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0 pointsphilh17y ago0 comments

One factor might have been ajax. Being able to vote without having to reload the page is a big deal, but it's only relatively recently that the techniques to do that have become common knowledge.

Not that that stopped slashdot from doing it with comments. It could probably have been made to work with articles as well; quite possibly everyone just thought editors were better at selecting interesting links to publish. The innovation was social rather than technical. (HN's system of articles selected primarily by voting, but with more than cursory editorial oversight, seems to be another social innovation. Did any earlier site do the same thing?)

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10ren17y ago

I worked out how to do this with an invisible 0-size frame, over 10 years ago. From another frame, you put data in the invisible frame (in a form, or as an URL) and submit it; then read the data back. Of course, it was awkward, and maybe there were some cross-browser issues (I don't recall, but such issues were the norm).

But here's my point: I thought it was technically cool, but I didn't do anything with it. Not even a demo. So this is a striking example for me that it really matters how familiar you are with a concept, before you can start using it as a basis of inventing something else. Progress takes a long time, and proceeds in steps. There's a tantalizing possibility that, maybe, knowing this could give you a simple way to leapfrog a decade ahead...

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