As other commenters already noted, the UI/UX of the app will need some work. Just some initial thoughts:
- Organisation of the notes is cumbersome: it wasn't clear to me what is meant with a note and a section, and how to actually start writing (I would expect to be able to start writing right away rather than first creating a notebook/section/note, choosing a title, etc...)
- I would like to tag my notes à la Evernote, and filter notes based on this.
- Speaking of searching/filtering: it would be nice to list all search results (and organisation of the notes for that matter) in the main view.
- Maximise screen real estate for the actual note taking: why is there such a huge header and side nav... on a 13" screen I barely have room to see my notes. I would like to hide all that in a hamburger menu.
- Keyboard shortcuts!
- The ability to drag and drop images or other documents would be nice
- The text in the textarea when taking a note is so small & there is no padding.
* Organisation of the notes is cumbersome: it wasn't clear to me what is meant with a note and a section, and how to actually start writing (I would expect to be able to start writing right away rather than first creating a notebook/section/note, choosing a title, etc...)
* I would like to tag my notes à la Evernote, and filter notes based on this.
* Speaking of searching/filtering: it would be nice to list all search results (and organisation of the notes for that matter) in the main view.
* Maximise screen real estate for the actual note taking: why is there such a huge header and side nav... on a 13" screen I barely have room to see my notes. I would like to hide all that in a hamburger menu.
* Keyboard shortcuts!
* The ability to drag and drop images or other documents would be nice
* The text in the textarea when taking a note is so small & there is no padding.
Just on a couple points I may already have what you're looking for, you can type in a hashtag (like #todo) anywhere in a markdown element and then that note will show up in a search for that hashtag (that search also works cross-notepads).
The side-nav can be hidden (although the rest of the chrome can't, which is something I want to get sorted). Also, on the textarea size, I think I'm using the browser default, but I might be wrong there.
Thanks for a decent list though, it's great to have action items.
Forks are always welcome and I appreciate all pull requests.
I'd like to give it a shot if I found some spare time.
- Instead of asking "Are you sure" to delete an element, just go ahead and delete it, but make it undoable. This allows for quicker workflow.
- If I double-click an empty space, I would like to immediately insert a Text element and start typing, without having to aim the mouse again and click Text.
I'll probably be coming back to this when I need some note taking. Thanks for sharing this!
On the quick-typing thing I was thinking that I could make it so that if you just start typing with the insert thing open, it'll automatically put you in a text element. What do you think about that?
Another thing that adds friction in my eyes is that when editing text your first click changes the interface into text editing mode where the text neither stays at the position you've seen it before, nor can you actually interact with it with that first click. So when I see a word that I'd like to change and I click there, that will only spawn the edit window for that text object, instead of just placing a cursor there so I can directly edit it.
An interesting read none the less
Counterpoint: this makes it harder to tell that information that you might want to be really sure is deleted (like someone elses credit card number or your passport number) is actually deleted. The deletion workflow is now delete it->check to see if it's in the undo list->really for reals delete it.
That's a way worse UX than a confirm dialog, and more risky for the customer. Remember that your grandmother might be using this to temporarily store her credit card pin.
It would be very foolish to assume that just because one has clicked “yes, delete” that the data is gone forever.
In terms of features, being able to paste an image (e.g. like pasting into a github comment, or into a gdoc) would be great. I find I use screenshots into the clipboard more than saving to a file, however I don't know if others do as much nor if Windows / Mac supports that.
Does windows have something similar? I've been using PrintScrn and Paint but it's comparably very awkward. I know there are apps, but "working in places where I haven't / can't install apps" is a requirement.
Although I use it every day, I haven't bothered looking up keyboard shortcuts for it.
Mac: CMD+SHIFT+4 (Ctrl not req'd.)
After not finding any good signup-free privacy-aware zero-installation solution, which supported both rich text and markdown, I started prototyping on the above. It is quite early stage but fairly usable. Any feedback/contributions are welcome.
- Hmm, no shortcuts? or keyboard support in general. Press arrow down to highlight a search result fails
- bounding box for a note not needed (see onenote)
- Search the content of a note not possible?
- Too much chrome while note writing?
These are simple things to fix. Great project!
Not too sure what you mean on the bounding box thing, like the little border around elements?
If you want to dismiss the sidebar just click the little ">>" or press "f". Hiding the breadcrumbs in the focus mode is on my todo list. Thanks for the list, I genuinely appreciate it.
I've been chasing a onenote alternative for some time, this looks promising. I have to add, I loved the old Onenote heirachy, notebooks down the left (rotated labels), sections across the top, pages down the right.
And more screen shots always help for those too lazy to trial. And add some default notebook/section/note naming, so people can just click and start adding notes.
Great work
I think you took the 'webapp' UX model a bit too far (where everything must be click, animation, multiple choice. Not even right click). Few modern web apps do these things well. One is checkvist.
Your target user likes the keyboard (coders, writers). Listen to them (us)
Mac seems relatively straightforward, but Windows seems like an absolute cluster.
I'm releasing my own free open-source desktop app built with Electron soon, and it seems like the biggest pain in the butt that no one seems to talk about.
Overall though I love the idea, upvoted! Might even give it a go. Solves some big problems I have with note-taking...I've resorted to Zotero + Cryptomator + Dropbox for my own setup.
Good to know. I'm planning on not signing anything for my first release, think I'll stick with that plan. Thanks!
1. It will be nice to have the possibility to add videos to notes. Not just links to files. I mean video files that are inside notes and can be played inside micropad.
2. Are there plans to add premium (paid) features besides paid sync in your clouds or all functionality will be available to everyone?
1. That's totally possible, although file-size could quickly become an issue with syncing the videos (there's a 50MB cap)
2. Nope, All actual client functionality is (and always will be) free + open source. Even syncing is free (up to a point).
Is this cap from software or from the cloud?
You should be signing apps if the smartscreen prompt really bothers you. Be mad at virus and malware authors that forced this, not Microsoft or Apple.
FOSS sites often recommend that a downloader check the hash of a downloaded file against one provided, never seeming to realize that if an attacker can replace a .iso file that there is a high likelihood that they can modify the MD5 hash shown to match their modified file.
Code signing prevents this.
Code signing is a good thing.
Having them synchronized to the phone instantly is very convenient. As a bonus, I can add sketches when I open notes on my iPad using the Apple Pencil. It is sweeter because I can even search for a text fragment I hand-wrote in one of those sketches.
Saying all of this here because, I wish there was an open source/self-hosted alternative that did that. This website showed portable apps on all platforms, and open source, got me very excited until I realized I can't just drag and drop images into a note. Neither can I add sketches on the fly.
Sorry, I didn't mean to critique your open source effort, and sound negative. My intent is to highlight an alternative that I enjoy, and perhaps bring some ideas for discussion.
You can quickly add a sketch by clicking on an empty note and then insert a "drawing" element. It'll also work with the Surface pens.
I really appreciate the comparison, I don't use Apple notes so it's nice to know what they offer.
Thanks for the feedback.
I'll look into adding them to the main site.
Then I have to give my note a title... I don't know?? I just want to create a note, not title it... so I enter no title and press "OK" and... nothing!
So I press "New" again, enter random keystrokes as a title, and... now what? I continue pressing random buttons, now I try "+ Section" (whatever that means). I got a collapsable section and 2 new buttons. Great.
Now I press "+ Note" and I finally get a "Hey, you can do stuff now!" message.
Is it so hard to just initially create a note without having to create a "Notepad" and a "Section" first? And you have to name both things before you can do anything.
So I insert a text with markdown, enter some random text... now I want to save it. I see a big huge blue button: That must be SAVE! Oh, it isn't. It's "bibliography", whatever that means. The big red button? Oh that's delete... I haven't created anything, but at least I know how to delete it just in case.
I also like how the label for the text-area is "formatting help" and is actually a link to "formatting help" and not the label for the text-area.
Anyways, I found out you "save" by just clicking wherever. Fine. So I now wanted to actually name my thing. I'm clicking the title in the header. Double-clicking. Nope, that doesn't work. Looking for a rename button here... Oh maybe the sidebar. So I see that cog icon and I think: There, that's where you must be able to rename it, right?
And yes, a modal! With a RENAME button! Cool. So I press the RENAME button and POOF modal gone. Wtf??? Since the blue button I saw earlier wasn't a confirm/save button but a "open a modal" button, I assumed it opened another modal, but no: Now it just closes the modal. Whatever.
So I open the modal again and notice the name is actually an input field (gotta love Google Material Design). So I change the name and click the modal away, assuming it is saved automatically just like with notes. My changes aren't saved. Fuck.
So I open the modal AGAIN and assume the "RENAME" button is a SAVE button. Finally...
This whole thing is a neat idea, but there is much room for improvement on the GUI.
The bibliography list lets you attach URLs to elements on your note, which is helpful for when you go back for essay-writing and stuff. The formatting-help thing isn't actually a label but I understand the confusion there, I'll look into ways to improve that.
I'd love if you would take the time to formalise some of your criticism in a github issue: https://github.com/MicroPad/Web/issues
Similarly for drawing.
Ditch the boxes altogether while writing/drawing and have them appear afterwards for manipulation.
edit: Other than that your program looks quite promising!
I'm thinking as a compromise for the mean-time I plan to automatically insert the text-box when you have the insert menu open and just start typing.
Thanks for the thoughts. It's great to get constructive feedback.
The only thing missing there is spreadsheets, which feels like it might be a little bit of feature-creep. Thanks for the feedback :-)
1. Add support for syntax highligting the code blocks in markdown may be?
2. It is not obvious that full screen will hide the sidebar and how I can bring it back.
3. App has several bugs I think. Trying to create a image note with 1MB image froze the application.
4. Vertical space is a premium these days. A lot of vertical space in the app is wasted. Not sure if this being an electron app.
5. Whats up with app icon? I am using appimage on Fedora.
6. For some reason the note taking does not feel effortless. I do not mean this as massive criticism but as others have pointed out, allow deletion without prompts and allow undo.
1MB images should work perfectly fine. It is an image element right?
I have heard that the icons might be a little weird. I've been unable to test it because my install of Linux doesn't use icons. I'd appreciate help with that one if anyone can help.
Thanks for the other feedback.
[0]: http://zim-wiki.org/
MicroPad _works_ on mobile, but not very nicely. That is a key thing I want to improve though.
Really nice tool, and I'll be sure to look at it to see how it changes.
The closest I can give you to lines right now is for you to insert a "drawing" element and doing a line there. That's not a great solution though.
> The web-client works on any modern browser. It doesn't matter if you're using a Chromebook, a Surface, or a toaster.
Apparently toaster beats windows phone, because it doesn't work on my Lumia
Also, yeah. After trying OneNote for a couple years I was just hooked with the infinite canvas concept.
Size: ~67 MB.
Don't know whether to laugh or cry.
standardnotes.org is another in that space
I have written what I hope is a pretty plain-english privacy policy here https://getmicropad.com/policy.php#privacy
Opened the menu, created the new notebook. Then it's just empty canvas. I tried clicking into it but nothing really happens. The Android keyboard doesn't show, which means there's no text input.
The mobile UI is definitely more of a read-experience but I'd love to change that (and if any developers want to help with that it'd be awesome)
Which security features are Edge lacking in this regard?
I absolutely love the idea by the way, can't wait to try it!
- I was a bit lost in the empty state after dismissing the help.
(perhaps not immediately entering full screen mode would be good)
- Took me a second to realize the sticky-looking text isn't a note but rather the page.
(I may have been thrown off by the word 'notepad' in the HN post title)
- The '+ Note' and '+ Section' interleaved in what would be a nice outline is a little distracting.
It also creates the note/section at the end of the list whereas the action labels are at the start.
(maybe even better is if you can iconify them and place beside the parent container's text)SUGGESTION: A video demo link would really help short-attention-span people like me. Something brief that shows it being used and highlights features that make μPad stand out (e.g. "infinite canvas" -- what does that look like)?
Now make it compelling for folks who like ONeNote!:)