quora is one of the most impressive sites i've seen in a while. here are a few of the details that really impressed me:
* pretty much everything is real time and extremely fast. even if you have 10+ quora tabs open.
* try logging out and having a friend log in. notice how you can log out all current sessions on remote computers, and how boxes are created for each user that has logged in on that computer. logging in then takes just one click (if it was set to remember).
* have a friend look at your profile. start editing your bio or title. the friend will see these changes in real time.
* start typing a response to a question. everyone can see who is responding to a question in real time. (imagine in HN had this amount of integration of real time data)
* the site search at the top is incredibly responsive and returns results for relevant questions, topics, and people all together in a dropdown
* site notifications additionally appear on the pages to which they are related. for example, if i visit a question where i have 3 outstanding notifications, they will all appear at the top of the page. if i visit a user's profile that has recently started following me, i will see that notification at the top of the user's profile.
* they already have a complete mobile site.
* on the implementation side, the html (html5) is already compacted, the js is combined and minified, and Steve Souders' best practices are already taken into account. this is expected for major web applications, but startups and non web-app sites (like blogs) often ignore it for a very long time or never do it at all.
* pretty much everything is real time and extremely fast. even if you have 10+ quora tabs open.
* try logging out and having a friend log in. notice how you can log out all current sessions on remote computers, and how boxes are created for each user that has logged in on that computer. logging in then takes just one click (if it was set to remember).
* have a friend look at your profile. start editing your bio or title. the friend will see these changes in real time.
* start typing a response to a question. everyone can see who is responding to a question in real time. (imagine in HN had this amount of integration of real time data)
* the site search at the top is incredibly responsive and returns results for relevant questions, topics, and people all together in a dropdown
* site notifications additionally appear on the pages to which they are related. for example, if i visit a question where i have 3 outstanding notifications, they will all appear at the top of the page. if i visit a user's profile that has recently started following me, i will see that notification at the top of the user's profile.
* they already have a complete mobile site.
* on the implementation side, the html (html5) is already compacted, the js is combined and minified, and Steve Souders' best practices are already taken into account. this is expected for major web applications, but startups and non web-app sites (like blogs) often ignore it for a very long time or never do it at all.