Show HN: Braindump, a simple note platform to organize your life | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Braindump, a simple note platform to organize your life

github.com

91 pointslevlaz41 comments

This looks very similar to the app I blogged about in a series of "Saturday morning hacks" posts. That app did notes, tags, to do lists, email reminders, and used sqlites full text search extension to provide high quality search. Also used markdown and oembed for rich media magic!

http://charlesleifer.com/blog/saturday-morning-hack-a-little...

what happened to said app? are you still using it or developing for it; or was it just a side project for a few weekends?

I use it all the time, something like 3000 notes now! I integrated a bookmarking app with it (search for bookmarking on my blog if you're curious) so it's a mix of bookmarked pages, notes, to do lists, reminders, and recently I've been tracking my dreams with it. Fun stuff!

Some feedback.

If the first word is eg: <seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee> Lines are not broken but run over. should have the appropriate markup in the preview imo. Lists show up on a single line of text. Not sure if there is a better way to present that though.

Is standard Markdown used? I noticed that a new line can show up as a list item if a hanging '*' exists

Hitting enter multiple times keeps the editor indented. Not sure if that's what I expect to see.

The link to the article should exist on the text in the overview imo - I don't want to have to click the title to see the note.

Thank you so much for the great feedback! :D

incidentally, and in a maybe interesting analogy, the comment a/b line-break behaviour itself just demonstrated that the same behavior occurs in hn comments on mobile: have to side scroll to read all comments on this entry

Well. It also happens on Firefox Desktop.

Reflows just fine in opera here.

I think that you should put the pictures you've placed in Github on your front page. I feel hesitant to sign up for something when I don't see any pictures.

Thanks so much for the feedback -- that makes a lot of sense. :)

I made a demo account if you want to check it out:

test@example.com/demo

you misspelled "test" as "tets" on the sign in page

Thanks! Fixing now :)

levlaz, could you say a little bit about what makes this different from other note apps? What are the pros/cons?

Right now not much, just basic functionality.

But I have this vision in my mind of what a note platform is supposed to be and unfortunately I have not found it yet. My favorite note tool was emacs org-mode so a lot of the things that I working on now draw from that.

Mainly:

1. Full Markdown Support 2. Easy way to make TODOS (and track them across notes) 3. Easy way to take meeting nots from a calendar invite. 4. Native Clients that actually work and sync, you should be able to see, edit, and make notes anywhere you are. 5. Open Source :)

# 2 -- will be implemented soon. # 3 -- will be implemented soon and should work with ANY calendar provider.

Right now Braindump is just a basic framework that I hope to use to accomplish all of those goals.

Could you take inspiration from Evernote?

Thanks for the comment! I have not used Evernote in a long time, but a few years ago it didn't do all of the things that I wanted. I should probably review it again.

What did you miss in org-mode that your tool is going to have? I can't think of anything, so I don't really know what benefits your tool provides compared to org-mode.

Great point, org-mode is perfect. But a lot of the world is missing out of org-mode because they dont know about emacs and don't want to learn. :)

I love org-mode, but I've just declared org-mode bankruptcy for my personal to-do lists and life projects. With my life being as busy as it is, I'm now rarely in front of a full computer with a keyboard when I'm at home, so keeping my home projects in emacs is not as appealing as it was 10 years ago.

I've tried running emacs on android -- too much friction for simple tasks that should be quick.

I've tried mobile-org; the workflow is painful.

I've tried orgzly. It's almost workable. Maybe when it gets folding, and I can simplify my syncing scenario.

For the time being, I've dumped stuff into Mirakel and ownCloud Notes...will see how it goes.

Is there a way to try it without registration?

I think the best way would be to run it locally. :/

I should set up a demo site. Thanks for the feedback.

I look forward to replacing Evernote with something, and I find the idea of Emacs org-mode for dummies great.

Awesome, glad I am not the only one :D

Great work! keep it up.

The screenshot in the git repo would look better with real usage instead of test posts. And notebooks should show how many are inside without having to click through first.

Thanks so much for the feedback, noted!

Can you please comment on the UX ? Which libraries / frameworks u r using ?

The design looks slick and professional

Wow, thanks for the compliment -- the Ui is still very much a work in progress.

There is nothing too special going on right now, its basic bootstrap with a little bit of customization thrown in here:

https://github.com/levlaz/braindump/tree/master/app/static/c...

Some JS libraries of note are:

Ace - the Editor Marked - for Markdown Rendering Bootstrap-Tagsinput - for the tags

UPDATE:

Most importantly :) -- all of the icons are Glyphicons that can be found here: http://getbootstrap.com/components/#glyphicons

Anyone looking for a decent note platform, just use google keep, it works like a charm :)

I like google keep, but Markdown is a must for me.

Don't set up a demo site. Make it so that I can use the app with data backed by LocalStorage until I decide to sign up.

Interesting idea, thanks a lot!

Dangerous idea; you lower the motivation for users to register, and when one accidentally clears their history they may become so disappointed they won't restart using your app.

Doesn't matter who's to blame--they're still sad.

Everything has its pros and cons, this idea is not self-evidently better.

Yep, I agree. You can elevate that risk but making it clear in the UI that your data is not being saved on the server.

If you are the kind of person who clears their LocalStorage often, I think you know what the risks are.

Trello, anyone?

I'm not really sure what you mean by that. The interface is very different from Trello, as is the UX, and this is open source self-hosted.

Sure, Trello is great for organising yourself, but it's not the be all and end all.

I love trello with all of my heart. In fact I am planning on integrating with Trello (making a TODO in a note will automatically add a card to your backlog).

But, this is not trello and it does not want to be. :)

Not sure if I am missing something here, but this is the kind of thing that could be created in a few hours from scratch. There are multiple UX bugs/errors and the UI is nothing to write home about either.

Not trying to be snarky or bitchy; honestly wondering why this is on first page HN?

I am wondering the same thing. :)

However, would love to hear what you don't like about it, and if you have time please file bug reports. This project is three weeks old I am committed to making it better.

> this is the kind of thing that could be created in a few hours from scratch

Yes and no. There is opinion that needs to drive the design and feature set; if this was using stock bootstrap I would be much more inclined to agree with you, but there is definitely some thought and care put into whats there and why. I don't agree with all of it, but it's not haphazard or careless, and is not something i found myself scoffing at for being overly simple or boring.

Second, it was submitted for feedback and the author has been receptive to it; not everything on HN needs to be a major news headline. The author also started a development blog for it, and as a project it can hit close to home in one way or another for many HN'ers. Building things is hard, and I think we do well as a community to support people who share what they're up to.

As someone who's not afraid to flag, I didn't find this unreasonable or unworthy of HN. But, you are welcome to feel differently.

This made my day, thank you for the awesome comment. :)

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