From a guy who surfs for electronic parts on a tablet while falling asleep at nights. Most vendor sites get painfully slow for this.
First impressions:
The pop-over splash screen makes me want to reach for the 'close tab' button reflexively.
If it's "the worlds fast free univeral parts library" I expect to see some part pr0n right when I pull up the site.
I don't want to click [microscopic white-on-gray X] to close the popover, I don't want to "Connect with Dropbox", and I don't want to click a magnifying glass to "Browse the library".
Then on the main page I'm presented with a GitHub-like dashboard. I see big videos for expensive CAD packages I don't own. I see 'LATEST ACTIVITY' which is a long list of entries that are all like: ibelimb updated domain template HTSSOP to var documentType = "/template/footprint/0.9" 24 minutes ago
Where are the parts?! Show me some parts!
OIC, there's a little grayed-out word "parts" at the top. Maybe that takes me to some parts.
Yay! A list of parts! While writing this, I find Firefox can't select and copy the text from this list. That's a pain, because often I have to paste part numbers into other search boxes. I click on the first entry: Microcontrollers NXP Semiconductors LPC1768FBD100,551 IC ARM CORTEX MCU 512K 100-LQFP
OK, a datasheet on the left, cool! Something on the right about dragging-and-dropping to add a symbol and a footprint.
"Add components to this part" "Drag and drop domain models here to form components." I don't get it, but maybe it makes sense if you're a heavy CAD user.
I learn that I can expand the right-hand pane to cover where the datasheet was on the left. I'm a little annoyed that I can't expand the datasheet on the left to cover the section on the right. But I learn that I can move the datasheet to the right and expand it to cover the left.
It seems the datasheet pages are just images? I can't Ctrl-F and search them. But I find the 'download pdf' button on the first try.
The 'summary' section looks useful. It would be even more useful with a parametric search.
Hi from Jonathan (cofounder). Thanks for the awesome detailed feedback. We hear you and are already working on (or have it on the near-term roadmap) almost all of this. I apologize for any frustration thus far. I really do.
Perhaps this will help until then: (1) You can click anywhere that isn't the splash screen (any dark area) to dismiss it. (2) You can jump straight to parts by URL https://circuithub.com/parts or (3) by the big button on the splash screen in the lower right.
Thank you! I hope you will. Things are moving really quickly internally. In other news, we fixed the splash screen. It now permanently dismisses so you shouldn't see it too often. That was our intention we just didn't quite get it right the first time ;-)
I confirm only seeing the splash screen once more. Thanks. :-)
I feel silly even suggesting this, but have you considered some kind of 'like button' and a way to share comments on parts? I swear, I've never asked for such a feature before, I don't even have a FB account! :-)
Is there somewhere else can we circuit dreamers and designers chat about parts by number? For example, this search https://duckduckgo.com/?q=555+timer+comments doesn't turn up much for arguably one of the most well-known part numbers.
First impressions:
The pop-over splash screen makes me want to reach for the 'close tab' button reflexively.
If it's "the worlds fast free univeral parts library" I expect to see some part pr0n right when I pull up the site.
I don't want to click [microscopic white-on-gray X] to close the popover, I don't want to "Connect with Dropbox", and I don't want to click a magnifying glass to "Browse the library".
Then on the main page I'm presented with a GitHub-like dashboard. I see big videos for expensive CAD packages I don't own. I see 'LATEST ACTIVITY' which is a long list of entries that are all like: ibelimb updated domain template HTSSOP to var documentType = "/template/footprint/0.9" 24 minutes ago
Where are the parts?! Show me some parts!
OIC, there's a little grayed-out word "parts" at the top. Maybe that takes me to some parts.
Yay! A list of parts! While writing this, I find Firefox can't select and copy the text from this list. That's a pain, because often I have to paste part numbers into other search boxes. I click on the first entry: Microcontrollers NXP Semiconductors LPC1768FBD100,551 IC ARM CORTEX MCU 512K 100-LQFP
OK, a datasheet on the left, cool! Something on the right about dragging-and-dropping to add a symbol and a footprint.
"Add components to this part" "Drag and drop domain models here to form components." I don't get it, but maybe it makes sense if you're a heavy CAD user.
I learn that I can expand the right-hand pane to cover where the datasheet was on the left. I'm a little annoyed that I can't expand the datasheet on the left to cover the section on the right. But I learn that I can move the datasheet to the right and expand it to cover the left.
It seems the datasheet pages are just images? I can't Ctrl-F and search them. But I find the 'download pdf' button on the first try.
The 'summary' section looks useful. It would be even more useful with a parametric search.
Looks like a good start! Bookmarked.