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Tinysheet

tinysheet.com

232 pointsAmorymeltzer74 comments

A few years back a few of us code golfed a sheet down to ~250 bytes. Not quite as full-featured, but loads of fun to shave off bytes.

http://xem.github.io/sheet/

The commented source code was very interesting to read. Thanks for sharing!

https://github.com/xem/sheet/blob/gh-pages/full-commented.ht...

A fun toy, sure, but a spreadsheet that self-destructs when you enter a formula of =o=0 and otherwise evaluates arbitrary JS is hardly comparable to an ostensibly-robust small-area spreadsheet.

Much in the same vein, but less of a toy, Tinymonth [0] has binary calendars - you just click on a day to toggle if it's part of an event or not. No .ics export that would really make it perfect, but it still seems extremely convenient in certain use cases.

Oh, and also from Postlight's labs, Textmoji [1] is a cute generator of custom emojis for Slack or Discord or whatnot.

[0] https://tinymonth.com/ [1] https://textmoji.app/

Submitted tinymonth[0] a couple days ago, ya never know what'll take off!

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28967515

The discussion here has me thinking of the many times I just use a simple plain text editor or notes app on my phone, when what I really needed was a lightning fast, minimal spreadsheet.

Does anyone know of such a software? Can read multiple types (csv/xlsx/maybe even m files or npy?), Does not do automatic conversions, simple editing and minimal calculation capabilities?

Sort of the vim/notepad++ of spreadsheets

sc-im (https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im/)? It might have too many or too few features, depending on your point of view.

It was too crashy for me in the end. Loved it before I got tired of the crashiness.

There are the "calculator notepad" apps like Soulver, Calca, Numi and I‘m sure some open source options as well. I use Calca on my phone quite a bit, but something with an actual table could be interesting.

For quick calcs I like http://notepadcalculator.com/

Don't get me wrong, I like the notebook look, but I literally just Google math equations and such things all the time. It's embarrassing how much I rely on Google to just do fairly basic math or unit conversion.

It's a reflection of how powerful a text input box is as an interface.

I'm a big fan of https://soulver.app/ as a mobile app (not a heavy Mac user, but if I was, I'd get the Mac version too). Sadly it's not available on Windows at all, and the mobile version is currently not on the App Store either (they're working on a major update and apparently you can still get the old one via TestFlight, but I just kept the old one installed on my phone).

This app looks like a great alternative! I will definitely be checking it out.

http://calca.io is a decent alternative that‘s available on Windows and still maintained on mobile.

This comment is in the light of other comments of what they do when they need to do similar calculation.

I just pull up a Python REPL and doing such calculations is really easy.

A real calculator app is better if it's written to do math the way a human expects (which Python isn't[1])

1. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/floating-point-error-in-python...

I use bc :)

On macOS I use Spotlight (cmd-space) to do one-line calculations or unit/currency conversion.

Added '1' to A1. In B1 I added '=A1'. Didn't work :(

Worked fine for me. Ha, spurious bugs, even worse...

Worked for me too.

It worked for me.

Love this. This is exactly something what I have been looking for ages.

I find smartphone solutions - calculators to be annoying, scientific calculators too much, spreadsheets to be too slow. This is what I need.

Where is the data for this stored? I was inspecting and didn't see anything in Local Storage, Session Storage, nothing on the network tab. Hit refresh thought everything would be wiped, but all my data was still there!

It appears to be stored in the url. As you update the cells there's an encoded # variable that, when removed, wipes the table.

And if you put the URL into a URL shortener, you can (ab)use it as cloud storage for your spreadsheet.

I once did some checks and found at least one shortener could store a URL string of at least 65KB [1]. That was in 2009. Not sure where those shortener limits are all at today - I suspect the industry dynamics changed when Twitter introduced its built-in shortener.

1. https://softwareas.com/the-url-shortener-as-a-cloud-database...

The limits are definitely shorter now. I also checked when I created URL Pages [0], which hosts entire web pages in the URL.

However there is a link shortener that is quietly hosted by GitHub called https://git.io that doesn't seem to have a length limit as far as I've discovered. [1]

0: https://github.com/jstrieb/urlpages

1: https://jstrieb.github.io/posts/git-io

But... URLs have a char length limit :x

And this has a cell limit. Perfectly aligned.

Think it gets encoded into the URL as it changes when you enter something. Also you are able to send that link to someone while visiting just https://tinysheet.com/ again gives a blank.

That’s actually a really useful feature. Nice.

If you like this you will probably also love the MacOS app called Numi. I sure do. https://numi.app/

I made something similar for a talk I used to give a few years ago [0]; including source code[1].

[0] http://tojans.me/vuexel/#/sheets/examplesheet

[1] https://github.com/ToJans/vuexel

Blank page on firefox. About half the time it flashes a UI before going to blank white, and half the time it starts out blank white.

It works flawlessly here on Firefox.

In general, I recommend anyone that reports something is broken on their brower to at least try it in a guest profile (i.e. with all extensions disabled, all settings being default) first. The author can't really catch the issue if it's caused by certain extensions/block rules/non-default settings.

It starts with a blank white screen on Firefox with no-script. Author should have a check that js is enabled if website is completely dependent upon it. If it is not, an html message of some sort is standard.

Then say it.

"This site does not work without JS" is a totally valid statement (I don't know what the point is though). No one knows GP (or you) runs their browsers with what extensions if they didn't explicitly mention it.

Serving a blank white screen to user agents without JS is the internationally understood symbol for "This webpage requires JS." "Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?"

The webstandard is to use a noscript tag with a message of some kind.

A white screen is a white screen. It has more interpretations than you think, including a dead website.

No it isn't. It's just a sign that something went wrong.

Same problem here.

It turns out that the app only loads if a "social sharing" script first gets loaded. This script is blocked by some ublock origin extension's block list.

Very cool idea! Too many bugs brought me back down to earth, but regardless I love neat things like this.

It's brilliant. You could add gesture support for selection and extrapolation

It has no reference loop detection. A bit of an edge case, granted, but still. Enter:

   A1:  =A2+1
   A2:  =A1

Then hit up/down/left/right arrows.

On mobile Chrome column B only has the number keyboard for me.

Interesting, but the =AVG() and I suspect other functions might have a flaw. When I tried =AVG(B1:B4), with one value in B1 (6), it returned 1.5 as the average.

edit: ah, just AVG() then, the scroll didn't work on my first try so I assumed it only showed SUM() and AVG() was just a "hidden" function.

Is there any way to add columns or rows?

I spent several minutes trying to figure out how to add columns or rows, but it turns out you can't. It's a 'tiny sheet', after all.

I love this.

A bit cumbersome to add equations. Consider a few quick-populated options with common ones?

Is there somethin like this that is open source?

Why only two columns? Or am I missing something?

It is called: tiny!

But... why?

Is there anyone who opens a classic spreadsheet software (from excel to google sheets) and says "I need something limited with less cells!"?

This is not targeting people who go to a spreadsheet software first; this is targeting people who need some quick calculation and can use the power of spreadsheet software. Maybe it's a quick forecast of an investment/loan over a few years, maybe it's a list of friends who owe you money for your group trip, maybe it's just the waiter who runs the payments for a 10-person table who all pay differently and they want to note who paid how much and what is left on the total bill. This is just like opening Notepad++ for copy-pasting something quickly instead of opening Word.

I can see a lot of uses for that kind of "quick spreadsheeting" that don't require you to fire a full-blown editor.

> This is just like opening Notepad++ for copy-pasting something quickly instead of opening Word.

But it's not.

Noteped++ is a pure text editor, word is not (because it has formatting, auto capitalization and other crap, that might bother you, especially if you paste a snippet of code).

This is like openining an online, special, 10-line limited version of notepad, instead of a normal notepad, that you already have installed on your pc, which has no line limits.

I do that kind of quick spreadsheeting on the Apple Numbers app. I can’t say it’s particularly pleasant to use. There’s definitely a need for reimagining the spreadsheet UI for mobile spreadsheeting.

What if I need to put more than 10 friends on my list. Why is it arbitrarily limited?

They do touch upon the rationale in their announcement blog post [0] but I do struggle to think of specific use cases.

[0] https://postlight.com/insights/introducing-tinysheet

As a personal anecdote, extraneous columns in spreadsheets trigger my OCD.

The first thing I do in any spreadsheet is to delete all of columns except for five, then add more if needed.

I wish there was an option in Google Sheets to start with fewer columns. I almost never need a full alphabet.

If this was an embeddable JS library then this would be pretty neat.

Why not? Why do you need bloated, mobile unfriendly spreadsheet software to quickly take down some numbers in a tabular form? For e.g, If I'm around the house and want to record a few tape measure readings with my phone like a digital scrapbook, I can use this. I like the tabular format and ease of use.

If I need to jot down a quick note, I wouldn't use a word processor with all the inane amount of options. I would use a simple note app because all those word processing options serve no purpose and makes the simple task I'm trying to complete harder then it needs to be. Simplicity is a very convenient feature.

If you remember this product exists the next time you're measuring than yes, it might be useful. I use my notes app to jot down field measurements all the time and it works well. Simplicity can be nice up until the point of too much fragmentation.

There is a difference between straight text and spreadsheets. I also like notes, but numbers are just easier to process mentally in tabular form. If they weren't spreadsheets would have next to no value.

If I use a product and find it handy and convenient I'll remember to use it next time. Likewise, if I use a product and find it obtuse and makes a simple task harder than it needs to be, I'll remember not to use it next time.

It seems like it's mobile-first.

On desktop it's kind of silly compared to google sheets, but open it on a phone and it's a joy to use for something quick and screenshot vs google sheets.

I like it. One example could be - Need to come up with rent calculations for rental properties, before I do the books.

Also, doing doing freelance project quotations with breakdown. Expected hours for each task and stuff like that.

This works perfectly for me. I have bookmarked to my main page. I just like spreadsheets.

But if anyone wants a bit more, I found https://ethercalc.net/ which I am exploring right now.

Seems like more than 2 columns would be handy even in those scenarios.

I get your point, but it does appeal to me. There are times I wish my Keep list had a totals function. I'll probably try this next time I need to share something on Keep that needs a calculation or an itemized quote.

to create discussion/controversy and therefore attention for the consultancy that created it (postlight).

For programmers, how about using SQL instead? https://superintendent.app

Anyway, the design of Tinysheet looks refined and slick. Very nice job.

This looks nice but the yearly pricing model puts me off. I suppose it’s really targeted at organizations though.

This seems aggressively overpriced for what looks like a very simple GUI on top of sqlite?

Is there an open source version of this?

I’m working a similar thing but open source you can check it out at https://github.com/rukshn/hypertables

However I haven’t been able to contribute lately because I was helping to build a covid health information system as part of my masters

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