Show HN: Papier – Open a new tab and trap your best thoughts | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Papier – Open a new tab and trap your best thoughts

getpapier.com

86 pointscalyhre50 comments

There is a clever and simple code snippet to convert a tab into a notepad:

  data:text/html, <html contenteditable>

Copy and paste into your browser address bar. Just bookmark that and you have a notepad with content that you can italicize, embolden, print, export, etc. I'm sure someone here can tweak this code to be even more feature-rich yet still compact. Or check the comments from the original web page.

This snippet was shared a while ago on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5135194

Either FF or Noscript disables that for me in Firefox. Works in Chrome though.

What version of FF? On FF 44 this code works with the following warning in the console:

The character encoding of the HTML document was not declared. The document will render with garbled text in some browser configurations if the document contains characters from outside the US-ASCII range. The character encoding of the page must be declared in the document or in the transfer protocol.

FF44 for me too. Must be Noscript disabling it.

This works great in Safari for Mac and iOS. Thank you very much for filling a void in my work flow.

I have something similar bookmarked though I can't remember the original author. I've been using it for a while as quick note taking app and it works wonderfully. (tested on chrome)

  javascript:(function(d){d.write('<body contenteditable style="font: 2rem/1.5 monospace;max-width:60rem;margin:0 auto;padding:4rem;">');var k = 'c'; var q = d.querySelector('body');q.innerHTML=localStorage[k];q.oninput=function(){localStorage[k]=q.innerHTML;}})(document);

You are missing usecase that content has to be saved and retrieved on reopening

Feature request: through force of habit, I obsessively mash Ctrl+S whenever I'm in a text editor - browser or not. Most web editors override this to prevent the giant "Save page as..." dialog from jumping up all the time. I know it's ridiculous, but I literally can't handle typing without Ctrl+S-ing almost every paragraph.

Edit: couple other thoughts: I just now realized how much I depend on the "New Tab" tab title to find new tabs in the tab bar. I realized that making the page name "Papier" is good marketing, but it makes it feel like a separate app instead of a better new tab page, and also harder to find if I open it, leave, and try to come back. Also, the page - even with no text on it - is about 150% the height of my window, and I despise unnecessary scrollbars (Chrome on Ubuntu). And it's "0 characters", not "0 character".

I'm only nitpicking because I will use this every day for the rest of my life.

It's an important reflex that anyone who used computers in the 80s or 90s knows :)

Which always surprises me that this is a habit of mine: I was born in '96.

Not to make you feel old or anything.

Why does it surprise you? Do people not save anymore?

People in the 80s and 90s experienced computers crashing regularly, thus instilling the reflex of constant saving. I'm not sure young people have that reflex.

If my memory is not totally off, I started my computer usage in the early 00s. I don't recall crashing as a ticking time-bomb so I certainly didn't have that issue. And I save manually frequently.

I think it is more of a power user thing and/or a paranoia thing or similar - not the fear of crashing. For me, anyway.

v1.0.5 is currently being deployed with most of your feedbacks. I also agree for the "New Tab" title, but it imply A LOT of translations to handle.

Very nice, love the simplicity. Full syncing is going to be key though.

The biggest "complaint" I have after 5 mins is having a quick way to jump to a new line at the bottom. You wouldn't want to override the default of the omnibar having focus, but a simple keyboard shortcut would be nice. Currently it seems I need to tab down into the page, but then that still leaves my cursor at the beginning of the document.

A couple of the unicode characters on that page don't render in Firefox on Windows:

* the character after "Choose Day"

* the character before "About"

I know character isn't the right word for unicode. What is? Code point?

Those are Emojis

Character is fine when talking about Unicode. As in: “That character at code point U+1F918 is not showing up as a proper glyph for me.”

You might be thinking of how a single Unicode character does not necessarily map to a single byte in UTF-8 (the most common Unicode encoding). Some programming languages call a single byte variable a char or character; is that what you are referring to?

Incidentally, the U+1F918 before 'about' is not available as a glyph on my system — i.e., I don't have a font installed that has it. The creator probably uses a Mac (as evidenced by his exclusive use of ⌘).

I suggest loading Papier on the new tab page only if it isn't yet open. If it's already open, the new tab page could show frequently visited, bookmarks, and search as before.

This is nice, but you can lose notes if you write in multiple Papier tabs. One has to be careful that they don't have another open Papier tab before they start note-taking.

Yep, ran into this as well.

If you live in the web browser, I guess this is what you use. Here’s a nickel, kid, get yourself a better program. Yes, I’m one of those condescending Emacs users. We have org-mode.

… — …

I’m not really that condescending, I hope, but it annoys me slightly that the web browser, of all things, is expanding to be the single one program that everybody lives “inside”, when Emacs has been more suited for this task for decades. Emacs takes its role as a framework seriously (if a bit ancient in its design), but web browser developers seem to insist that browsers are for web browsing only, and even seem to be more and more hostile towards plugins and extensions, and only allow them begrudgingly; each day edging closer to being a walled garden.

Even if Emacs is not to your liking, another consequence of the web browser being the “framework” is that the programs that people use from within it are not programs, but web sites – web sites that are under the control of third parties and can change for the worse or disappear at any time. (Not to mention the lack of privacy; even with HTTPS the server operator have all the logs.) Contrast this with runnning programs in a desktop environment; the only downside there is the lack of automatic updates, and the lack of automatic access to large shared data sets. However, far from all programs can really benefit very much from these things, and even in the cases where they do benefit, at least the privacy concerns often make it worth it to do without those benefits.

Sorry for the unexpected rant.

(For those who didn’t recognize the reference: http://dilbert.com/strip/1995-06-24)

I think the web browser is where people want to live because it's so well connected.

And programs in the web browser don't have to be web sites under control of third parties. My favorite example is http://tiddlywiki.com

Offtopic, but has anyone an idea how the demo video is made? Is this a simple tool like LICEcap or do you need a bigger production app like AfterEffects?

It was made with AfterEffects. For more details you can ask @LucChaissac.

This is awesome, I absolutely adore the idea and implementation. Couple of small points in terms of feedback:

* A new tab with no notes has a height greater than 100% of the browser window, and adds a scrollbar. Small point, but annoying for people like me :)

* There are some issues with links: clicking could be more intuitive, and highlighting is inconsistent with certain characters. (Try pasting a YouTube link.)

Shamelesly plugging one my apps here, very identically: save your thoughts or a todo list without installation of any extension or signups >> http://www.doit.eddywebs.com/ When you come back on same browser it remembers everything.

Really nicely executed. I noticed that the editor uses the new Draft.js from Facebook under the hood? If the authors are around, I'd love to hear how Draft.js has been treating you so far, and how much you've been customizing it.

Good luck!

Exactly! For what we have needed so far, Draft-js is an amazing editor. The only weird issue I had was with the default css who must be used, otherwise you're gonna have a hard time debugging it.

My use case: I use Papier to write down the single thing I'm (trying to) work on. That way if I idly open a tab in order to start getting distracted, I have a reminder of my actual top priority staring back at me. Magic.

Love it. I'd like to see something like this with markdown capabilities.

Why? Is markdown so important for you to take some notes?

Markdown support means that I already know how to use it. I don't have to figure out what hotkey bolds text, underlines text, turns things into bullet points, etc.

How do I add links to this? Is it even possible? If it was markdown, I already know how to add a link, no extra thought required.

Why do I feel like it's strangely 1995 again?

Ya. My flashback is to 1988, painstakingly crafting manuals for my shareware.

I don't mind that this doesn't support markdown, or have super-specific instructions, or w/e. It's a fun bit of software, and I'm going to play around with it for a while :)

I'm just answering the question of "why would you want markdown support?"

I wish papier would support bbcode. Then I would know exactly how to bold text or add hyperlinks to other webpages on the world wide web (mostly angelfire websites).

don't really see the appeal, why not just use a plain text editor or write it down physically?

I'd be happy with a Copy As Markdown function, or something like that. I don't really mind the rich text, since it's simpler to look at than multiple panes, but the end result of something like a draft blog post will end up as markdown for me. Having the markup converted would be nice.

I never try these todo/organizing apps that are just another burden, but this seems different. The fact that it has no accounts its simplicity feels very good. I'll use it.

I like the simplicity as well, but not being able to use tab is a tough habit for me to break. That alone will probably keep me using my current application.

I like the simplicity.

Been happily using workflowy for some time. It has the ability to drill down and makes lists of lists of lists. I like to map out all my projects with it, can cross them off or add descriptions.

If you try it here I get free space:

https://workflowy.com/invite/5f5e43d.lnx

Otherwise:

https://workflowy.com/

So many services use the New Tab today, so you have to prioritize what you actually need. For me, such service would better work as an online tool/service, not an extension. A similar concept has been implemented in idonthaveadamnpen.com which sends your notes to your email address.

Anyway, thank you for a nice note-taking service. Keep it up!

I tried to copy and paste code into the note. Indentation doesn't translate over. Otherwise a useful tool.

Feature Request - Dots! The deputy loves Dots! Seriously though, I want bullet points and enumeration please.

Very nice! Hopefully it'll support syncing to google user account too.

Working on it ;)

Also instead of taking over the newtab page it could use it own page :)

Is the data sync to any cloud services? Looks good by the way!

Is there a way to export in order to backup somewhere else?

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