I know HN prefers we focus on the content and not the design but I have join in to say that word scrolling experience was brilliant.

I was focused on the data initially scrolling through until I suddenly realised, wow, this is really nice!

“non-trivial” is one of those words that seems like it should be a Claude-ism but is actually just the single best word for a concept that comes up extremely often in research and engineering discussions.

“Orthogonal” is similar. It’s been commonplace for decades in my world but seems Claude-ish.

You did a fantastic job; very to-the-point with effective visualisations. Kudos!

One very minor note: if your scroll device reports pixel-perfect deltas rather than discrete scroll-wheel ticks (e.g. logitech mx master, laptop touchpad, etc), the behaviour in the word search box is a bit weird. Arrow keys work fine though.

Thank you!

I did test it with my mac touchpad without issue. Maybe the problem is that I wanted to make discrete scroll-wheel ticks work. I just tried a fix by normalising deltaMode to pixels.

If you could just paste this in your console, I would have a better idea:

    document.querySelector('.wall').addEventListener('wheel', e =>
      console.log(e.deltaMode, e.deltaY.toFixed(2), e.defaultPrevented ? 'PAGE' : 'native'), true)

FWIW I got a bunch of "(-)10.00 native" in the console, "PAGE" never showed up no matter what I tried. Firefox, also a Logitech mouse, no trackpad though.

On a compatible Logitech device, browsing through the word search box benefits a lot from enabling hyperscroll.

For those who didn't know (like me 5 min ago):

Hyperscroll - special mode turned on with a button next to scroll that turns off scroll friction and let's you scroll into infinity (wheel keeps turning after you lift your finger).

Yeah, it takes some getting used to (the wheel is VERY sensitive to even the smallest finger movements), but when you get used to it, it's clearly superior to a regular scrollwheel. Much less finger fatique.

G502 user here! I also put a draggable scrollbar for the less lucky :)

> Some believe what separates men from animals is our ability to reason. Others say it’s language or romantic love, or opposable thumbs. Living here in this lost world, I’ve come to believe it is more than our biology. What truly makes us human is our ability to hyperscroll!

> Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World

Congratulations! I was going to comment on the scroll field in particular when I saw this. I didn't even realize you had to hand-craft the component, but it's such a nice UI idea in general, the way the scrolling works and how the content above changes.

Thanks! The real and probably unnecessary pain was having the words in different sizes.

Frankly, that's the one part I would have done differently. Mixing font sizes rarely looks good, but that's just my personal opinion. If you want to visually indicate intensity, I'd have used color, or rather saturation. Not the text itself, maybe a small pill next to it. But I don't think it's necessary, the order already conveys some sort of ranking, I don't think cardinal information adds much here.

I think I agree afterwards, but now I developed emotional attachment to that quirk ^^

Basically when scrolling, the frame around words will have a stable top edge to avoid flickering, and it took me a few iterations to make it work.

I tested multiple designs, some of them inspired by word clouds and the size variation stuck afterwards.

Mobile experience is great! Thanks for thinking of us!

I just wanted to pop in and say that I found the site delightful. It’s aesthetic, concise, and everything works so quickly and responsively.