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Show HN: NotepadJs – A cross-platform love letter to Notepad

(github.com)
145 points itkeman | 1 comments | 22 Jan 25 11:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.337s | source

As a native Windows user who switched to macOS a few years back, one thing I never got over was the simplicity and usefulness of the old school Notepad app. This app aims to recreate that very same experience, cross-platform and easily installable as a PWA.

I've been using this for personal use for around 2 years and I figured it was time to share it with the world. Criticism, issues and PRs are welcome. Thanks!

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crazygringo ◴[22 Jan 25 13:10 UTC] No.42792416[source]▶
This is really cool, I love this.

I do most of my work in browser tabs, but often need a "scratch pad" to paste or type things in, like snippets of code or a short todo list. And I use TextEdit on my Mac, but I'd prefer a browser tab so this is wonderful.

Four requests, from most to least important:

1) Let me choose the font and font size? For code snippets, I really want monospace. And make sure the preference persists

2) Keep current contents in local storage, so it survives a browser restart? (Or maybe you do already?)

3) Having tabs feels redundant with my browser tabs -- I'd rather get rid of the extra bar at the top and just have a 100% clean typing space, with just the (wonderfully unobtrusive) menu bar. (I understand their utility in a PWA though, maybe a menu option to toggle the tab bar? Also full screen mode to hide the menu bar for a pure editing experience?)

4) Get a proper domain name. :) So I can start typing "note" in my address bar and it will autocomplete. Surely "notepadjs" is available for some TLD? Or "notepadx" (for cross-platform) or "notepage" (for webpage) or similar?

But this is a great idea. I'm surprised I've never come across something like it before, it seems so obvious in hindsight. I love it.

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vallode ◴[22 Jan 25 14:11 UTC] No.42793025[source]▶
For what it's worth, I have a bookmarklet with these contents:

  data:text/html,<body contenteditable style="line-height:1.5;font-size:22px;max-width:75ch">type here...
I use this _all_ the time for very quick note taking and writing that will later be copied elsewhere, think one to three sentences and then offload.
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1. dspillett ◴[22 Jan 25 15:29 UTC] No.42793824[source]▶
Nice. I'll have to look into how localStorage works in such contexts, and if that is not badly maybe knock together a bookmarklet that does that but keeps text in case I accidentally close the window before I should (or Windows, when I'm using that, decides to reboot, as it is wont to do).