Nice idea. I really wanted to like this but I'm not so sure you've pulled off the execution. Just after a couple of minutes of usage I found so many compatibility differences between that a real shell that navigating around your site became rather frustrating:
* Tab completion was glitchy
* Deleting characters mid line was glitchy
* Commands don't follow common idioms:
- `ls *` would fail
- `ls -l` would fail
- `ls ` (space char after `ls` command) would fail
* I couldn't select the output from `ls` to paste into the prompt
* Symlinks don't behave link symlinks:
- I cannot `cat` them, have to click with a mouse
- Yet they are still displayed as a file in `ls`
* Common readline shortcuts like ^U don't work
* It barely works on mobile / tablets:
- Scrolling is all over the place
- Screen doesn't resize to use the full screen
- Pain to type commands on mobile keyboard because they auto-capitalise first characters
Also there seems to be some latency between keypress and the character appearing which makes the experience a little jarring too.
Given this is your main way to navigate the site rather than a secondary navigation system, I think it's something you either need to go full out or not bother at all as the novelty of a partially compatible - inspired by Bash - approach wears off very quickly resulting an in frustrating overall experience.
I enjoyed the hell out of it. It was like seeing something familiar from my world, in cake form at a restaurant. I flicked it with my spoon, had a chuckle, and moved on. It's a toy, not a tool.
I think it's fair to say it's both because it's the primary navigation tool on a site with a fair amount of linked content (otherwise what's the point in putting content on it if it's not meant to be discovered?)
As a toy, I do completely agree with you. As I said in my previous post, I do really like the idea. But as a navigation tool I think there are areas for refinement while retaining the same fun factor.
I think you're being pretty harsh towards a neat personal portfolio site. It would be different if it were for a product or service, but it isn't, it's just a fun personal site.
I think you're being pretty harsh about my intentions. I said it's a nice idea and worded all of my feedback constructively thus if the author wishes to further develop this they know areas one user struggled with.
I approached my feedback in terms of what I would like to read if I were the author and I mean that honestly because if this were my project I'd have valued that kind of post more than vague comments like "this is awesome" (which are obviously nice too but doesn't offer any guidance for enhancement).
As an open source contributor myself, I know how negative some people can be when you release a project. But at the same time we (myself included when I release products) cannot expect every comment to be glowing with praise. The real question is whether feedback is constructive or just critical. I felt I was the former and I sincerely hope that's the way the author read it as well because I did genuinely like the concept even if I raised specific issues about its execution.
Yeah, the one thing that made me click away from the site was the particle effects when typing. It really broke that 'suspension of disbelief' moment for me. I know it is not a real terminal, but if you are going to go to the effort of making people feel they are interacting with a terminal, then don't break that illusion with fancy chrome.
Agree. It's a fun effect to show off as a FE dev I guess, but it feels out of character. Maybe make a "party mode" or something? You could click a disco ball to turn it on! :D Other than that, cool idea and well executed.
I once helped conduct a hiring interview where the candidate had that enabled, it had an especially bad effect on the video compression in google hangouts screensharing.
There is a Real Terminal Emulator™ with some effects close to this (including, I believe, a nyancat cursor) called Terminology (from the Enlightenment folks).
I'm specifically annoyed that readline binding of open editor, ctrl-x ctrl-e doesn't work. Please fix, never visiting your site again. (Tongue in cheeks).
If the point of the site is to find clients/recruiters/etc.. then you should scrap this idea.
While technically this is somewhat impressive nobody who this site is aimed at will type commands to see your work/cv/etc.. They will just close the tab and move on.
I disagree. There are too many negative comments in this thread. This is an awesome site that will resonate well with clients and recruiters. It has exactly what they looking for and yet presented in such a refreshing way. It show cases your creativity, ambition and dedication to do something like this. Great job!
I started making my personal site as terminal just like this one and eventually scrapped the idea because it's a terrible experience on mobile, but also it's just gimmicky on desktop and will only be mildly interesting to other devs.
Sad but true. I spent some time building a personal site mostly for fun, but also to get back into industry. Many companies view a blog as a liability... better off studying for a few months to get some extra certifications.
I think it depends. If you're blogging about technology findings it's fine. If you're blogging about how much you hate <insert politician here>, then yeah companies may see it as a liability.
I'm interested in hearing his reasoning, too. Maybe said companies don't want people posting about what they're doing at work or don't want a PR nightmare if the employee says the wrong thing
I had mine for a while now http://chandrabhavanasi.com/ which was based off of jquery and a bunch of hardcoding. I haven't updated it in a while though. The new ones I see once in a while on hn like these are pretty nice though.
Would you mind if I use your source code to set up my own similar personal website? Of course, I will give the credit to you. By the way, I am impressed with this novel idea. I will tinker around the code to add my own features.
problem with the site is that since it only implements a subset of what one would expect from a shell you're constantly inputing things that do not work.
It was fun though. I learned to use Dreamweaver MX because at the time I was in elementary school and my teacher just started a campus newsletter club. We were also lucky to have computer class and got some HTML lessons. Mind you, this was 1999-2003 in HK. I was very disappointed at US’ computer class in my junior high.
Not sure. May be try to tap and hold? It might be not a normal text field, so Firefox might not understand it. There can be some global gesture for it may be.
It'd be interesting to collect stats on all the commands people try to run, and to implement all the ones Linux users are likely to have wired into muscle memory.
Cool site that doesn't run like a dog, I'm impressed! I actually spent a few minutes fiddling around trying to see what I could do on the terminal, can't say that for many other sites.
If I could offer one little bit of feedback; some labels on the menu at the top would be kind of handy, a few icons are easy to recognize but some aren't (at least for me).
It took me a sec to realise duchess.ai was a folder, not a file, and then another second to realise tab completion was trying to send me to duchess.air for some reason. Cool concept, just a couple of little things to iron out.
I found it frustrating, I didn't actually end up seeing anything other than the terminal I tried changing into folders, but it didn't seem to work. Seems broken.
I don't mind this but I wonder what it would take to make it so you could SSH to the same domain and make it somewhat interactive. Letting anyone connect with any username (and based on their username allow them to open files personalized to that) I often wonder the effort it would take to make custom shells for people to connect to without giving too much access to a server for personal reasons.
Pretty neat, but those particle effects are strange for me. Similarly, I've never used yet but Unixstickers has a terminal like interface on their website: https://www.unixstickers.com/terminal You can use it for shopping.
Nice! I made a site where information was primarily exposed via keyboard input (my personal site as well[0]) but I had to make sure mobile worked okay so I made a static version for mobile users.
What a cool idea! I was hoping there was going to be a directory of blog posts I could `cat`. I feel like there's some fun potential here if you keep fleshing it out, but of course who has the time?
I enjoyed how many people are quick to criticize that this doesn't work as well as an actual terminal. Because that was definitely, absolutely the point.
"Just one thing" - I'm sure Karl knows this is not fully-fledged, bug-free terminal.
Great concept Karl, I think you're a no-brainer hire for anyone who wants to add out-of-the box problem-solving to their team, since you just hacked your personal brand publicity very creatively :)
The concept is cool, but I'd like to point out a couple of issues.
The explosion/flashing thing is somewhat annoying. Honestly comes off as childish.
Tab-completion _deletes_ word under cursor if no match is found? Why?
Why is the terminal built on angular? Seems like an overkill. Partly because I think Angular is a terrible abomination, but in general there's not much going on there to even warrant a framework.
Well played Karlsteltenpohl, well played.