Ask HN: Review my app "Interactive Block Diagrams"

4 points by pkc 16 years ago | 9 comments

I feel current block diagrams are not very self explanatory. For ex., you want to know brief details about block and know internal details of a block then need to go through rest of document.

"Interactive Diagrams" tries to solve this problem by allowing users to interact with block diagram to know more details about it. Specifically it will answer following kinds of questions -

* Briefly explain what a block is all about.

* Allow user to see internal details of the block in the same diagram itself and go back and forth between different blocks.

* Also allow to see the system block diagram in different views. For ex., it can have different tabs with one tab for "data flow view" of the system, another tab "control flow view", another for "architectural view" etc.,

From these concepts I developed an app which outputs an interactive diagram as flash file(.swf) as the output. The example block diagram can be seen at - http://roorky.com/misc/shapes.

For example single click on "Network" or "File System" block will popup a description box. Double clicking on "Network" or "FileSystem" blocks will change the diagram to internal details of "Networking" or "File System" in linux kernel. You can navigate between different block diagram through "Back" and "Home" links displayed at the bottom of the page.

I am looking for answers to following questions -

* Do you think there is a need for such kind of diagrams or tool which creates such diagrams?

* Is there a better way to solve this problem if its a problem?

cubicle67 16 years ago |

yes, I think there's a need for this type of diagram. Reminds me of LabView from many years ago.

some quick feedback:

- Could do with some sort of feedback to indicate what can be clicked on and what can't. I jumped in (to the demo) early without reading your instructions, and had to click on everything to see what responded and what didn't. It looks like brown boxes with square corners are clickable. Completely missed the double click option.

- The scrolly bit on the dialog that pops up is horrible :) (Unresponsive, hard to hit, doesn't really look like a scrollbar etc)

- There's a bit of naming inconsistency going on between being in the top view, and in a sub view. From the top view, it looks like there's 3 main processes; File System on the left, Process Scheduler in the centre and Network on the right. When I enter Network, I'd expect to see the box it connects to called Process Scheduler, but instead I get Virtual File System. Where's the process Scheduler gone? Same with the sub view on the left.

- Interaction is also inconsistent. From the top view I double click a box to enter it, but the same action doesn't work on boxes within that view; instead I need to click Back (which I didn't notice for some time). When I'm looking at the Network Interface view, it looks like the Virtual File System is the same type of widget, but it isn't

- Oh, and you might want to get rid of the generic Rails 404 page :)

pkc 16 years ago | |

Hi Cubible67,

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah you are right. App and diagram are not polished. I put up quickly something that gives a feel of what I am thinking and get feedback is there really need for such thing. Surely I will consider all of your points and put up more polished one in some time. All of them are valid points except for interaction consistency. When you go deeper into Network you see "Virtual File System" which a sub component of Network. Double clicking on "Virtual File System" should take you to internal details of VFS. But they are none of details as far the diagram is considered. So it won't do anything.

Note: Indicating which of them are clickable is a very valid point. Will try to incorporate it in some time.

Tichy 16 years ago |

I really had hoped the app would be called "interactive block diagrams".

Must admit I am not that big a fan of such diagrams, and your app just might explain why: apparently they just don't tell you that much, hence the need for more attached information that you saw. Not sure if your solution really alleviates the problem. I might prefer to see the information without having to click around.

Ie if I see a larger text with captions for the individual parts, it might be easier for me to zone in on the parts that interest me.

pkc 16 years ago | |

Hi Tichy,

Thanks for the feedback. Changed heading to "Interactive Block Diagram". Would you mean you prefer maps like interface?

jrockway 16 years ago |

There should be some sort of unified modeling language for this sort of task...

pkc 16 years ago | |

Hi jrockway,

Can you please elaborate more on this point.

rincewind 16 years ago | | |

[FMC]( http://fmc-modeling.org/ ) is much closer to the notation and level of abstraction you used in your diagram than UML.

Daniel_Newby 16 years ago | | |

It's a joke -- do a web search for "unified modeling language".