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Debriefing After Warsaw's First Startup Weekend

Posted by timothy on from the polish-spring dept.

rysiek writes "Last weekend marked the first Startup Weekend in Poland. Three days, about 100 developers and designers, 20 mentors, forming 30+ teams. The big winner — CityRace.me — will be launching soon, with a few others close on its heels. Most hackteresting project — Nest of Worlds (conceived by the Warsaw Hackerspace people) — has it all: Game of Life on hexes, with sound in pure JS (needs Firefox 4, but still awesome). There is also a lengthy summary of the network setup and problems for the network admins among you. Ralph Talmont also offers a more general write-up. Disclaimer: I was the network guy."

12 of 21 comments (clear)

  1. Network summary complaint by mikael_j · · Score: 1

    I love the late-'90s-style rant about browsers at the beginning. Especially since it starts off by stating you should use Chrome (WebKit-based) or Firefox, that Opera is also fine, then goes on to say that other users of KHTML- och WebKit-based browsers should make sure they have a recent browser and finishes off by telling IE and Safari (WebKit-based in the sense that Apple created WebKit by forking it from KHTML) users should get "a real browser".

    Also, hasn't Safari generally been more standards-compliant than Firefox the last few years? Is the author of that page trying to say that he/she sucks at (X)HTML and CSS?

    --
    Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
    1. Re:Network summary complaint by rysiek · · Score: 1

      that was not supposed to be a "rant", but pure information. I am working to iron out the incompatibilities between the browsers on my brag, but it's early in development and really, really hard, as many new HTML5 options are used (i.e. CSS3 Multicol, allowing for a nice horizontal layout).

    2. Re:Network summary complaint by uglyduckling · · Score: 1

      The trick is to use stylesheets properly so that it downgrades gracefully on older / less standards-compliant browsers. I use Safari on my Mac because it's fast and doesn't get in the way. At the moment your site is an empty page with a few graphical decorations. That's not a problem with my browser, it's a problem with your coding.

    3. Re:Network summary complaint by rysiek · · Score: 2

      please tell me which part of "I am working to iron out the incompatibilities between the browsers on my brag, but it's early in development and really, really hard, as many new HTML5 options are used (i.e. CSS3 Multicol, allowing for a nice horizontal layout)" you do not grasp? I know about the problems, I know how this website looks like in Safari and IE. guess what. as soon as I have time I will be working on that. by the way, looks great in Lynx/Links. in the meantime - "release early, release often". I wanted a horizontal layout with pure HTML/CSS and I got one. booyah! if you have some material technical advice, please share. i.e. how - without JavaScript and relying on UA Strings - can I detect which browser we are serving content to and select the proper stylesheet (yeah, conditionals for IE; nothing for Safari; got it working for Chrome/Chromium with some interesting hack). otherwise - thanks, Capt. Obvious, for your valuable input.

    4. Re:Network summary complaint by mikael_j · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't it make more sense to first release something that has the desired basic functionality and then later add things which you can't immediately get working in all major browsers?

      --
      Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
    5. Re:Network summary complaint by lluBdeR · · Score: 2

      That's not very web 2.0y of you.

    6. Re:Network summary complaint by uglyduckling · · Score: 1

      I understand all that, and hey - it's your site, so it's up to you. My point was, the first couple of paragraphs of the site just tell people to upgrade to a 'real browser' which isn't really the answer at all. Without Javascript you'll probably have problems, but I'd say on the scale of technical cludgery, using some JS is more elegant than telling people to change their browser. A hack that might work is: <link rel="stylesheet" media="screen and min-device-pixel-ratio: 0" href="safari3.css"/>.

  2. Bravo, but a bit late. by elh_inny · · Score: 2

    Thank for the writeup Rysiu, good to see Poland catching up.
    It's too bad I didn't even hear about it, try to focus on publicity before the event next time - makes more sense IMHO.

    1. Re:Bravo, but a bit late. by rysiek · · Score: 1

      yeah, we're waking up. you wouldn't believe how much is going on! there are going to be many, many more stories from Poland in the following month or two, among others - about discussions with the Government about network censorship and data re-use (a huge success has been just announced there).

  3. Lisa Bonet ate no basil by Tetsujin · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Warsaw was raw. Was it a car or a cat I saw?

    --
    Bow-ties are cool.
  4. Great Warsaw Startup Weekend post by David/HackFwd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    There is a great post on Startup Weekend Warsaw by David Bizer from an european accelerator HackFwd.com http://hackfwd.tumblr.com/post/5545518291/3-days-in-poland

  5. SWWAW social media buzz metrics by Ubik · · Score: 1

    There is a nice infographics by Brand24.pl about the impact Startup Weekend Warsaw generated http://twitpic.com/4ym3so!