Show HN: Nash, I made a standalone note with single HTML file (keepworking.github.io)
Hello HN,
I hope it will posted as well.
I made a note in single html file.
This does not require a separate membership or installation of the software, and if you download and modify an empty file, you can modify and read it at any time, regardless of online or offline.
It can be shared through messengers such as Telegram, so it is also suitable to share contents with long articles and images.
It is also possible to host and blog because it is static html file content.
152 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 228 ms ] threadI wanted the document to be edited without a separate editor.
If you send html to Telegram, the preview will not run js when the recipient opens it. I think Android and IOS work differently.
How is this useful? For quick writing and sharing of HTML files, but not the links, but the files themselves.
Very interesting,thank you.
When I opened html on the file app on my iPhone, js didn't run, so I could only see it
I don't think it's perfect in many ways.
Nash appears to simplify my job, thanks!
* plus this for an easy TOC https://codepen.io/cgurski/pen/qBrNrPo
Consider changing the behavior so that when the page is opened in the browser from the local disk, then it opens edit mode automatically, but when it's published to someone's website and accessed on the open web (check if the address is http/https), then it's a normal, read-only view expected from most pages.
Of course:
1. there should be a way to override this (a query string param or magic URL fragment) so you can look at it in edit mode, too
2. there should be a blanket exception for certain domains/URL prefixes—defaulting to keepworking.github.io (or <https://keepworking.github.io/nash/>)—so it activates edit mode on that site, too, which means that you personally don't have to do anything special to make the demo work (best if this exception is user-modifiable, so e.g. someone else can get the same behavior if they want without using the trick from #1)
I think this focuses much more on the standalone HTML part of it.
In the same vein, one could also distribute P2P apps via a standalone HTML file by hooking it up via WebTorrent and using their STUN servers. Or at least, I know that it's possible in the past. Just an example, standalone HTML files can be fully fledged apps is my point.
My Code editor is NeoVim or it's IntelliJ
But there is no HTML page involved at all.
What I want to hint at: You're extrapolating the usage of VSCode.
Anyway, I find it remarkable that a piece of software that I don't even use can trigger such a reaction in me, from a perfectly benign and innocent statement about the prevalence of HTML.
That said, I'm genuinely interested in understanding why you felt that way, is using VSCode considered something to be ashamed of or something, is it because it's a Microsoft product?
PS: I have a strong positive bias towards VSCode due to personal history, so just trying to understand the developer perspective :)
I know, and it's nothing that needs an apology from you. Sometimes people (like me) feel offended over nothing, and it's more interesting for them to question why that is, instead of blamig the other party. That's not to say the reverse can't be true, just that it's tempting and too easy to project one's own offendedness if one isn't careful.
But back to the interesting question of what's up with vscode.
It's a very subjective thing for me, which probably explains the emotional reaction. I'm aware that vscode must be a very solid and practical tool for so many people to use it. But it gives me a negative gut feeling, mostly for the following reasons:
Using what is essentially a browser to edit text feels wrong and bloaty, not unlike going on a cruise ship just so you can eat at a restaurant.
It's made by Microsoft. I'm old enough to remember when they were not ashamed of being openly nasty, how they tried to lock us all into their own walled garden, and the glimpse Internet Explorer gave us into what that would look like. It's hard to trust this company, even if they have taken on a more benign appearance.
So, it just feels very wrong to use a weirdly bloaty browser-editor that a company with a track record of being a Big Bad Influence gives away for free. (I have similar misgivings about Chrome, which does not help vscode.)
Therefore, I prefer dedicated editors and IDEs made by people whose main goal is to make just such tools, and who I can pay for (as a purchase or donation). In summary: vscode works well, but using it makes me feel icky, and there are similar or better alternatives available to me that don't give me such a feeling.
So if there is a public statement that can be read to imply that I'm somehow happily using vscode feels a little like getting mud thrown at me, if that makes any sense, and there's a strong urge to clean up the record and, by extension, myself.
Yeah, I also think it's weird how that works. It's things like this that make me understand better the secret inner workings of people interacting with other people. :)
I got the courage to ask because I felt that you sounded open for a bit of self-introspection. Thanks for taking the time to describe something that's difficult to describe!
When I joined Microsoft in 2007, Visual Studio was at a state that it didn't even have syntax highlighting for Javascript. Many years later, I got so excited when Microsoft hired Erich Gamma from IBM's Eclipse IDE project (long story) because I knew what was coming. VSCode was originally called Monaco editor, built on top of WinJS library, and was just a little web component. Over the years, it changed significantly to become what it is today.
From your perspective of VSCode being a "Microsoft product", I totally get what you're saying, but VSCode has been one of the few exceptions for me for the reasons explained, and more.
The 'nasty' MS hasn't gone away. However their negative actions tend to be swept under the rug as somewhat confined to big biz and govt. Look at their headlines from the last five years for details.
Also, extrapolating usage of vscode seems pretty fair since they said "most"
Pressing the letter keys for anything other than typing feels so weird to me. My brain might still be thinking of the SHIFT key as a physical modifier that literally shifts the typewriter letters from uppercase to lowercase position.
I admire fast vim users, it's a joy to watch them code.
Then I decided to really give it a try and let go of everything I had learned. Now I'm a daily neovim user. kickstart.nvim is really what made it possible to use as a daily coding tool.
I know that some people code in an HTML page rendered in Electron, that would be Atom and VS Code and family, but that's far enough from the majority of people that declaring "our code editor" is disingenuous.
According to: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#most-popular...
It seems that the order of most used technologies on SO is JS, SQL, HTML, CSS, and only then Python. We skip back to TypeScript and then Bash before finally getting to Java, C#, and C++.
I daresay that self-selected people who read, and sign up for, and fill out a survey at Stack Overflow does not represent the industry as a whole.
What blows my mind is that people use frameworks where they include stuff that's not even JS in their HTML, stuff that needs external JS to attach to it or hydrate it. That feels like the worst of both worlds.
I definitely come from an opposite place where JS is king and I don't have any files with an ".html" extension exept for "index.html". And I don't have any HTML in my JS, either. Anything that's a partial template is ".htm" and gets hydrated before it gets added to the DOM.
UX suggestion. You don't need the "as read only" save options if when you do a normal save the page tells you if it has been changed. That'll get you down to 2 menu options and make me think less.
All it was missing was a self-contained WYSIWYG editor for it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43179649
I think those two services are more appropriate for the name "Note".
For my project, I should have used Page or Document for the project name.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FileSystem
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System...
This is one that Firefox refuses to implement (a personal gripe for me)
It would be nice to have a reasonably nice text editor for notes and whatnot everytime I open a new tab.
[1] https://reframe.canine.sh/czhu12
Share uses Navigator.share (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/s...), which should invoke the browser’s “share” menu if it has one.
There's a lot of value in these kinds of things to manage your own bookmarks if you choose to without having to expose them to Google and a Google doc or something. Of course you risk losing your file.
I actually also really like the idea of building simple/local web apps in a single HTML page. A while ago my child and I visited a science museum and played with a simple stop motion animator. I decided to make a web app just like it and built it as a single HTML page, copied it to her laptop and she can use it without internet. I built it using React and a bundler though, because I'm too lazy to write vanilla js. It just bundles into a single HTML file. Maybe I'll post a Show HN some time.
plain, vanilla js and some decent skills will do nearly almost everything in a cleaner and more maintainable way.
after decades of maintaining other people's stuff, dumb design by smart people beats all the other combinations.