFox, Opera, Chrome, and Safari. ... Try it out at www.browserling.com! (Use Chrome)"

This reads as pretty ironic to me...


Oh well.


I'm trying to use testling and I'm uncomfortable with the fact that there aren't prices anywhere. If you click on "pay for private repos" you end up on a page where each link is broken ("quick start" contains "beep boop" and "support" has "article not found"). Discouraging :-/


Sorry about that, we'll get these documentation pages finished today!

The prices can be viewed when you sign in with your browserling account.


Thank you for the answer, I'm looking forward to it.

I strongly suggest you to put the prices immediately visible: while evaluating different products I started with the ones with a clearer pricing. Think about it: you have to check 10 products, 3 of them require you to create a login just to know how much they cost, the others are upfront about it. Which would you evaluate first?

Keep up the good work.


Every time I start writing a new node module, I stop and see if substack (or visionmedia, for that matter) has already done it.


Smart move. :)


I am a a happy user of everything they make, including the hundreds of open source node modules!


Thank you!


Can't help feeling the site is a bit more about the authors than helping the customer


Well that is my personal blog (catonmat.net), where I post updates about my company.


Sorry, that explains it... thought this was your marketing site.




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