Show HN: FlakeUI
55 comments
·March 3, 2025alwa
freeamz
Or that Apple space based file system back in the 80's.
Try this a bit, it would be nice to be able to go directly to the grand-child, instead having to bring up the parent before going the child. Other wise can be a much better file naviation system then what we have. Especially on touch screen I would image.
unalarmed
I'd like to suggest adding support for clicking and tapping for navigation. Having to drag feels unintuitive.
chipaca
Thank you for the comment. I would not have understood "can be navigated using mouse" to mean "dragging".
Also I hate that I can't select text on this. Probably because "dragging".
miningape
Exactly, clicking should be the default so the drag handler doesn't prevent users from highlighting text - I literally cannot read anymore without frantically double-clicking/dragging on the words in the text
paxcoder
I think it would be pretty nice to be able to use the keyboard to navigate the UI (left/right arrow keys to "orbit the content", up/down to "zoom").
Using a pointer, I'd prefer to just be able to click on the oval to zoom into, maybe double-click to zoom back out a level, use the back button to go to the place I came from.
jeffhuys
Makes me think of arguman[1] and kialo[2]. I discovered arguman maybe 10 years ago and have been thinking about it ever since. It's non-functional now but the source code is available. Maybe it's just my wishful thinking, but if we could map out every detail of an argument, maybe we could make progress faster, as a species. If this were incentivized well (like for instance polymarket), maybe with crypto rewards or something, this *could* take off.
[1] https://github.com/arguman/arguman.org - the website exists but is non-functional now
[2] https://www.kialo.com - feels like a dumbed-down version of arguman
keyserj
I think if we could improve our ability to easily & precisely communicate arguments, that would be huge for humanity's ability to deal with problems. I'm building a tool[1] that I'm hoping can help with this, maybe be a successor (in some ways) to something like Kialo.
It's critically missing suggestions/approvals[2], and perhaps a simpler interface[3], but I think that, for arguments about problems/solutions, the idea of grounding arguments within a cause/effect diagram is really powerful both for getting on the same page and for making concrete progress towards improving a situation (rather than arguing for argument's sake).
I'd be happy to get your thoughts on it if you have any (I'll be making a HN post about it sometime soon^TM).
jeffhuys
> I think if we could improve our ability to easily & precisely communicate arguments, that would be huge for humanity's ability to deal with problems.
I've been thinking the same thing, and also started working on it in the past. Whenever I voiced this (like here) others came to me saying they also thought of it as at LEAST a part of "the solution". You seem to actually have something going here!
I'll take a look at your three links, a first look at [1] gives me goosebumps, you have no idea how happy I am that I'm not the only one that still has this top-of-mind, especially nowadays, no matter what side you lean towards.
I can't really find the words to convey my elation here, so you'll have to do with a simple "wow, thank you!".
keyserj
That's awesome to hear :). I also appreciate knowing that I'm not the only one thinking about it.
bflesch
interesting. I've been thinking about building something like this to provide a structured framework for social media discussions and argument chains.
settsu
This reminds me of the time a few years ago when mind mapping sites and apps exploded into popularity among the... "technorati" and sort of slightly seep into the wider online awareness but then seemingly, just as quickly, disappear into the background noise of the internet (I'm terminally online to a degree, especially when it comes to tech news—and have a pretty decent general awareness of pop culture trends—and can't recall having seen the topic referenced since the trend faded. But perhaps I'm just not in the right circles?)
fellowniusmonk
People mistake a helpful "view" for a useful UI.
None of these mind map, zoom first interfaces actually help with creating a global understanding.
People take an occasionally helpful "view" for navigating items and then mistakenly believe it should be turned into an active interface for creation and editing.
Graph/Mindmap views should only ever be a view and maybe a linking layer for nested text lists, actively operating in these interfaces is worse for global understanding and systems thinking.
I suspect this is because mind maps don't actually map to how our brain stores information.
Visual programming and even tools like KNIME work for stepwise workflow creation but they are not a good UI for new thinking, it's too much UI for novel idea generation and brainstorming, these interfaces are also useful for quickly understanding a DB structure.
That's why they never take off and remain a niche tool for the small number of people who have brain structures that find them useful or are willing to bend themselves to an arbitrary interface.
anorak27
Reminds me of prezi[0]. It would be great if there is an open source version of prezi similar to reveal js.
[0] https://prezi.com/p/p6evz0gdy5dr/ux-design-tips-for-product-...
panglesd
Maybe you are interested in slipshow: https://github.com/panglesd/slipshow/
remon
There's a significant performance issue. There's no good reason for a few ovals and texts to stutter on my system. May be worth investigating.
tearflake
May I ask, what machine you are running it on? On my Celeron (4GB RAM), things are OK-ish.
recursive
Intel Core i7, 48 GB, Firefox.
Decidedly not "OK".
tearflake
I'm sorry, I really wouldn't know what's happening there. On my Linux, Chromium works the best, Firefox can pass, Opera is a bit slower, and Epiphany (is that the name?) chokes a fair bit.
On i3, Windows things seem fine - I tried Edge, Chrome, and Firefox.
On Mac, I somehow managed to get it working based on Lambda Test web interface feedback, but I wouldn't know the real use performance.
tracker1
i7 is meaningless... it could be a 4c/8t processor from over a decade ago that's slower then buttered toast today, or something much faster with big/little cores more recently.
einpoklum
In the author's defense - this is probably a prototype, hacked together without trying to optimize performance. You should not judge the idea by its realization's performance at this point in time.
tearflake
It is true that I plan a custom renderer with scripting support, to replace the HTML version. From the tests I performed by now, it can be smoother and faster than the current version. But it is yet to be seen how well would a substitution to HTML catch up with the current state of art CSS+HTML+JS.
tearflake
At some moment I had a version with cached bitmaps that simply flew fast and smooth. But, since HTML has some serious issues with rendering to bitmap from js, I had to pick the slower version with native real time HTML rendering.
edu
Agree, it's slugish on my M1 Pro/16GB on both Safari and Chrome.
monkeydust
Liked this more than expected. Here's my possible use case.
In a work setting I am constantly juggling between excel,PowerPoint,word and bunch of online wiki style tools
When I have to craft something that requires information from these tools, like many, I end up creating a PowerPoint presentation.
Gets the job done but never feels ideal given the one way directional nature of it, yes you can hyperlink but gets messy for audience.
This style of navigation could help especially where you are layering the information across multiple themes (each theme say is a node). As audience you might go deep into one node quickly then zoom back out to understand how that node interacts with another.
QRe
Kudos for building something new, fresh & exploring, experimenting.
I don't see a scenario where this would be useful. It reminds me of exploded-view drawing but I don't see this being useful for textual content. Do you have an explicit use case? The example page, to me, looks very cluttered, overwhelming and IMO aesthetically unpleasing when reading on a mobile device.
tearflake
Maybe a note keeping app?
lacoolj
Seems to be a navigational flaw here - you can't get to any of the intermediate "sections" without manually going back one by one (other than "Home" to get to the absolute top)
Otherwise, this is pretty cool and would be great for one-way traversing (maybe a quiz/test would do well here)
kstrauser
Make it themeable like Gabocorp[0] and the world will beat a path to your door.
com2kid
Super fun, but not being able to scroll text within an oval using the scroll wheel kinda sucks on desktop.
The mobile UI is really slick though!
I feel like this UI would be good for some sort of narrative game, where each oval is a room and things keep changing in each room.
mindcrime
I really like this. And conveniently, I am just now working on creating a new personal website[1] + blog, and I could very well see using this for at least part of the site I'm building.
The only nit that I really have is that my intuition was that I'd be able to select new "sections" (or "bubbles" or whatever they're called) by clicking or double clicking. Having to grab and drag isn't bad but it violated the "principle of least surprise" for me a little bit. But not exactly a big deal.
It reminds me of the glory days when “hypertext” was a term uttered with a straight face to great stroking of beards—HyperCard, exercises in nonlinear narrative, VRML-based “navigation,” Apple eWorld [0] and the like.
> Would you like to bring a touch of adventurous spirit to your contents?
I personally would not, but I’m really glad people more adventurous than I are still exploring the periphery of UI design!
[0] https://www.macworld.com/article/223467/remembering-eworld-a...