Stashpad launches Google Docs alternative you can use without any login | Hacker News Reader

Stashpad launches Google Docs alternative you can use without any login

techcrunch.com

130 pointsyuvalhazaz68 comments

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I have a bookmark on my bookmark bar that just does

data:text/html, <html contenteditable>

It's great for quick notes between tabs or copy/pasting things together into a cohesive comment.

This truly delighted me to learn, thank you!

Thanks for this. Very clever and handy.

I've been wanting to make a simple web app with persistent notes, a homegrown Google Keep clone, to run on my shared host, just for privacy purposes.

But this is a neat little non-persistent solution for single-location use.

If it's just for you (and in some cases even if not), you can also just save the innerhtml directly to a database to get the persistence.

Run it through a sanitizer before serving it back, but otherwise it'll work fine.

My slight modification on this is:

    data:text/html,<html><head><title>Notepad</title><style>html,body{margin:0;padding:0;}textarea{padding:10px;font-family:Courier;font-size:16px;height:100%;width:100%;border:none;outline:none;}</style></head><body><textarea style="height:100%;width:100%;font-size:16px;padding:10px;"></textarea><script>document.getElementsByTagName('textarea')[0].focus()</script></body></html>

I love, love, love threads like this where people share their bookmarklets.

It's how I found kill-sticky[1] which I use religiously.

javascript:(function()%7Bdocument.querySelectorAll(%22body%20%22).forEach(function(node)%7Bif(%5B%22fixed%22%2C%22sticky%22%5D.includes(getComputedStyle(node).position))%7Bnode.parentNode.removeChild(node)%7D%7D)%3Bdocument.querySelectorAll(%22html%20%22).forEach(function(node)%7Bvar%20s%3DgetComputedStyle(node)%3Bif(%22hidden%22%3D%3D%3Ds%5B%22overflow%22%5D)%7Bnode.style%5B%22overflow%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7Dif(%22hidden%22%3D%3D%3Ds%5B%22overflow-x%22%5D)%7Bnode.style%5B%22overflow-x%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7Dif(%22hidden%22%3D%3D%3Ds%5B%22overflow-y%22%5D)%7Bnode.style%5B%22overflow-y%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7D%7D)%3Bvar%20htmlNode%3Ddocument.querySelector(%22html%22)%3BhtmlNode.style%5B%22overflow%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%3BhtmlNode.style%5B%22overflow-x%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%3BhtmlNode.style%5B%22overflow-y%22%5D%3D%22visible%22%7D)()%3B%0A

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Wat do?

It kills dickbars (aka sticky hover-over UI elements on websites), which term was coined by Mr Gruber of Daring Fireball fame.

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/06/27/mcdiarmid-stick...

Haha this is funny. Does this even work for pages that are written with frontend frameworks? Needs a remix for 2024.

Virtual DOM refreshes might bring back the original style if not the elements themselves.

As insane as it sounds what probably makes more sense is to query for and remove the elements, generate a PNG of the page, delete everything in the body, and make sure the only child element of the body tag is your new img tag.

Also since you cannot unload or make undefined all the other js already running you may want to add some defensive event handlers on the body tag with MutationObserver.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MutationObs...

If you have uBlock Origin - and who doesn't - you can use the 'element zapper' to do targeted killing of such annoying elements. It does wonders for those sticky headers, grey-out overlays and similar nuisances. Bind it to a key - I use CTRL-ALT-Z for 'zap' - and you don't need to leave the keyboard to go on a killing spree.

Thanks for this!

Here is my modification to yours. I added a data URI notepad favicon.

    data:text/html,<html><head><link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="32x32" href="data:image/png;base64,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"><title>Notepad</title><style>html,body{margin:0;padding:0;}textarea{padding:10px;font-family:Courier;font-size:16px;height:100%;width:100%;border:none;outline:none;}</style></head><body><textarea style="height:100%;width:100%;font-size:16px;padding:10px;"></textarea><script>document.getElementsByTagName('textarea')[0].focus()</script></body></html>

Add my own little twist to use the default Monospace font and change color scheme based on system theme:

data:text/html,<html><head><link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="32x32" href="data:image/png;base64,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"><title>Notepad</title><style>html,body{margin:0;padding:0;color-scheme:light dark;}textarea{padding:10px;font-family:Monospace;font-size:16px;height:100%;width:100%;border:none;outline:none;resize:none;}</style></head><body><textarea style="height:100%;width:100%;font-size:16px;padding:10px;"></textarea><script>document.getElementsByTagName('textarea')[0].focus()</script></body></html>

This is great! Is there a way to persist the state across refreshes?

This is wonderfully clever and simple!

And then something happens and you lose it.

A million editors and you pick the least capable. My go-to is a sublime text window, even if ST is not my code editor.

At this point I have PyCharm as my IDE, Obsidian as my official "Notes" with a capital N, and about 40 open unsaved text documents in Sublime Text that i just use as scratchpads. Writing down things, acting as a poor man's extended clipboard, etc.

I absolutely love this flow and it works so well for me now.

I recommend you check out “Scratches” in PyCharm (or any IntelliJ IDE). Cmd+Shift+N I think? I type it reflexively, it lets you create a scratch pad of any “type” (Python, PHP, plain text, shell, everything IntelliJ supports) and write code with syntax highlighting and all the bells and whistles you are used to.

They are all saved in a folder on your computer and easily accessible from the “Scratches” section at the bottom of the file explorer.

It’s my go-to for any text manipulation and I think you can even configure it up to run your snippets of code if you want (I’m stuck using CodeRunner cause I’m too lazy to look more into “running” Scratches).

I also use it to paste in information as I’m debugging a problem. Then I can use multiple cursors or regex find/replace to take information and turn it into commands to run. Yes, I know about CLI tools built in to most systems and I use them to create one-liners but sometimes I want a little more direct control and/or I want to build a script from the commands.

> The product is browser first and document history is stored locally

so.. for throwaway documents then?

browser storage is one of the worst data places imagineable. Hard to backup, very hard for user to access, impossible to sync or share. And very unreliable too: many troubleshooting procedures for web apps start with "reset browser profile" or "clear site data"

The new and improved Pastebin

"document history is stored locally" doesn't necessarily mean "document history is not stored in the cloud/elsewhere"

It sort of does. Not in a strict semantic sense, but I don't think any user of a service that says it stores stuff "locally" expects it to upload that to somewhere else without explicit consent.

It sounds like your interpretation is like if I said "our data is stored on our servers" but that actually meant "our data is stored on our servers, but also on AWS, GCP, Azure, Alibaba and shared with FSB, CIA, CCP, and the public and other parties (including but not limited to the Royal Bhutan Police)".

That would be true, but misleading to the point of being meaningless or (hopefully) potentially criminal.

I guess, but local-first is a huge movement which means exactly "data is stored locally" AND usually "data is synced to the cloud"

Just saying it's not a novel concept if that's what they're doing (I couldn't tell from the article)

There is a huge difference between "document history is stored locally" and "works offline".

The local-first movement might sometimes talk about privacy and offline availability in the same breath, but those are very different concerns and if someones says "data is stored locally" then I assume they should check both the privacy and offline boxes but with a huge "I might loose all my data" caveat. If it still uploads my data to some cloud then I would not describe it as "document history is stored locally".

I assumed it was letting you store it on the local filesystem, not in the browser storage, which I agree is a bad place to store anything. There is one site I use that stores my favorites in the browser store and I had to write two JS bookmarklets so I can import/export my settings on a regular basis because pretty much every time Chrome crashes you can be assured that all my cookies and storage data gets zero'd out.

I tried using the product and out of curiosity inspected the editor. The editor is basically a CodeMirror plugin with all the tech heavy-lifting like realtime collaboration is enabled by CodeMirror itself.

It's clearly an overstretch to call this a Google Docs alternative, especially since Google docs is powered by insane levels of engineering. I know because I work on a competing word-processing product.

It's mildly surprising seeing such a shell product receiving millions of dollars in funding and even a published post in TechCrunch!

I'll be swapping over. My usage for Google Docs is little more than pastebin + formating + access control. I suspect this is also probably a huge chunk of their overall use-case as well. In general, the least engineering amount possible to deliver what's actually needed is best IMO!

There once was an incredibly nice product like this called hackpad. It even had a similar theme IIRC. It was a yc company, lovely polished product, and the folks I was founding a startup with loved it with zero effort spent on convincing them.

10 years ago Dropbox bought it and shut it down.

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=hackpad

I loved etherpad but it was a pain to host back then.

I'd love to have something similar that's lightweight and not serverside node.js

Take a look at https://github.com/ekzhang/rustpad

Hackpad still quasi-exists as Dropbox Paper, but it's definitely not the same. I really like this product because it reminds me a lot of Hackpad!

I just got hedgedoc (nee codimd, nee hackmd [1]) setup for my own purposes. It does have the advantage of splitscreen edit/preview, and it has the option to use vim/emacs keybinds in the editor, but if I'd had stashpad, I probably would not have bothered setting up a selfhost hedgedoc.

[1] https://hedgedoc.org/history/

+1 for hedgedoc. Only weird thing missing is an admin interface and easy way to check if no one is abusing any of those forgotten public pads that are hanging about.

It needs to support some table of contents concept, pretty limited tbh. This looks like a very basic app. Who do they know at TC?

I’m seeing scratch solutions shared, so here’s mine for iOS

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/scratch/id1671420139

I tried to optimise for least number of taps to quickly write something down.

Here’s a blog post by a user https://irreal.org/blog/?p=11202

But if there’s no login how do they track you for marketing purposes? This doesn’t sound like a web app at all.

Instead they'll record all your keystrokes and feed that to their proprietary AI and sell it back to you

Awesome. This functions exactly like I expect it to, and without any unnecessary nonsense that I've come to begrudgingly accept.

Clean, simple, intuitive, and local-first. A really great product that I'm happy to have found! Thanks!

I wonder how you compete with Google docs while charging $8 a month?

A full office suite with email from Microsoft is only $13/mo so the bar is pretty low.

"only", when 99% of the people are perfectly well served with the featureset of yesterdecade's LibreOffice suite, the three problems being the network effect (if everyone else is on another "network" or standard, you're forced to as well), that it looks like 2002, and that they have to spend 10 minutes on the first day to figure out that some buttons are in different places (I'm lost in Office nowadays, it really is just a matter of habit and not that either of them has an inferior layout). With the only functional defect being "it looks old", a modern style is what you pay 150€ every year for when buying into the Office monopoly. Except as a student: they're happy to help you gain the habit and experience the network effect.

I guess this is why Google Docs has been the first to make a dent: you seamlessly download the software to render the file format upon pageload, so there's no network effect on file formats anymore. Add a modern look, reach into your pockets to make it free until you've established a good market share, advertise for it in your already popular products (costing them nothing), et voila

The real secret we need to know here is how to convince TechCrunch to write about you when you have the most generic product on the planet. Knowing journalists is the secret?

If it makes you feel any better, news articles make almost no impact on a product’s revenue or success.

Yes and no. In this case it won't make a difference.

They raised $2M on the original idea this pivoted off which is insane.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/30/stashpad-is-a-notepad-for-...

Is this not exactly the papier chrome extension?

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/papier/hhjeaokafpl...

Not sure where the data is actually stored, but assuming the last version is stored in the cloud, how can they prevent users from sharing data e.g. music though the docs? And how can they they stop users from doing that?

The thing that immediately stood out to me is `stash.new`. I thought that was only for google apps....

How is this accomplished? I does one register with chrome?

wow - did not know this but found it. https://get.new/

It is just a TLD. https://get.new/

Thanks for the link. I discovered that you can create new repo or gist on github using

repo.new

gist.new

That's very handy and useful.

This is a Google Docs alternative in the way that a pair of shoes is a car alternative.

A pair of shoes is a great alternative when a car would be overkill!

Or stuck in traffic while you walk by

But who will buy it when the price is $8 for the shoes, $6 for starter car and $12 for standard car.

I’ll drive to my garden shed if I want to!

To be fair that's what I consider Google docs relative to office.

How is it better than Emacs?

why not just use something like Notational Velocity?

what is the point of this?

you can’t store any important info if there’s no login unless your links contain the key.

and at that point you might as well just use a login instead maintaining your own list of docs

agreed, would be nice als selfhostable service though

> The product is browser first and document history is stored locally, so users can search for docs without querying the server. The company said that while there is no offline support at the moment, it is a feature that the startup will introduce in the future. > > You can easily share these docs for others to look at and collaborate with. However, some of the features like read-only sharing are behind a login.

it took you longer to write that comment than it would've taken to get the answer.

i see no reason to use this product over gsuite when it’s both cheaper, has more functionality, and a data/privacy policy

Access control appears to be a paid feature:

https://www.stashpad.com/pricing

Using the free version for anything sensitive might not be a good idea, especially since I can't find anything about their retention policy or something like terms of service.

The lack of needing an account is a (or the) key feature: one I wish more online services copied. How much better and more frictionless would the web be if we weren’t having to log into an account everywhere we went?

How do I get back to my docs from a second device?

If each doc has a unique URL, then bookmarks? Most browsers already do this. I’d be willing to argue that browsers should make sharing bookmarks from one device to the other easier and account-less, too, but that’s a different rant.

Bookmarks might be fine for technical users, but these days I do not see non-technical users use this feature at all.

Not really. Regular users send links to themselves all the time as a way to bookmark things.

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