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Show HN: I wrote this to make note taking on YouTube effective

tuberslab.com

15 points by auBavan · 13 comments

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llagerlof

I am trying it and looks fantastic.

But the UX needs improvement. I tested just the offline version using Firefox. This is what could be improved:

- When I reload the video, all my notes were lost. The notes should be persistent with autosave feature (web storage or indexed db).

- The youtube UI is already cluttered. Why bother to hide the editor buttons? The buttons should be always visible.

- The copy to clipboard doesn't work for me (Firefox issue, maybe?).

- The Save button down't give me any feedback. What it means? After I clicked it I realoaded the page, but just part of my notes was retrieved. Mostly was lost.

- What is summary write mode? I tried to write something, save, switch to note taking mode and returned to summary. Just a blank summary.

- The topic is about the full note, I presume. If yes, maybe it's better to change the label to note title or description?

- When the user start taking notes, the video should stay paused until manual play (When text lost focus? shortcut? A second ENTER?). Enable autoplay inside options.

- Add a shortcut to allow the user start typing insted of clicking on the text editor.

And the hard features to implement:

- Allow to export notes into a file, with the images for printing.

- Allow to save the notes into a json, with images, to allow reloading offline notes.

Thanks for this amazing application.

  • auBavanOP

    Thank you so so much for the feedback.

    1) Yes I don’t save the notes locally. Never thought of this offline scenario. Will implement soon.

    2) That makes sense. I thought hiding the buttons could reduce the distraction while watching videos. But, as you mentioned, youtube ui is already a busy place. no point. Will do.

    3) I’ll test and fix it tomorrow if it is replicable.

    4) Partly retrieved? Thats worrying. May be there could be a bug with refreshing. I’ll test it. I’ll add a feedback on save button as well.

    5) Summary pad is something I use to compose a complete picture of the video from notes taken. Summary going away is worrying, I’ll double check.

    6) Topic is like a folder. I normally watch multiple videos on a topic. So, I tag them with same topic and then I can filter them by topic on my phone.

    7) Ok. I’ll introduce enable/disable autoplay option in settings.

    8) Short cut to focus is a fantastic idea.

    9) That would be fantastic. I’ll see how I can do it.

    10) I am not sure If I can get that much space from extensions. Offline support is going to be tough. But will try.

    I can’t thank you enough for the feedback and encouraging words. I’ll update once everything is fixed. Have a fantastic day.

  • auBavanOP

    Hi, I managed to fix some of the stuff.

    I still could not do offline support. However, I have introduced pdf download for local print. ( It still hits the server to generate pdf though)

    Introduced shortcuts for focusing ( alt+shift+f) and hiding ( alt+shift+h) notepad.

    Auto play can be disabled via settings. And buttons can be made always visible via setting too.

    Thanks for your feedback and support. Have a great weekend.

siddienahar

Hey, interesting product and good work with the launch too. But I'm not able to register and getting "SignIn Failed".

Also, you may also want to check https://lanes.io/ -- It gives similar capability.

  • siddienahar

    Ok, so I registered via website and then tried logging to the extension and it worked. When I tried registering through the extension, I was getting above mentioned error.

    • auBavanOP

      oh.. I’ll look into that asap.

      • auBavanOP

        I just tried to replicate myself. It seems working fine on chrome and firefox on a mac. May I know on what you were trying registering?

  • siddienahar

    A quick feedback. It'd be great if you could help with the keyboard shortcuts right in notes section (the ones which you showed in the demo video). Will help a lot!

    • auBavanOP

      Thank you for you good wordsZ And good idea about specifying shortcuts somewhere. I have not heard about lanes.io. It looks like a huge project. Mine is simple and small. :) Thank you so much taking time to try this anyway.

auBavanOP

I would love to receive some feedback on this if someone had some time. I completed MVP in a month, but polishing it took about 4 months( after hours and weekends). Still not finished though. I am planning to add more Note apps integrations as they open their APIs. Thank you.

blisseyGo

A FYI: On Safari, the text renders on top of the images on the website. Layout issues.

  • auBavanOP

    oops. How embarrassing. I own & develop on a mac. But, still ignored Safari. :( Will fix it during lunch break. Thanks for spotting.

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