A plain-text way to get your point across quickly and artfully in the browser(quickpoint.me)

25 pointsby edoloughlin18 hours ago12 comments

conartist615 hours ago
Feedback: 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
- gregorywegory9 hours ago
  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.
  - grog4549 hours ago
    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.
- nixpulvis14 hours ago
  We need to remove the entire History API from the web.
  Bring back the back button!
- mrgoldenbrown14 hours ago
  Yeah, same problem here. this was annoying enough for me to close the browser and give up.
  - gregorywegory9 hours ago
    Sorry to hear that. Maybe I should add a user setting?
phyzome15 hours ago
"You need to enable JavaScript to run this app."
Very plain text! But I'm not sure what the point was.
- signalToNose13 hours ago
  What is the definition of plain text? There is hardly any such thing
  - mike_richards10 hours ago
    The browser will happily render text files, but +1 for it shouldn't require js. =)
    https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/84/pg84.txt
  - gregorywegory9 hours ago
    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.
  - yjftsjthsd-h13 hours ago
    ? 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.
    karmakaze12 hours ago
    So HTML then with no js?
  - grayhatter13 hours ago
    In this context? Scripts not required to view the page.
hliyan14 hours ago
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
- karmakaze12 hours ago
  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."
- pornel13 hours ago
  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.
  - gregorywegory9 hours ago
    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.
- gregorywegory9 hours ago
  Yeah. Hacker news readers should go straight to the demo…
pmontra14 hours ago
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.
settsu13 hours ago
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)!
14 hours ago
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Kailhus10 hours ago
I think the main page overlay needs 100dvh rather vh unit to account for mobile devices with navigation bars
gregorywegory16 hours ago
short stories look nice on mobile..
https://quickpoint.me/greg/thoughts/howtosurvivethemachineag...
- mungoman214 hours ago
  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.
tantalor14 hours ago
Trying the demo. Seems broken. Type text and nothing shows up:
https://imgur.com/a/XD7KZNj
johnea10 hours ago
Yea, I think it's called writing and reading...
More lost civilization...
adamgordonbell14 hours ago
Love the demo!
hyperhello15 hours ago
Please, whatever you’re doing, hire a professional.
- 14 hours ago
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