norns.community: forward

dansimco · 2023-05-16T20:57:52.356Z

Bathing in the simplicity.

andrew · 2023-05-16T22:47:33.980Z

100% yes

suggestions/impressions

~~i really like the links up front on the script page, i’m preferential to hosting docs on github so it’s versioned alongside the script & now the external link is way easier to find~~
- ahhhh you’re just pulling docs from the repo anyway !! smart smart
use explore as homepage ! looks great & i appreciate the better use of screen real estate
the ui of the tags doesn’t really feel clear to me whether multiple selected tags are AND’d or OR’d. i was expecting AND but it’s OR (?) am i the only one ?
i miss the separation between general tags & connectivity tags on the old site. i could see that being re-split up into two separate rows on the new site. & i kinda miss the icons!

Gatrix · 2023-05-17T07:52:29.530Z

I think it’s OR. I would also appreciate it being AND’d, because OR isn’t really needed if you can just click single tags.
Maybe it’d be a good idea to select a “base tag” and “secondary tag(s)” to search for, so you could for example search for a looper, that can also be a delay or sequencer in addition to that, although this could just unneccessarily complicate the UI, but maybe it could be hidden under an “advanced search” option?
Other than that, this already looks and feels great, in particular the simplicity of it.
Last idea: What if there would be a “random script” button that’d take you to a random script, similar to wikipedia’s “random page”?

tehn · 2023-05-17T11:47:55.875Z

andrew:

use explore as homepage

indeed it looks good! but i believe that having a front page load several hundred images is a permacomputing anti-pattern.

andrew:

whether multiple selected tags are AND’d or OR’d

agreed, this should be AND

and a perfect moment to reiterate that we’d highly welcome contributions to fix anything

additionally, tag text needs some h-width, selected vs. mouseover color needs disambiguation

andrew:

separation between general tags & connectivity tags

we discussed this at length and opted to not (yet) revamp the catalog fields. right now “tags” are all smashed together. just like tags on this forum, there is no granularity so they become a grab-bag. one solution would be to abandon the “tags” field altogether and use two: “devices” and “categories” or something similar.

i would strongly prefer not to have the static site generator “sort” a bunch of tags into groups manually, which won’t account for the inevitable invention of new tags. the goal of this project was zero management: it’s a window into a dataset, not something that edits or curates or maintains data.

(sorry, setting a bad precedent here by not simply logging issues)

niksilver · 2023-05-17T16:39:00.322Z

Very impressive, and a great example not just of redesigning something, but rethinking it, too. Congratulations.

I’ve submitted an issue regarding font size, but otherwise really great work. Thanks.

fellowfinch · 2023-05-17T16:55:22.940Z

nicely done! I really like that it’s far more connected to the monome homepage layout than v1. The only thing I miss a bit is a search function, but you can easily go cmd+f and call it a day. I really enjoy the tags far more than group categorization in v1. Makes far more sense now, at least for me.

chochacho · 2023-05-17T17:29:10.631Z

Really dig the new look, easy to navigate and find things.

One of the featuress I really liked about V1 were the symbols representing which devices scripts were applicable towards (grid, crow, arc, etc.)

If that could continue to be a thing, that’d be really cool.

andrew · 2023-05-17T21:32:55.144Z

tehn:

one solution would be to abandon the “tags” field altogether and use two: “devices” and “categories” or something similar.

i’m a fan of this solution personally : )

(some crude googling suggests that a JSON schema can limit arrays to certain values, so it seems like some agreed-upon devices & categories could be enforced during the PR phase)

toneburst · 2023-05-18T11:39:30.523Z

My script, Bline looks good I think.

My personal preference; if the active area of the page has a limited width, I prefer to have the content centred on the page (as it is here), rather than stuck to the left edge, as this leaves a large amount of empty space on the right on larger displays, which looks awkward, I feel.

I’d also like to see code snippets have a box around them. They also seem to be formatted smaller than other text, which looks a little odd I think.

I haven’t read the entire thread, so apologies if the above have already been mentioned.

I applaud the effort to make user-generated content more accessible though. Keep up the great work!

tyleretters · 2023-05-20T16:36:52.369Z

thank you for all the encouragement, issues, ideas, and bug reports! some responses i wanted to bubble up:

spacelordmother:

I’d like to ask for the ability to view the site as dark text on a light background

thanks for bringing this up. we did it.

andrew:

i was expecting AND

Gatrix:

I would also appreciate it being AND

yes, we agreed. it is done.

niksilver:

I’ve submitted an issue regarding font size

awesome call out, thank you for this. done.

fellowfinch:

you can easily go cmd+f and call it a day

my thoughts exactly.

chochacho:

I really liked about V1 were the symbols

this issue got sorta swept up into the data normalization issue (see the quotes immediately below this ~~post~~ paragraph). symbols/icons are definitely on the table to make a return.

tehn:

one solution would be to abandon the “tags” field altogether and use two: “devices” and “categories” or something similar.

proposal: make it a non-breaking change by keeping the “tags” key but adding “devices”. we could optionally automate a one-time data cleanup PR for all the old scripts.

andrew:

that a JSON schema can limit arrays to certain values

yes! and there already is one in place for maiden: maiden/pkg/catalog/catalog.schema.json at main · monome/maiden · GitHub

toneburst:

also seem to be formatted smaller than other text

thanks for this call out. we addressed it! turns out to be a very strange feature/bug with browsers.

edit:

Screenshot 2023-05-15 at 09.46.02

blog post:

Northern Information

About two years ago we built https://norns.community. It was a massive project, both conceptually and technically. It served us well, but after a needlessly complex server migration earlier this year, we started talking about how to simplify.

JaggedNZ · 2023-06-02T07:19:29.465Z

Nice work on the new site!

Sorry, I have kind of slept in on this change and I was wondering if the old site content is archived somewhere? And if I could kindly get a copy of the midigrid documentation?

I’m still unsure how to add new midigrid documentation without adding midigrid to the Norns library. Is this possible?

tehn · 2023-06-02T11:12:15.971Z

norns community repo is a hard requirement to be added to the site

old site: 159.89.234.208

will be taken down shortly

eigen · 2023-06-02T11:15:19.825Z

the old site’s content was also automatically backed up at: this github repo.

it will remain available even when the old site will get taken down.

Igor_Temel · 2023-12-24T00:28:46.858Z

Could browsing scripts on norns.community (github hosted)
by date created/uploaded be implemented?
It would help to quickly find which new scripts are added,
or old ones updated.
Thank you!

eigen · 2023-12-24T17:00:46.699Z

norns.community (the inventory website) has no notion of “history” / “date added”. even though this could be reconstructed from the git history it’d complexify quite a lot the static site generation (potentially breaking it off its stateless nature).

@Gahlord did build a working RSS feed of newly added scripts to fill that gap. i don’t know if it’s in a ready state to be largely shared, though.

Gahlord · 2023-12-24T21:40:33.388Z

Here’s the RSS I built for norns.community. It’s based on the json feed from the github and will add new items if new items are added to it. But it doesn’t grab updates because updates aren’t added to that json either.

I’m done with it for now and probably won’t do any further work on it unless something in the json changes or someone pings me to say there’s a problem with it. It’s the best rss for the norns.community at moment haha.

xmacex · 2023-12-24T22:18:57.630Z

These aren’t the droids you’re looking for, but the way I follow new scripts is just use the forum… I am presuming this is a more comprehensive/comprehensive enough catalog. I have a watch for new posts in the library category and most of them are going to be for norns rather than crow, teletype or other things. Normal package updates tell me when scripts get updates, and then I’ll check their thread.

(Plus i visit the forum 25 times per day – don’t do what I do!)

fellowfinch · 2023-12-25T08:00:03.768Z

xmacex:

These aren’t the droids you’re looking for, but the way I follow new scripts is just use the forum…

This is my go to strategy as well. I find it more rewarding following the discussion of a newly added script than just seeing a new script in the pool.

Igor_Temel · 2023-12-29T22:42:24.758Z

I understand that, and I concur!

xmacex · 2024-07-22T15:52:43.313Z

I saw surfing on the cyberwaves today and came across observation that

The one I was looking at was Midigrid: use launchpads & midi grid controllers with Norns, whose documentation link here on lines as well as on norns.community points to https://norns.community/authors/jaggednz/midigrid. That gives a 404. The stuff is at Redirecting… (note the capital “J” in there) → midigrid | norns community. I’ve come across a few rotten URLs before, but this is the first time case is the issue.

Would it make sense to just lowercase the URLs or redirect from mixed case to lowercase?

Cheers