Powershop.co

December 15, 2012 8:44 AM

Powershop.co
Powershop search engine for PC components (like motherboards, CPUs, etc). My basic plan was to create a tool like diskcompare that would work for all types of components, as well as an attempt to come up with a modern HTML5 UI that would let you view and filter data the same way you would in a spreadsheet or database browser. Right now it works for CPUs, GPUs, RAM, Motherboards, Monitors, Hard drives (including SSDs), USB sticks (and flash cards), Monitors, Cases and Fans, as well as Laptops and Tablets. The front-end was done entirely in javascript (about 5k lines of JS before compression), and no HTML is generated server-side, instead plain HTML is sent and the javascript code requests JSON objects for everything else.

When I started working on the front-end code I had it generate huge HTML table in javascript. It wasn't too slow on my desktop but on slower computers it took forever. I ended up creating a dynamic system table that only adds the cells you can actually see to the DOM when you scroll or re-size the browser. Unfortunately, it's a little laggy in Firefox right now. I have some ideas on how to optimize it, but for now it just gives you a warning :P

It's not completely finished, there are a couple other issues, which I go over on the front page, so there maybe a few glitches in some cases, but 99% of the time it should work.

Let me know what you think!

Role: programmer/designer

posted by delmoi (4 comments total)

This is neat!

I ran into some trouble, though.

Looking at motherboards, choose wirelss LAN sort. Now everything without a wireless LAN disappears (maybe this is intended). I was unable to determine how to undo the 'sort' without reloading, which lost other selections I had made (this is the trouble)

second, the "sort" pop-ups didn't seem to be keyboardable. It was my instinct to try to tab through the fields and hit enter for OK or escape for Cancel.

Last, and most minor, it doesn't seem to be possible to incrementally refine a filter. For instance, if I first want to refine to motherboards that take have at least 4 SATA connectors and then want to refine to ones containing 5, I have to turn off the filter, then turn it on again in order to enter the new value.
posted by jepler at 9:14 AM on December 15, 2012

I like the idea of a client-side Javascript/JSON framework as much as the concept itself. Cool!

Spontaneously I feel that the components list on the front page should be bigger and more visible. Maybe put it in the left column before all the text?

I really like reading behind the scene details and project rationales but I'm not all of it needs to be on the front page.

I couldn't find a list of component categories the individual component pages. Also, not sure the vertical whitespace between the logo and table needs to be so big.

That all CSS logo looks great.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 9:27 AM on December 15, 2012

Looking at motherboards, choose wirelss LAN sort. Now everything without a wireless LAN disappears (maybe this is intended). I was unable to determine how to undo the 'sort' without reloading, which lost other selections I had made (this is the trouble)

That is how it works now. And at this moment when you sort or filter you lose the selections anyway - for now it's really just for keeping track as your scroll around. Eventually I want to turn that feature into a wishlist type thing that you can actually save and link too. Right now if you want to undo a sort ordering you can sort on another column, like price or model, since everything will have a value for those fields.

second, the "sort" pop-ups didn't seem to be keyboardable. It was my instinct to try to tab through the fields and hit enter for OK or escape for Cancel.

Yeah, that is definitely something I should fix!

I couldn't find a list of component categories the individual component pages. Also, not sure the vertical whitespace between the logo and table needs to be so big.

Adding links on the component pages is something I had in mind, but there are a couple other things I want to use some of that space for, including context sensitive tips, and possibly showing thumbnails of some of your selected items. One of the reasons it's so large is so that I have space for the menus. I've also been meaning to get around to making icons for those categories.

I really like reading behind the scene details and project rationales but I'm not all of it needs to be on the front page.

Probably not, I just put it there to sort of explain where the site is at in case anyone ran into any frustration, since there are still minor issues to look out for. I also don't have too much else to put there at the moment. I'd like to have more color on the front page, possibly have product images and links for some of the most popular items, that kind of thing.

Thanks for the feedback, it's really helpful for figuring out which things I should work on next.
posted by delmoi at 2:36 PM on December 15, 2012

Is there a way to sort columns in descending (rather than ascending) order?

It would be nice if selecting sort again would toggle the order, but it doesn't seem to (at least, not in Firefox 17.0.1).
posted by James Scott-Brown at 6:27 AM on December 21, 2012