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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: 0.336s | 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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pferde ◴[22 Jan 25 14:58 UTC] No.42793499[source]▶
I just hit Win+K, and my OS runs a simple text editor of my choice for me.

Maybe I'm getting old, but using a browser for something you have available natively seems like an antipattern to me.

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stronglikedan ◴[22 Jan 25 17:58 UTC] No.42795613[source]▶
Those type of people live and work in the browser. Everything's a PWA. Little to no native app use. Like to manage apps (windows) by browser tab management instead of OS management. At least it's consistent across devices!
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TeMPOraL ◴[22 Jan 25 19:52 UTC] No.42796794[source]▶
I'd consider doing that if I could rely on the browser not losing state after OS restart, browser restart, unexpected forced browser restart because of some autoupdate bullshit, accidental refresh, automatic unloading of tabs, badly thought-out shortcut for closing the browser window, unexpected update of the web page/PWA into which I typed something, accidental cookie wipe, certificate expiry, lack of reliable form of local storage[0], and a bunch of other things that make me consider everything in the browser ephemeral unless stored on a server.

(I'm not a browser fan, but even in my weaker moments, this one thing is what stops me from fully embracing living in browser.)

--

[0] - AFAIK there's still nothing in the browser one could reliably use to get the equivalent of persisting data to a hard drive. There's like 5 different mechanisms that could allow it, if you could rely on any of them, and of course none of them are user-inspectable except through dev tools.

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crazygringo ◴[23 Jan 25 00:06 UTC] No.42798958[source]▶
But literally everything you describe is worse outside of the browser.

My browser does a better job of retaining state than most of my apps. My desktop apps have clunkier auto-update than my browser. My browser apps auto-save to the cloud, my desktop ones often don't auto-save at all.

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1. TeMPOraL ◴[23 Jan 25 01:30 UTC] No.42799602[source]▶
I'm talking strictly client side. I literally said "unless stored on a server", and let me remind everyone that "cloud" just means other people's computers.

(Also that "serverless" really means "there actually is a server, but you don't get to manage it".)

Desktop apps can save files and read files. That alone puts them miles ahead of any purely client-side app. As for convenience, most apps today auto-save stuff when you're not looking, but lack of that feature isn't a big deal for me - I started using computers some 25 years ago, so I habitually press "CTRL+S" every couple seconds without even realizing it.