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The making of Medium.com

140 points| aquid | 13 years ago |teehanlax.com | reply

62 comments

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[+] ValentineC|13 years ago|reply
Loved the article, not a fan of the 2.4MB video of hands typing on an Apple keyboard [1] I was forced to download. I'm just glad I wasn't on a mobile connection (tethered or otherwise) with a bandwidth cap.

I searched for methods to disable MP4 video downloading on both Chrome and Firefox, but they don't appear to work (for Firefox, it was about setting media.autoplay.enabled to false). If anyone knows how I would be able to do so, I would appreciate learning how to.

[1] http://www.teehanlax.com/resources/img/story/medium/header.m... (2.4MB)

[+] call|13 years ago|reply
The whole damn page is 13 MB. It took over a minute to load on my 1.5mbps bandwidth-capped WiMax connection. The tab in Chrome is using over 200MB of memory on my Mac. With chrome using the maximum possible screen real estate, I can't even read the title on my 1440x900 mbp. http://cl.ly/PK8o

A+

[+] benjamincburns|13 years ago|reply
Not to mention that on a 13" rMBP it pushes the title below the fold. Doesn't give me a lot of confidence to try their "distraction free" writing interface...
[+] kGrange|13 years ago|reply
Not to mention users like me, who opened it in a background tab, never even saw the video playing. I wouldn't have known it was anything but a blurry image if I hadn't seen this comment.
[+] xSwag|13 years ago|reply
Install Ad-block and add custom regex blocking all .mp4 files? I'd give you an example but I'm on my mobile right now
[+] yesimahuman|13 years ago|reply
2.4 MB for a video that is part of what was clearly a designed interactive experience for desktop/laptop doesn't seem like any kind of big deal.
[+] cmelbye|13 years ago|reply
Wow, great article but terribly designed website. Really slow scrolling, confusing layout, not sure what I could interact with and what I couldn't. (Some elements used the "pointing hand" cursor yet indicating I could click, yet did nothing when I clicked.)
[+] wiremine|13 years ago|reply
I had the completely opposite reaction: I thought it the layout was excellent. (Although I agree the reaction on the mouse over was confusing).
[+] stephengillie|13 years ago|reply
It's a decent layout if you turn off Javascript.
[+] alberth|13 years ago|reply
Reading the site on my smartphone, it was excellent.

Reading the site on my laptop, it was horrible.

That could explain the mixed responses to the UI of the site.

[+] lucian1900|13 years ago|reply
Not to mention the stupid top bar that moved around the page. Websites don't get to have chrome!
[+] caseyf7|13 years ago|reply
If Medium is the future of publishing, I'm going to need a robot to scroll for me. That was great, but now I'm tired.
[+] whostolemyhat|13 years ago|reply
Yep, I could only fit about five sentences on the screen at once. I ended up zooming out to about 70% to make it more comfortable to read.
[+] saeidm|13 years ago|reply
I still like http://throwww.com better. I'm only saying that cause I built Throwww, though.
[+] robotmay|13 years ago|reply
I had almost this exact same idea last year (a one-off blogging platform). It wouldn't have looked anywhere near this nice though, good work :)
[+] zipop|13 years ago|reply
Medium does not seem to have a way to post from an iPad. It says I have an unsupported browser. Really, Medium? Or am I missing something?
[+] NSilver1776|13 years ago|reply
I really like the idea here, the quality of information has been so badly degraded by spam and status updates that it would be valuable to have a place for meaningful discussions on abstract ideas.
[+] arkitaip|13 years ago|reply
Very detailed and useful write-up about how actual design work is done in complex web app projects. Makes me actually want to use Medium.
[+] dreamdu5t|13 years ago|reply
Medium is not a complex webapp. Facebook or gmail is a complex webapp.
[+] bowerbird|13 years ago|reply
i read this article back when it was first released, but my memory is that the takeaway message was that if you've got a lot of money to spend on designers, designers will be quite happy to take it from you. :+)

-bowerbird

[+] marban|13 years ago|reply
If you guys are interested in a similar tool like medium (without the network), I'll be launching http://www.postagon.com next week.
[+] msutherl|13 years ago|reply
Yeah, the problem with Medium is that it's beautiful and well designed – almost perfect, really – but the community is so Silicon Valley. I wouldn't want my writing associated with that trash.
[+] ranjez|13 years ago|reply
Its taken twice the time and 10 times the people and budget to build something half as great as Glipho I guess silicon valley is all about who you know!
[+] thoughtcriminal|13 years ago|reply
I personally won't ever use Medium because it deprives the author of branding and recognition.
[+] intropic|13 years ago|reply
I wonder what the reasoning was behind branding the author in the URL path as opposed to as a subdomain. It seems like a very strange approach to take from guys who have done the latter before.

If nothing else it sure makes posts from Medium very annoying on HN because I can't actually tell which blogger's post I'm going to read until I click the link (primarily read on iPad so no hovering).

[+] barretts|13 years ago|reply
Why, simply because it's hosted on a different domain? It seems to help people reach an audience wider than they would otherwise, which is anything but bad for branding.