Manifest: An instant grid-based pinboard for note taking in the browser | Hacker News Reader

Manifest: An instant grid-based pinboard for note taking in the browser

manifest.app

77 pointsandreypopp19 comments

Hi all, I'm Jonathon, the maintainer of the Manifest repo. Thanks to whoever linked it here on Hacker News, I was wondering why it was get more attention that I expected...Appreciate the support and feedback thus far!

One minor suggestion: just in case you haven't considered it, is to `favor undo over confirmation`. So when the user deletes a note, instead of asking if they are sure with an alert dialog, just delete the note but also have an undo buffer (or trash can) so they can restore it easily.

Someone suggested this recently. My personal thought on it is not to try to be too smart and over-engineer things. Relying on a browser's native dialog system simply just works and doesn't really need to be maintained. Doesn't mean it will always remain this way, that's just my current attitude regarding it.

It doesn't just work though, because it is a detriment to the user's workflow and is just easier to make.

Delete with confirm gives you a far worse UX than undo does though.

Also having the confirm there, kind of disrupts the flow. At least for me, your mileage may vary. Cool website though.

This makes sense intuitively, from the user psychology perspective.

However, if you delete, but allow for the user to undo, you run the risk of a lost connection in between the delete and a potential undo call.

It's possible for the back end to still behave as in the confirm workflow (while the front end follows undo). But that's ... complicated.

This is a great little tool!

The subtle grid reminds me, oddly perhaps, of OneNote. It was my favorite note taking app in college, and there was an implicit/invisible grid at the base of every page with similar click and drag boxes for text and other media. Ever since 2018 when Microsoft began removing features (i.e. local notebook support) and stopped updating the full desktop version, I've been searching for a viable replacement and debating just building one myself. The continued free availability of the depreciated desktop app has stopped me from taking the plunge, but OneNote is no longer something I expect to count on forever.

There's definitely a crowd of people who like visual note taking apps with just a little bit of organizing framework. And there's definitely demand for that kind of application.

Hi - I’m on the OneNote team. We’re bringing the full desktop version back into active support and development (announced at Ignite in Nov). We made this decision after hearing strong and consistent feedback from customers like you. Hope to keep you as a fan!

I did something similar a few years ago, I used markdown inside my notes so I could put links / images and format the text easily.

The notes were also stored on a mongodb, so they can be accessible from anywhere.

The only thing I was a bit stuck on, is when you define a grid size, it is quite hard to make it work anywhere, especially if you have big differences in resolution between your devices.

Nice work! Safari is kind of limited with it, it takes a few clicks to create a note, sometimes(?)

Also a no-select might be good for certain part of the page, or for the ones not being edited presently, as text selection seem to grab most of the page text at any click and drag.

As the original developer on this I was building everything on Windows so didn't have Safari immediately available to test on. I'll take a look though and make sure improvements get made if needed!

Feels great, but is there an option to switch out of the dark theme or is it the only one

It probably depends on your browser's settings? It's light for me.

Yes, press Alt+T :)

https://github.com/jonathontoon/manifest/blob/c51828086d972f...

If you're going to have obscure shortcuts, may I suggest that you document them part of a note somewhere maybe accessible via a '(?)' icon at the bottom of the page?

Also, your dark mode is way too dark and contrasted. Consider something like this:

https://imgur.com/a/8FLdGb5

HTH

Totally agree w/ all of this.. esp. the dark contrast in the imgur link is way better - imho.

Dark mode was just added over the weekend, so there's probably a better way to address how to find out about features, shortcuts etc as they get built.

As for the contrast I think it's just a case of visual style preference. I think the current contrast works for now but it's only been out for a little while, so happy to see more responses down the road.

We changed the URL from https://github.com/jonathontoon/manifest to the project page.

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