It's a fun little project and I appreciate the effort you put in, but I found it hard to "consume".
As already written, the text takes too long to show up. Why not have a mouse-over and show a full block of text?
I think it would have been great, if the effort went into something more "useful", like improving/cleaning up something like Sheldon Brown's collection, which is already great.
Furthermore, so many things are missing and unclear
- you seem to show only a ahead stem. I'm missing the spacers.
- you're missing the Dunlop valve and the new Schwalbe Click Valve
- your selection/explanation of wheel sizes also leaves much to be desired. Having someone finally explain the ETRTO sizings to me ( and that both 28" and 29" wheels use 622mm rims ) was eye-opening
I know that it's hard to draw the line somewhere and that this should be a site for beginners. but still
Tohsig · 1h ago
Fun idea! I'll echo the comments about bringing in the text all at once, or at least line by line. The characters are definitely printing out at your 60 chars/second target; it's just significantly slower than I think a lot of people read.
Some additional common parts you might consider adding:
- Rear wheel hub (cassette compatibility) and front wheel hub
- Bottom bracket (crankset compatibility)
- Axles (quick release and threaded)
- Star nut (what the top cap is generally bolted to)
And some minutia you may want to add:
- Many rear derailleurs nowadays come with a simple on/off clutch that adds extra rotational resistance to the cage arm. That helps keep it from pivoting during rougher riding and in turn helps limit "chain slap" against the frame.
- The handlebar stem is one of the most, if not the most, critical components on a bike in terms of safety. You tighten the top cap just enough to pull all of the headset components flush against each other, but the stem bolts are what actually lock the handlebars to the fork. Just something I always emphasize because I've seen too many people try to wrench the top bolt within an inch of its life, barely tighten the stem bolts, and then almost hurt themselves when their bars rotate and/or twist while riding.
lemoing · 2h ago
Hey folks, author here!
A bit of background: I'm a software engineer by trade, but I'm currently on sabbatical doing a year-long working holiday in Australia. I love riding bikes but only had the most beginner-level knowledge of them before I found a job at a bike shop. This was a fun personal project to try to capture some of what I've learned so far, targeted at fellow beginners. It's going to be incomplete/lacking if you already have some bike knowledge, but I hope you all enjoyed it all the same.
Please keep the feedback coming; it's late in Australia, but I want to make sure the bike info is at least accurate, if not comprehensive!
nathanallen · 1h ago
Congrats on building and releasing this passion project! I love the hand drawn aesthetic. You had a vision and made something totally unique on your sabbatical. I hope you don't get bogged down in making it more "accurate" and "comprehensive" (unless you really want to!).
Similar to you, I worked in bike shops for years before getting into web development, so naturally some of my first toy-projects were an attempt to combine what I was learning with what I knew about bikes -- for example, a diagnostic tool based on the sound your bike is making (http://nathan.codes/showcase/#bikegnosis). It will be imperfect, just like your bike, but it will be totally your own!
manveerc · 29m ago
Congratulations! As a bike noob, this was very informative.
PS: I see a bunch of feedback along the lines of,”Why did you build this?” Please ignore. It's a passion project. Do whatever gives you energy.
andrei_says_ · 2h ago
Thank you for creating this!
Please consider removing the animation effect from the text. If it’s very important to you, maybe use a fade-in for the full paragraph?
While cute, the effects force the viewer to wait which is not a pleasant experience.
Evidlo · 4h ago
Cool!
The text printing time felt pretty long to wait for the whole paragraph.
Thanks for the feedback! I think the text speed might be an issue with my implementation: it adds a single character on each animation frame with a WPM speed limit, but this would cause problems if a device isn't able to animate very quickly. A better approach would probably be to use the wall clock time to figure out how many characters to add on each animation frame.
As for SVG, I've used that in other projects but since I was working with pixelated drawings instead of vectors, I chose canvas instead. The downside is having to do a lot more of the work on animations yourself (but this ended up being an upside for me since it was a lot of fun :) )
hamdingers · 3h ago
What's the WPM limit you're using? It seems to be significantly slower than my silent reading speed.
As already written, the text takes too long to show up. Why not have a mouse-over and show a full block of text?
I think it would have been great, if the effort went into something more "useful", like improving/cleaning up something like Sheldon Brown's collection, which is already great.
Furthermore, so many things are missing and unclear
- you seem to show only a ahead stem. I'm missing the spacers.
- you're missing the Dunlop valve and the new Schwalbe Click Valve
- your selection/explanation of wheel sizes also leaves much to be desired. Having someone finally explain the ETRTO sizings to me ( and that both 28" and 29" wheels use 622mm rims ) was eye-opening
I know that it's hard to draw the line somewhere and that this should be a site for beginners. but still
Some additional common parts you might consider adding:
- Rear wheel hub (cassette compatibility) and front wheel hub
- Bottom bracket (crankset compatibility)
- Axles (quick release and threaded)
- Star nut (what the top cap is generally bolted to)
And some minutia you may want to add:
- Many rear derailleurs nowadays come with a simple on/off clutch that adds extra rotational resistance to the cage arm. That helps keep it from pivoting during rougher riding and in turn helps limit "chain slap" against the frame.
- The handlebar stem is one of the most, if not the most, critical components on a bike in terms of safety. You tighten the top cap just enough to pull all of the headset components flush against each other, but the stem bolts are what actually lock the handlebars to the fork. Just something I always emphasize because I've seen too many people try to wrench the top bolt within an inch of its life, barely tighten the stem bolts, and then almost hurt themselves when their bars rotate and/or twist while riding.
A bit of background: I'm a software engineer by trade, but I'm currently on sabbatical doing a year-long working holiday in Australia. I love riding bikes but only had the most beginner-level knowledge of them before I found a job at a bike shop. This was a fun personal project to try to capture some of what I've learned so far, targeted at fellow beginners. It's going to be incomplete/lacking if you already have some bike knowledge, but I hope you all enjoyed it all the same.
Please keep the feedback coming; it's late in Australia, but I want to make sure the bike info is at least accurate, if not comprehensive!
Similar to you, I worked in bike shops for years before getting into web development, so naturally some of my first toy-projects were an attempt to combine what I was learning with what I knew about bikes -- for example, a diagnostic tool based on the sound your bike is making (http://nathan.codes/showcase/#bikegnosis). It will be imperfect, just like your bike, but it will be totally your own!
PS: I see a bunch of feedback along the lines of,”Why did you build this?” Please ignore. It's a passion project. Do whatever gives you energy.
Please consider removing the animation effect from the text. If it’s very important to you, maybe use a fade-in for the full paragraph?
While cute, the effects force the viewer to wait which is not a pleasant experience.
The text printing time felt pretty long to wait for the whole paragraph.
Also another simpler approach might be to use SVG animations like this: https://codepen.io/mikemjharris/post/svg-toggling
As for SVG, I've used that in other projects but since I was working with pixelated drawings instead of vectors, I chose canvas instead. The downside is having to do a lot more of the work on animations yourself (but this ended up being an upside for me since it was a lot of fun :) )
The infernal suspension forks on 3 out of 4 of the bikes in my garage would beg to differ, both in upfront cost and ongoing maintenance.
Also - my suspension fork is 20 years old, has never had maintenance and is working fine. What do you do to yours? :)
(Or maybe my fork is NOT fine and I just don’t know it…)