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Scratchpad: Rapid prototyping from UI elements you clip/collect from the web (scratchpad.co)
52 points by adraper 5006 days ago
13 comments

I think people are taking the lean startup method of throwing a landing page up to gain intrest a little too far, this feels quite deceiving and to be honest has annoyed me that oh.. I'm just signing up to a mailing list and have to actually invite my friends to be 'front of the line'.. makes me feel like nothing has actually being built at all apart from a pretty landing page.
Yeah, and using the lean startup method on a HN post like this is particularly deceiving (considering HN is usually for stuff that's been built).
Standard HN comment these days. Bitch about signing up or sharing something and not make a single comment about the product itself.
As the designer/developer behind this I promise you plenty is being build, we'll be ready to start inviting people to use it in the next couple of days.

Sorry to have annoyed you, but there's really no better way to gauge interest/insight into what your doing early than this type of approach, it really does work out for the better in the long run.

"Sign up & Get Started Now!"

Thats exactly what your call to action says.. but thats blatantly a lie.. It gives the expectation of instant access.

"Sign up to learn more, Coming Soon, Be the first to know"

all alternative CTA's that are less deceitful.

I agree that based on the CTA you're expecting to go directly into the app, but to be fair that's the bottom CTA (I never saw it as it was below the fold of my screen).

Instead of taking the negative route, you could just tweet about it and ask for early access...

I too believed I would be signing up for a service that was already launched and thought twice when I realized I was being deceived.
Kinda. The popup after that says "Be first in line! We're launching soon.", before you give your email.

Exciting service. I would still be giving my email if it said "be the first to know".

You can do this today with the http://easel.io chrome extension.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/deejobgbijaihniifc...

It uses html/css, so you can even edit the things you import.

How are people gushing about this service in the comments when it's not even released/available -_-

I got so excited, signed up, and then nothing :(

Sorry, as was noted below the CTA was a little misleading, I've updated it since—nothing sinister was meant by it, just trying to gain insight into what people want as we put the finishing touches on the app, you should get an email in the next couple of days to start using it
What was the CTA before? Right now it says "Get Started Now" which is clearly not the case.
It says "Signup and Learn More" now, took a few minutes for the update to propagate
>"Sign up and get started now!" I register, and then nothing. Isn't this tool already released?
Sorry, guess some of the release text made it into the beta signup, we'll have a working app ready in the next day or so, if you signup i'll make sure you get first access—promise!
Alright. Thank you.
Did you get the idea for this from that one footnote to Bret Victor's recent essay? If so, that's some impressive turnaround time.
Ha, I wish I could say I was that fast, although the whole thing's still very much in it's infancy sadly my turnaround time isn't quite that quick!
Love the idea but isn't this the same thing as using command+shift+ctrl+4 and then pasting into a photoshop document?
It's similar yes (and partly what it's based on, i've been doing just that for years), but not everyone has photoshop (or wants to go through the effort of screenshot-ing and organizing their clippings on their hard drive
I couldn't help but realize the remarkable design similarities to http://www.blogic.com. I'm curious if it inspired you.
wow, some definite similarities, but no hadn't seen that site until just now. It's actually based on another site design I'd done a few years ago: http://yourboxseat.com/
Darn, I was going to say I was flattered.
Sorry, happy to lie if it helps :)
Looks like your site's SSL cert expired.
How different is this from easel.io?
The biggest difference is there's no extension to install (not a big deal to most). Also, we're focused on non-designers being able to get their thoughts/likes across easy to designers.

That said, as a designer myself the Scratchpad process is largely based on an existing process I've employed for a while to get things going to show other's in a simple manner what i'm thinking and get early buy in to be able to move forward faster and on my own terms.

Amazing tool. This is the kind of thing you've always dreamed of finding.
This is awesome, but isn't it a copyright nightmare waiting to happen?
As long as you don't redistribute what you copy I can't imagine it being a problem. It looks to be meant for prototyping/wireframing.
Looks like signup is broken :( Love to test this new tool out!
Odd, send me an email at andrew[at]scratchpad.co and I'd be happy to give you access when we have the tool live in the next day or two
In IE8, the stylesheet does not load.
Soooo excited about this!