[joaren]

I find myself agreeing with most of what you wrote, and yet, it doesn't matter. You keep sabotaging yourselves.

Does no-one do QA? Do you not have a Steve Jobs-esque character who has taste and an eye for detail and who can look at this stuff the way your users will? Because such a person would've looked at this and Noped the fuck out of there, cancelled whatever PR you had planned, and put everyone around a table saying "we're not there and can we fix it?".

Your first hyped launch thing was a sign-up form with blurry fonts leading no where. Now you've implemented a giant janky scrollbar with easing equations calibrated for "instant turn off". The parallels to Flash really are quite similar.

You should not imitate native behaviour unless you have someone going over it with a fine toothed comb, and you shouldn't be making grand claims about the future when you cock up the present.

If you believe your own claims, then why does your page work terribly on my brand new laptop, never mind the 4 year old one it just replaced?

[malandrew]

What's the lesser of two evils?

1) Launch an imperfect product that works well for some use cases; or 2) Perfect everything and be ridiculed as vaporware

I wish we were Apple and had $159 billion in cash reserves. We're not though and have to operate within different constraints that don't afford us the same luxuries. You can't really compare Apples to Famo.uses

[wyck]

No offence by I cannot read anything on your website because the native scroll doesn't work, nor does my keyboard ( I had to scroll using my mouse-wheel and it was not smooth). That is neither 1) nor 2), it's 101.

How can I trust your "Ready to start building a beautiful UI?", when the basic tenant of a UI in regards to a webpage is missing.

If you did this to any popular website it would be a mass exodus in no time flat.

[zoomerang]

If you spent two years hyping vaporware and then do a major Apple-esque launch with all the fanfair while claiming to the next evolution of technology...

... you should at least attempt to make the scrollbar on your own website work correctly.

Seriously. You don't have to be Steve Jobs to realize that your scrollbar needs fixing. It's not just unpolished, it fundamentally doesn't work.

[malandrew]

It took us some time, but it shipped, so by definition, it cannot be vaporware.

Yes, the scrollbar needs fixing. We're working on it. Remember that the framework is also open source, so we're open to receiving pull requests that help get these issues resolved sooner.

Wikipedia was once compared to Encyclopedia Britannica in terms of number of errors it contained. It had more errors, but shortly thereafter those errors were fixed. Many of the shortcomings of our scroller will be fixed very soon. Some fixes may take a bit longer, but anyone bitten by a particular bugs has the ability to fix the problem.

Linux also went through similar pains with obviously broken parts early on before it reached maturity.

I don't know about you, but I much prefer a world where open source projects exist, even if a little broken in the beginning. Whenever someone actively hates on an open-source project they are essentially littering in and poisoning the commons instead of helping cultivate and nurture that public space.

I think this is really the point I'm driving at that people need to consider. Building something of this magnitude and ambition takes time. It's open source and anyone, including everyone wielding criticism in this thread has the power to download the source code, try it out, find out where it shines and help polish it where it does not yet shine.

Give it a fair shot; discover its merits; help make it better for everyone.

[icelancer]

>1) Launch an imperfect product that works well for some use cases; or

I absolutely loathe this attitude that has taken over entrepreneurship. This is not OK. I don't give a shit what the Lean Theory zealots say.

[xiaoma]

>I absolutely loathe this attitude that has taken over entrepreneurship. This is not OK. I don't give a shit what the Lean Theory zealots say.

They've worked insane hours for over a year to create a tool. It's an imperfect tool, but one capable of doing amazing things. And they've given it away for free. How are you not OK with this?

[joaren]

If you work insane hours for over a year, your company is broken. That is a problem of time allocation and unrealistic expectations, and has no bearing on the quality or usefulness of the work being done.

As for "capable of doing amazing things", this is stuff that Flash was able to do better 10 years ago. If people hadn't forgotten where we came from, and browser makers hadn't ridden the CSS train to performance hell, Famous wouldn't even be necessary.

So far, all I've seen is a) huge, hyped up promises and b) janky demos that feel like some interaction design student's wild experiments. You don't need to be Apple to do this right, you just have to be able to be honest about the output of your own work.

[malandrew]

I expect negative comments on occasion from everyone, but you've been registered on HN for 16 days and every single comment you've made since you've joined has been vitrolic haterade that adds nothing constructive to the threads you participate or the community. Do you ever have anything positive to say about anything? If you're so embittered, why participate here at all?

[bottled_poe]

When the goal is to get rich, every bit of work has a dollar figure.

[nevster]

I agree but add that it's not lean. Being lean means having reduced functionality but the bits that you do launch should work well. In this case, the launched bits don't work well.

[SkyMarshal]

Don't sweat it, I recall Meteor went through the same thing way back when - cool core technology, no security or other practical considerations - and look at them now, $11.2M Series A from A16Z. You can never have too many JS frameworks doing cool new stuff pushing the limits on what's possible on the web, launch warts notwithstanding.

[malandrew]

Thank you for your comment. It refreshing (not because it involves my company (although that helps), but because it sets the right tone for the community). Encouragement with constructive criticism combined results in greater good.

TBH I'm not sweating it at all. I understand the criticism. Some of it is fair commentary from thoughtful people, some is typical cynicism that blinds the otherwise intelligent. At the end of the day, the only difference between a bug report and a rant is the tone of voice used to communicate.

I'm mainly trying to provide counterpoint so that others who have yet to make up their own mind have the opportunity to do so. Many discussions can often get trapped moving in the direction in which they start. Get of on the right foot and things evolve excessively positive without constructive criticism. Get off on the wrong foot and things spiral out of control into doom and gloom. Regardless of which way it goes, doing a reality check lets the conversation focus on criticisms that actually have merit instead of the devolving into the mutual admiration society or a grand hate parade.

[Dolimiter]

Agreed, let's keep it simple and polite.

So please, tell me, how do I scroll down on the homepage? I've tried everything.

[malandrew]

Truth be told, we probably have to fix the scrollview as it has been used on the front page and implement some features like keyboard controls. In the meantime, you can download the starter pack, http://code.famo.us/famous-starter-kit/famous-starter-kit.zi... , or check out the github repo, https://github.com/famous/famous .

What device are you trying to view the site on?

[nevir]

...or 3) Launch a product that is polished, but lacks some features.

[cnp]

Right here guys, right here. Lots of very real monetary lessons to be learned from the above

[malandrew]

Our website is not the product. I promise you that if you take the time to explore actual product we're working on, you'll see that it's pretty polished, but lacks some features.

[dragonwriter]

> Our website is not the product.

The problem is that it seems to be the only thing bigger than a one-click demo built with the product that is available, so it is -- whether you intend it to be or not -- the most powerful statement you have about what the utility of your product.

(It doesn't help that the broking scrolling makes it very hard to get to some of the rest of the content.)

If you think it represents the product poorly, I think you desperately need (1) to not rely on your product for your whole public-facing website (dogfooding is good, but part of that is having good judgement about fitness for purpose), and (2) build something that has a clear role that is more than a trivial demo that demonstrates the real utility of the product (something that's part of your public website, and a key and useful part and not just a demo, may be good, but it needs to be something that the product is ready to do acceptably.)

Or, if the problems really are fairly minor, then fix the problems that makes using it for your whole website and turn that into a plus.

> I promise you that if you take the time to explore actual product we're working on, you'll see that it's pretty polished, but lacks some features

Asking people to do more work to discover the value of your product is generally not a compelling way to get people on board with it. If the external visitors first impression isn't positive, its not their job to work harder to get to a positive impression.

[nevir]

Your website is seen to reflect the quality & state of your product - by extension it _is_ your product.

I realize all the negative feedback must be demoralizing, but humans are silly beasts who have knee-jerk reactions to most things, and don't bother delving any further. Unfortunately, it's often best to cater to that.

[joaren]

The fact that you seriously say "our website is not the product" shows how utterly misguided you are in your marketing. I am not trying to be mean, this is simple and logical advice.

You make a platform for making websites. Your website is a huge turn-off that reminds everyone of every shitty over designed web brochure / 'experience' they've ever seen. And you think this is just a problem because people are picky.

Amazing.

[rhubarbquid]

> I wish we were Apple and had $159 billion in cash reserves.

Apple went from near bankruptcy to that $159 billion by sweating the details. (and, I suspect, a certain amount of luck)

[mponizil]

For such an ambitious project, bugs at this stage are totally reasonable. The problem is that they're front and center following months of hype and promotion.

And there's nothing wrong with building momentum either, Famo.us has really done a solid job generating the buzz. But if you are going to take that route, then yes, the details at launch-time are dang important.

I'm very intrigued by the premise and think the progress is tremendous. But I can't really blame folks for their initial reactions and that's kind of a shame.

[dragonwriter]

What use cases is this good for? It seems to be fundamentally broken on both desktop and mobile for even basic functionality. There's something that solves only some very narrow provide problem better than existing solutions; that offers clear, if niche, value. But I don't see how this rises to that level.

[sequoia]

I'm not sure 'make scrolling (a feature the browser does natively) work on desktop' = "perfect everything"... I can perfect scrolling by creating a blank html page.

[blake8086]

This comment seems really mean.

[joaren]

No, this comment was factual, and consists of all the questions clearly nobody is asking loudly enough at famous HQ.