Comment by jfoster | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jfoster | Hacker News Reader

Hi HN! I realize there's no shortage of note-taking apps, but I wanted to make one where you don't need an account, don't need to download an app, and your notes won't be sync'ed to the cloud, etc. I used to use Windows Notepad for this, but now I use a Mac and everything from Notes gets pushed into iCloud.

If you just need to write a shopping list or jot something down quickly instead of a note that you'll need to keep for a long time, Temporary Note might be useful for you:

- Accessible from any device with an internet connection & web browser

- Notes are not uploaded to the cloud, but keep in mind that they're in the URL, so they might make it into your browser history

- There's a few features for dictation, speech synthesis, fullscreen

- Am considering adding saving notes as txt files, but won't be adding any cloud sync or accounts; it's not that kind of note-taking app

Would love to hear any feedback on whether it's useful or not, or any feature suggestions.

> Am considering adding saving notes as txt files

Why prioritize that instead of saving notes as editable notes (just the way it feels to use temporarynote.com, but from a file on your disk)? Output an HTML file instead of plain text.

I love this idea. Will get it done soon.

Html is fine, but txt is really useful. Txt would also allow easy porting and reuse. But no harm in having multiple options.

Plain text is useful, but getting it in that form is trivial—it's just a textarea (nothing fancy like contenteditable, so it's already in plain text) and every system that you could expect to use this from should have a functioning clipboard.

A note with the look and feel of temporarynote.com calls for coordination from the author to modify their app to be able to output itself as a self-contained file.

On an iPhone, I turned on dictation but there was no indication on how to control (or stop) it. After giving permission, what is expected behavior? How do I cease dictation?

Permission is controlled by the browser. If you go into your browser settings, there will be something for controlling which websites have which permissions.

Why not just use localstorage rather than using the URL as a hack?

One idea is that the url makes it immediately shareable. You can send your note to your phone in a text message without any uploads due to it being encoded in the url.

Having the note text in the URL can be good in some cases. Storing the note as a bookmark becomes possible, as does storing a note in a URL shortening service. Opening a fork of a note from a different device also becomes possible this way. (eg. on Chrome, using "Send to Your Devices")

Localstorage (as far as I know) isn't easy to move across devices or share, and notes being a bit ephemeral is part of the idea of this. I think anyone who wants to save notes indefinitely is probably better off with one of the cloud-based note-taking apps.

We've done it all before:

* the original: htlm.org

* my own attempt: original.littr.me

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