Think the Apps could be interesting. Can probably make a sortable Thingiverse with it 
Still I think basic stuff like searchresults and sorting probably should be prioritized before api fluff. Can’t possibly take more than a couple of hours to implement …
@Marty_McGuire Hey Marty! I didn’t say that I’m hugely unhappy – I really do prefer the new Thing pages, I believe. I’m just sniffing around trying to figure out how things are different. I guess I’m largely bummed about the infinite scroll. I was spending lots of time in the distant past I miss the “scroll to end” button.Also, I’d really like to hear the feedback from others. Because I’m not quite sure what to think yet. But I can be won over. I am really loving the Customizer projects.
@Marty_McGuire The new look is pretty snazzy but the plague of iphone cases is giving me a migraine!
At the OSH Summit a couple years ago Eric Wilheim (IIRC) talked about how they had to remove all of the k’nex guns projects from the new projects sidebar on Instructables because it made the sight look like that’s all it did (b/c there were so many of them). That’s now whats happened to Thingiverse!
Maybe there needs to be a new Customized Things category?
Let’s see.
- It does a better job of branding; Makerbot’s identity is much more prominently displayed, and I think it’s cleaner to boot.
- The homepage does a much better job of showcasing the content.
- Customizer is well integrated into the design; it sits thematically as a peer to Thingiverse, and provides a good base design for apps to extend.
- Thing pages showcase images, treat metadata almost like exif data in an image viewer, and present that information well (derivations are especially well represented, IMO.)
I think more could be done with the layout - a good carousel implementation and more dynamic behaviour would provide for a much more living feel; it all feels a bit static and unresponsive. Hovers are a bit coarse; some subtlety to the changes on hovers, for example - borders, a slight darkening to text, etc., should be considered. Consider changing the treatment on the image previews - perhaps cross-fading/slideshowing images, and moving the image selection strip over the photo as an overlay on hover.
It looks nice, but feels dead.
Hey @Marty_McGuire , when will Thingiverse have a public API? If you need some guidance @Gary_Hodgson has some very good, well-developed ideas
Whoa, how long has this been available?
Starting today!
Ah, I thought maybe I was behind the times or something, thanks!
Looks pretty cool @Marty_McGuire , but this bit in the TOS is kind of a bummer:
“Use the Thingiverse API for any application that replicates or attempts to replace the essential user experience of Thingiverse.com or that competes with the services of Thingiverse”
Kinda reminiscent of Twitters “no twitter clients” position, is that the intent?
I’m very close to stealth-trawling thingiverse, downloading everything, and mirroring it in a better format.
It looks like they’ve tweaked the layout a bit, I’m liking it much better today than yesterday. Seems a bit cleaner too.
I thought this comment on the Thingiverse Google Group was interesting. Too harsh?
Joe Kerman jkerman@gmail.com
10:30 AM (10 minutes ago)
to thingiverse
You dont get to play the “we are a small team of people” card for
sympathy anymore. You are a closed-source hardware company with 150+employees, a booth at CES, retail space in Manhattan, a factory in Brooklyn, and are (partially) owned by billionaires. You need to send complaints about staff to HR, not to the public mailing list.
The site doesn’t suck because the team is too small, it sucks because the goal of the design sucks. Whatever team decided that what people really want is a dashboard, and that browsing items by upload date isnt important, sorting by tool used isnt important, and that nobody has a monitor more than 10" wide, cant be saved by more time or coders.
Sorry to be so harsh. But you are no longer the little open source
hardware company that deserves all the patience in the world for
taking a financial hit to support the open source 3d printing
movement. You are a giant company that has no need to placate people like me anymore, and its painful to watch things you love be taken in a direction away from you.
After reflection, I find Joe’s message too harsh.
While he’s right that the management of expectations bit is certainly complicated by Makerbot’s role as a business, I’d say it doesn’t really work to make claims to understand precisely the goals behind their design changes. Better to describe how you use the site and how the changes effect you as an individual.
I don’t say this in defense of the thingiverse web dev team, but more that I get a sense that these changes are to do with how they suspect that people use thingiverse (complicated by marketing goals of Makerbot, but probably not that much: the tverse web team are real “believers” in the mission of thingiverse).
I think sharing clearly how one uses the site might be helpful to them or to another team looking to propose a different model or a new repository. I’m more like Joe in how i used Thingiverse – I suspect that most of the hardcore users of Thingiverse “read” it chronologically to find the real stuff, rather than waiting for the small Makerbot team that features stuff to determine what you learn about. But having spent a lot of time with casual users, they don’t use thingiverse like I do and don’t want to put that kind of time in.
I still haven’t found the way to use the new version for my favorite way to use thingiverse, but I’m going to give the new approach another week and see whether my attitude changes. Certain elements like the publishing tools are really helpful and I’m already preferring those. Maybe I’ll sort out how to escape the curatorial direction of the site to get a clear sense of what the actual community is doing there. Probably that’s going to work out or another repository appear to solve this, so I’m less frustrated than I was when I first shared a note about this change.
They are a small team, but they are a very capable one. I have high expectations. And certainly the arrival of Tony’s tools to thingiverse like the iPhone creator should be celebrated. There is so much that might be done with tools like those!
Thanks,
Matt
As I think about it more I think the reaction is a mixture of genuine bugs/usability changes and a “too clean” design refresh. The site is now a clear extension of the brand and look of Makerbot.com instead an identity of its own. I thought the big Thingiverse logo with “a makerbot industries website” had more character personally. But I also think it’s a perception that the dynamic nature of it is more controlled now. It’s amazing to have press releases and then about Ford putting 3d printers in their engineers desk and then see a featured engine from, new member, Ford, but it feels like a tacky marketing ploy. Don’t get me wrong, I still downloaded the engine and plan to use it as an example of what can be done on my printers. What is missing are the google ad banners that used to be at the top and sides. I don’t have an opinion either way about ads, just noticing and element that was there. My guess is it will cost but $$ to put ads on that site. It is a more professional looking site but some of the white areas (negative space) clearly indicate future features down the road. The only thing I do think should happen is more money and staff should be thrown at it, if the community didn’t care about it they would just close their accounts and be done. It will great to see it continue to adapt.