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by aero31aero 2157 days ago
I was looking to file some issues with the project but couldn't find a repo. Guess I'm too used to expecting things to be open source.

Anyway, I'm hoping the authors see this. I tried Shelly for a while and here's what I think:

1. The tutorial needs background. Its text displayed over more text and that's tough to read. For the first point in the tutorial, I couldn't locate where it was visually and had to carefully read what the various parts of the screen were saying.

2. Make the editor stop complaining while I'm writing something. Its too aggressive and made me immediately think of https://i.redd.it/nygb741tho951.gif.

Overall, I like the concept. I'd have wished the syntax was more like javascript so someone learning this could more easily translate their skills to other parts of the web, but I guess we have to compromise that for the nostalgia and simple commands like `right 90` etc. I love this!

2 comments

Thanks for the feedback!

1. the background should be almost-opaque, with very little transparency. Can you share which browser/OS? Probably some missing CSS :)

2. Ha :D Maybe a grace period? Did you mostly mind the squiggly underline errors, or the red box that appears at the bottom? Giving feedback soon enough but not being aggressive is a delicate balance, there's probably room for improvement here.

1. FF 77 on Arch, with ublock origin enabled. I'd still say almost-opaque is a bad idea for text-over-text. Were it an image, an opacity: 0.5+ value would be fine, but text is very distracting even at opacity: 0.8 or so.

2. Maybe that could work. A red underline is fine but the error at the bottom is the biggest thing. Instead of switching between neutral/error state, why don't you experiment with working/neutral state? If the code is fine, show a green tick at the bottom, else just show the error with grey color and a grey icon so it's visible but not attention grabbing. On the other hand, you'd get the advantage of getting people hooked with getting the code back to green. Positive reinforcement.

2.

WHERE IS THE RETURN VALUE, LEBOWSKI?