A plain-text way to get your point across quickly and artfully in the browser
quickpoint.meFeedback: navigation within a slide deck needs to happen with `history.replaceState` not `history.pushState` so that it is possible to leave the page again after scrolling around a bit. As it is the back button forces me to back out through my entire scroll history to get to the web page I was previously on which is an anger-inducing experience I would not want to subject others to.
As mentioned if plain text is your goal it would be really nice if there were some way to serve the content as plain HTML as a backup
That was something I thought deeply about. I decided that an imaginary user would see a page change as a navigation event. Pressing back and having the whole thing poof could be just as anger inducing. Most SPAs use some type of router to do just that.. I imagine I won’t hear from anyone who prefers it that way so until I can afford some user testing I won’t know. Quite a bit of anxiety about that one. I had initially used replaceState…
Yes, plain text to create it not displayed as plain text. I didn’t write the post so the title may be a little misleading. Flashy JS heavy output for minimal input is the point.
I scrolled down. Then I scrolled up. Then I scrolled down. Then I scrolled up. Then I was ready to leave so I hit the back button. Only instead of that happening, I was scrolled up, and down, and up, and down, and up, and then I could leave.
Taken to the extreme, I think it becomes more apparent which choice is better.
Yes you’re right. I’ll switch that off.
We need to remove the entire History API from the web.
Bring back the back button!
Yeah, same problem here. this was annoying enough for me to close the browser and give up.
Sorry to hear that. Maybe I should add a user setting?
"You need to enable JavaScript to run this app."
Very plain text! But I'm not sure what the point was.
What is the definition of plain text? There is hardly any such thing
The browser will happily render text files, but +1 for it shouldn't require js. =)
? A series of unicode characters with no graphics or code beyond the application (here, a web browser) that displays it. It's quite common, I'd argue.
So HTML then with no js?
Sounds about right
In this case I meant you can use plain old text to render a webpage… which is what you do anyway but I thought I’d make up another way that people who love text but don’t code might find useful.
In this context? Scripts not required to view the page.
Skip to the demo (in case you get distracted by the colours and other aspects of the website and lose interest): https://author.quickpoint.me/demo/story
Both the website and this demo does a terrible job of showing how good the plain text renders, to the point I have no interest in looking further.
Perhaps they meant "...in the browser on your phone."
It won't even open on mobile if the page hasn't been loaded in landscape orientation.
This seems to be all about being flashy and JS-heavy, rather than just getting the point across.
There’s two sides to it, an author creating something using plain text in the authoring tool and a reader viewing the final product. So the author uses plain text to get their point across to the reader.
When you’ve created something you can publish it and the reader can view it at a URL. The author obviously isn’t trying to get a point across to themselves in the app.
The authoring tool is a web app and does quite a lot so it is JS heavy. It works well on mobile but the demo only works in landscape as the mobile version is slimmed down so you do have to rotate your phone.
Yeah. Hacker news readers should go straight to the demo…
Black on blue/purple (what color is that?) and viceversa are probably fashionable but not the most readable combinations. For sure they are a way to force readers to put extra effort into reading so maybe it's a deliberate choice: whoever gets the point is really interested. Survivor bias.
In step 46 of the demo walkthrough, the little popup bubble says "Viola!.". The word you're looking for there is "Voilà!" (minus the extraneous period)
Seems like an interesting project and I can see the appeal to markdown aficionados (me among them, although I don't currently have much need to do presentations)!
No, I specifically meant to say tiny violin.. :)
Thanks for taking the time.
You can use it to produce any kind of multimedia webpage. Some restaurants are utilizing it by printing out the QR code it produces so customers can see their menu.
short stories look nice on mobile..
https://quickpoint.me/greg/thoughts/howtosurvivethemachineag...
Not knowing whether a tap shows more text or moves to the next slide makes me super anxious. Would love an indicator whether there's more text for the slide in the next tap.
If you press “set” on a keyboard or tap the screen with three fingers a settings screen appears that lets you switch on a position indicator.
Sorry it’s inducing tension but that’s sort of the point. To build suspense in the story. It’s based on Robin Sloans tap book idea.
https://www.robinsloan.com/fish/
The whole project is an attempt to allow people to make worthwhile digital artifacts easily.
Thanks for taking a look.
Trying the demo. Seems broken. Type text and nothing shows up:
That’s a bug. You have to be logged out. Apologies. I’ll fix it as soon as I get time.
I think the main page overlay needs 100dvh rather vh unit to account for mobile devices with navigation bars
That was something I went back and forth on and eventually decided that there was too much negative space when the browser chrome disappeared but all the content is accessible, or should be anyway. If not please let me know. Thanks.
Yea, I think it's called writing and reading...
More lost civilization...
Love the demo!
Thanks a million!
Please, whatever you’re doing, hire a professional.
!