Show HN: 5iler – a repurposable minimalist notepad | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: 5iler – a repurposable minimalist notepad

5iler.com

46 pointssidyadav61 comments

Neat, minimalist idea. I like it.

Small nitpicky feedback: Your keyboard shortcuts say to use cmd + 1/2/3 to switch files. In Safari, that will load the first/second/third bookmark. The correct shortcut for Safari is ctrl + 1/2/3

Thanks! I'll update the Shortcuts modal to reflect this.

Three finger swipe on the mac app would also be wonderful. Any chance of open sourcing this?

On Windows there is no Cmd button at all...

You might want to fix your shortcut help. I don't have a cmd key on my Linux system.

Thanks! I'll update it to reflect OS/Browser.

I like 5iler a whole lot and I second adestefan's advice. I use a Linux system and don't have cmd keys. I'm wondering if, since some browsers (at least Chrome + Safari) use cmd+1/2/3 to switch tabs, if maybe replacing cmd with ctrl would be easier for everyone involved?

Great app and excellent design. Call me a fan!

Appreciate it :)

Actually, you can already use Ctrl+Numbers -- command is essentially just an alias for Macs (i.e. the Shortcuts modal is the misleading part).

Sorry for not being more clear! I meant that you may want to update the documentation with that information.

I was a bit obtuse in my original comment. Ctrl does work fine. I then tried Alt since that's in the position of the Cmd key, but that didn't work (which is a good thing because then it doesn't eat the browser's tab switch keys.)

Of course the same is also true on Windows.

I've updated the Shortcuts help screen on Windows :)

Still missing in one place. When you hide the menu the little tool tip says to use cmd + E to restore it.

It also recommends Cmd + S as a way to enforce synchronization

Cool idea, nice implementation!

Feature request: please implement lists either as a keyboard shortcut or as a text macro. Both ordered (numbered) and un-ordered preferred.

BTW, for anyone who didn't catch it: you can change the name of each notepad. Just double-click the name, type what you want and it'll be saved.

Thank you! As a matter of fact, Markdown support is the next big thing I'm working on, and I plan to look into incorporating lists.

I'm probably in the minority, but I would vote against markdown support. There are tons of minimalist markdown editors out there (have a look in the Mac app store for starters). At least make it switch-offable.

I'd vote against list automation too, because it changes the way the cursor and keyboard behave.

URL detection would be nice though, since it only affects the visual display and mouse behavior.

I'd also vote for a constant-width font option. Preferably Consolas or one of its knock-offs.

It would be nice if the line number, column number, and number of characters in the buffer were reported in one of the corners.

Comments based on the web version (Firefox Mac).

Interesting, thanks for the feedback. I definitely plan on adding an off switch for Markdown, and will only be going through implementation if it doesn't impact speed/usability in a noticeable way. The plan is to make it a minimal implementation (i.e. keyboard shortcuts only) and barely something you would notice you had.

The reason I'd like to add it is because having switched over from TextEdit and Evernote, the one thing I miss are the Cmd+B,I,Us etc.

Have you thought about a subtle markdown support like a syntax highlighter? Vim does this for example. Bold things get displayed bold with there stars, headings get bold and colored (red in my case). It allows to read the markdown source and have the effect of formatting at the same time.

Two requests:

1) I'd like the titles to be Markdown-friendly headings instead of C comments, personally.

2) I'm not sure if this is within scope - maybe this is just something to do on my own in Dropbox - but it would be neat if there were an 'archive' button. Let's say I'm done with one of my files and I want to clear it out. Push the button, and that file would be moved to archived/DATETIME.txt or something like that, and cleared.

Hi! Thanks for the feedback.

1) I'm working on implementing Markdown and will be using friendly headings once we sort that out.

2) I love this idea! In fact, it's been on my wishlist for some time now -- I plan on shipping it this week. I've been calling it "Snapshot Backup", but I think "Archive" is a much better word for it. Thank you :)

Update: I've implemented the "Archive" feature. Thanks again for the suggestion! http://5iler.com/

Great job! Like the concept. But here's another nitpick.

I see when you activate a file, the animation first shrinks the file a bit and then expands it out. Is it possible to remove the shrinking? It makes the app "feel" a bit jerky. I think the reason is when you shrink the activating file, all other files expand by a bit. This causes the whole screen shifting a bit, leading to a somewhat jarring experience for a split second.

Interesting app. I actually like it because I use a paper planner that is laid out in columns like the app. (like this: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UQkLuS4qZtA/UTyyzpS9suI/AAAAAAAAAH...)

Text editor-like tabbing behaviour (new line preserves last line's tab level) for indented lists would be quite useful.

That makes sense. I'll try my best to include it in the next version!

Really nifty and very well done.

If you have time down the road you could think of implementing one feature that every modern text editor for some reason lacks: autocorrect. TextEdit on Mac has some form of autocorrect but mostly sucks, I don't know why in 2014 we're still using the backspace but I feel it's time to move on.

isn't the same auto-correct system in TextEdit.app available by default in any cocoa text-fied on OS X? And if you think that system 'mostly sucks', perhaps it is because you are vastly underestimating what a difficult feature it is to implement?

I didn't say it was easy and I'm not underestimating anything, that doesn't change the fact that autocorrect on Mac sucks.

In Chrome, the font is rather difficult to read. For example, l and t look very similar.

Great idea - it looks very promising :D

I agree in chrome this is super hard to read. I like the idea though.

Thanks! :)

Had a few complaints about the font, working on adding customization in the next version.

why not just change it to a better default font? It's cool, btw.

After some digging, I realized this was a Windows + Chrome issue with a particular font size and I was able to fix it!

Check it out: http://5iler.com/me

Cool idea, not sure I like how the web app hijacks Command+N keys though (I use these often to switch between browser tabs). Lately I've been using a similar ~5 categories, and just emailing things to myself. I put the "tag" in the subject line have gmail filter them into labels.

Thanks!

Out of curiosity, which browser are you using? As far as I'm aware, I didn't build in any Cmd+N hijacking into the app (I did do Cmd+S for syncing/saving though, and Cmd+1,2,3,4,5 for switching between files -- is that what you mean?).

Yea, he means Cmd + Number I believe. In Chrome Cmd + 1 goes to the first tab, Cmd + 2 to the second and so on. So it can be somewhat annoying for someone who frequently uses those shortcuts to change tab.

Sure -- right now, Ctrl+Number works as an alternative, so considering getting rid of Cmd+Number all together.

Right, I should have been more clear. And yes, I was using Chrome.

I really like this, especially that it handles the tab key properly. I find it frustrating that it hijacks ctrl+tab and ctrl+shift+tab as well though. I use those to switch browser tabs. I'm on Linux + Firefox.

I'm interested in what 5 categories people would use in their own 5iler?

Mine would be: todo, random, scratch, thoughts/ideas, notes.

Since I built the first prototype a few weeks ago, it's been changing every day for me! Interesting to observe the change in contexts.

Right now it's: Thoughts, Code, 5iler, Today, Private

Looks nice. I have been using http://selfcoded.com/justnotes/ instead of evernote, but I will check this out!

I don't get what the 'insert line divider' is meant to be. It seems to just insert a large, fixed amount of whitespace characters?

Try it out! It's a hyphen-based separator I found myself using to divide chunks of text. For now it almost functions as "sub-notes" feature.

The keyboard shortcut is Cmd/Ctrl + /

Yes, I did try it out-- for me at least, on FF/Win7, it just inserts about 20 whitespace characters.

Good idea! it works pretty good in FF but in Chrome when I type "-" nothing gets printed, and when I type = it prints "-".

Nice, I really like it.

My suggestions might be out of line with the minimalist philosophy but:

1) Code coloring or at least code blocks

2) The ability to open two at the same time, side by side

For the desktop version, I'm having problems with undo. Occasionally, if I delete something, I won't be able to undo it.

This may be a known issue: it has to do with the fact that whenever Dropbox syncs, the undo state is reset. If you haven't setup Dropbox sync and have been experiencing this, let me know.

Yeah I actually haven't synced Dropbox, though I can't seem to reproduce this on a consistent basis. Huge fan of this though, definitely going to be something I use on a consistent basis.

Also, redo isn't working for me at all.

Jk, I was using the wrong shortcut :)

FYI: I am planning to open source the code within the next two weeks. Please get in touch if you're interested in contributing!

hello@5iler.com

I absolutely love this!

Thanks!

> 5iler (pronounced ‘filer’)

No. This isn't intuitive at all.

Five-iler?

I'm guessing you're not a fan of the movie Se-seven-en :)

Is that really the most constructive thing you could say and the most constructive way to say it?

Probably not, but I agree that it's worth mentioning.

It doesn't follow any common verbalization of the '5' character. It's also at the front of the word, so you have no clues to start you off on the right path. Even when you know how to say it you still want to say "five" when you read it. I would give the name a very low usability/accessibility score, and frankly it pushes me towards not using the product ("yeah I use this thing called filer - if you want to check it out it's actually spelled with a number five, and then 'iler' - yeah I don't get it either"). If we're going with the 5 theme I would have preferred 5note or 5notes.

Mentally, I pronounced it 'Vile-er' (as in roman numeral V).

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