Show HN: WebStickies – Sticky notes for the internet

https://lawrencehook.com/ws/

by lawrencehook • 4 years ago

201 76 4 years ago

lawrencehook.com

I made a browser extension that lets you leave notes on websites.

Some features: search by content, add tags, sync, export/import

kixiQu• 4 years ago

Reminiscent of https://hypothes.is, but with a distinctively fun UI :) Cool project!

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

thank you!

RamblingCTO• 4 years ago

Hah, I was actually thinking of this but couldn't remember what it was called. Thank you! This thing is really great!

afusalan• 4 years ago

I've been pondering about the idea of a collaborative browsing lately like social browsing, figjam for websites, maybe like replit but for browsing there's a couple of examples but the best one so far is Tris.com, i used it for a while but UX is not the greatest so i stopped using it. Would be cool to have that.

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

That's a neat idea. Quite ambitious, but agreed it would be cool

ta3411• 4 years ago

This is super cool. Any idea how Tris.com is able to get Google Search results?

ortusdux• 4 years ago

3M is reportedly quite aggressive about defending their canary yellow note trademark.

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

Interesting.. I took the color scheme from the Stickies application on MacOS, so hopefully 3M goes after Apple before me :)

splittingTimes• 4 years ago

Maybe Apple pays licensing fees or has permissions from 3M...

erickhill• 4 years ago

This is going to be incredibly helpful for me to create reminders on my work's website and even hobby sites I visit often. Thank you!

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

Awesome! Thanks for the comment

billsmithaustin• 4 years ago

Wasn’t there a startup that did this in the late 90’s?

bjelkeman-again• 4 years ago

There have been a bunch of these companies. We started one company in 1999, which we eventually moved to San Francisco. We built sticky notes which were stored together with a cash copy of the website on our servers. So one could collaborate around the notes in a corporate environment. Funding dried up in the dotcom crash, so we went home again. (An interesting side note to that was that the CIA wanted our stuff to build something for the presidents office, but decided against it, probably for security reasons. At least I got a trip to Washington DC out of it and meeting CIA CTOs or equivalents. Interesting times.)

Other companies built public note systems. I think I have seen another four or five since then that have tried to make a business around sticky notes in websites, but nothing seems to… stick (ahem).

People seem to want to give internal feedback to the content team on PDFs or in emails.

One of the original browsers, maybe Netscape, had comments on pages, but it got removed early on.

Edit: added note about CIA.

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

That's very cool.

EvanAnderson• 4 years ago

Third Voice[0] did shared annotation in ‘99.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Voice

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

Say Yes to WebStickies :P

xattt• 4 years ago

I thought this was Google’s initial goal.

rzzzt• 4 years ago

I remember something where you could doodle and comment on any website, but pages usually devolved into spam and drawings of... you can imagine.

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

* Just noticed the HOST variable in the extension code is pointing to localhost rather than my server, so login/register isn't going to work for a bit. Updated but it'll take up to an hour to be released. :facepalm:

edit: the fix is released!

s3000• 4 years ago

Do you see a way to combine this with ActivityPub so that there are public notes for websites?

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

I'm quite unfamiliar with Web3 so can't say that I do.

ghewgill• 4 years ago

That's fine, ActivityPub[0] has nothing to do with the "Web3".

[0] https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/

TheFreim• 4 years ago

This looks very promising. I have one issue and one feature request for your consideration:

1. Could you allow us to change the key bindings? "Alt+Shift+N" is already taken for a feature in my browser and I cannot find a way to choose a different shortcut for creating new notes. 2. It would be very useful if this had a highlighting feature where notes can be attached to highlights. I am thinking of something along the lines of how Kinopio (https://kinopio.club) does things but with highlighting (could also take inspiration from Kinopio and allow notes to be linked together).

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

Thanks for the feedback.

1. I believe extension shortcuts are configurable through the browser settings. Here are some copy/pasted Google results

Chrome: 1. Click the three-dot menu from the browser's top-right corner. 2. From the More tools list, open Extensions. 3. Click the three-line menu from the top-left corner. 4. Select Keyboard shortcuts. 5. Click the Edit icon below the extensions.

Firefox: 1. Click the menu button. click Add-ons and themes and select Extensions. 2. Click the Tools for all add-ons cogwheel. 3. Click Manage Extension Shortcuts in the menu. 4. You will see the shortcut options (if available) for your installed add-ons.

2. That's a good idea. Not sure how I'd implement it. I'll put in on the roadmap :)

chadlavi• 4 years ago

nothing for Safari?

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

Unfortunately Apple has substantially more hoops to jump through in order to publish to the Safari extension store. Maybe in the future.

mmastrac• 4 years ago

At least for the first few years, Apple kept changing the Safari extension tech enough that it wasn't worth keeping up with it. Has it finally stabilized to the point where you can build anything non-trivial and have it work for a few years?

turshija• 4 years ago

As a regular MacOS stickes user this looks very promising!

Few requests:

- save sticky position on a website with scrollbar instead of being position fixed (scratch that, realised there is an option for that using right click -> pin to page, nice)

- change dimensions and position to use pixels instead of percent to preserve dimensions when changing browser size

- "minimized" sticky should display first line of the note

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

these are good ideas, thank you

gala8y• 4 years ago

also... in menu you have 'close', where in fact it deletes.

tambourine_man• 4 years ago

There's a bug where the click registers 100px so pixels below the actual target in Safari. Works fine in Chrome and Firefox.

Great work btw, I could see myself using this daily.

thewebcount• 4 years ago

Oh, it works in Safari? I wish they’d said that on the web site. I went there, saw “Chrome and Firefox” and immediately hit the back button.

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

There's a way to get Chrome extensions working in Safari. I haven't tried it out though.

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

Thank you! And thanks for the feedback

drye• 4 years ago

I wish MacOS sticky notes would actually stick to individual windows and would move with them when you moved those windows. Instead, they just float, like all the other windows.

bobbylarrybobby• 4 years ago

That they can't float over windows in all spaces is particularly annoying

MikeSchurman• 4 years ago

I know this is off topic, but how do people assess the risks of installing an extension like this? The permissions allow "access your data for all websites" which includes reading passwords you type into fields. This extension looks very useful, but in general I just don't know how to trust it.

greybox• 4 years ago

I hit the same problem, however it does attempt to explain why it needs each persmission:

    Download files and read and modify the browser’s download history — Required to export data.
    Store unlimited amount of client-side data — Required to save sticky note data locally.
    Access your data for all websites — Required to load sticky notes on any page.

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

Thanks for the comment. It's a valid concern.

Chrome and Firefox have a review team for their extension marketplace, though I believe there are instances of malicious extensions getting through anyway.

And while rather labor intensive, another path toward vetting is examining the source code. I haven't obfuscated it, and Googling for "view extension source code" has many results.

And for what it's worth, I can give an assurance that I'm not a bad actor.

Maybe relevant: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...

CTDOCodebases• 4 years ago

If you update the extension does it automatically update for the users or does the user have to manually install the update?

Regardless I love the idea of this.

Blue111• 4 years ago

Chrome and Firefox have a review team for their extension marketplace

Has this Firefox extension been reviewed? because most don't get reviewed

jonas-w• 4 years ago

If it is a well known extension i will trust it, but often i find myself to extract the extension and Look at the "source code" if it is not open source.

jazzyjackson• 4 years ago

so what if it reads your passwords if it has no network permission to exfiltrate?

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

FYI extensions don't need a network permission to make network requests.

kurt44• 4 years ago

I only install extensions that are either have low permissions or are blessed by Firefox.

uBlock Origin is the only "access your data for all websites" extension I use.

exodust• 4 years ago

For note taking I'd only ever use extensions with no permissions needed. "Tagged notes" is an example of a good, simple notes extensions for Firefox.

If I need sync, I'd prefer not to rely on the extension for that. Why would I pay for my own cloud service AND a separate payment for random apps that use their own sync? Most people have their own online storage, and should always be the number 1 way to backup things like personal notes.

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

I appreciate the comment.

In my mind, the sync feature for this app is less about backup and more about maintaining a single instance across multiple computers/browsers.

taikahessu• 4 years ago

Feedback: I instantly tried moving a note around on my phone. Did not move. Then I tapped a note and it opened fullscreen and the closing x supersmall at the edge of the screen. Instantly left the site.

I read the comments, oh this is for websites. Cool idea. UX just needs to be top notch.

That security issue (requiring all data) is a bit too much, dunno if you can do anything about it though.

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

Thanks for the feedback.

I realize the mobile UX is terrible. It's only designed for desktop, for now.

And yea, the security issue is tough. I'll see if I can reduce the required permissions.

atum47• 4 years ago

I remember seeing something similar a long time ago. As I can remember you were able to scribble on a website, and everyone else using that plugin or website (I don't remember if it was a software or site) would see what you have drawn.

andyjohnson0• 4 years ago

Back in the early 00s there was a browser plugin called Third Voice that did this. I seem to remember people got concerned that it would lead to "graffiti-ing" of websites. I don't remember what happened to it.

helloworld• 4 years ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Voice

xeonmc• 4 years ago

Wasn't it one of the marketed feature of Microsoft Edge before it was scrapped and replaced with Chromium?

reaperducer• 4 years ago

I remember seeing something similar a long time ago.

If memory serves me, something similar was very briefly a feature of Internet Explorer.

Except with the IE version, everyone else using IE (which was everyone, even Mac users) could also see everyone else's notes.

The project was discontinued over concerns about intellectual property and defacing other people's web sites.

It was a long time ago (as illustrated by the reference to IE for Mac ), so I may have some details confused.

prawn• 4 years ago

I recall this too. It was very controversial at the time and fizzled out.

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

I'm a big fan of Streaks!

rrdharan• 4 years ago

This was genius.com’s pitch at one point right after they secured a massive funding round from a16z I believe - “annotate the web!”.

Didn’t really work out for them: https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/genius-sold-medialab-w...

evross• 4 years ago

Hypothesis is one that has been interesting to use for web article annotation. It lets you save quotes and comments on articles https://web.hypothes.is/

stereoradonc• 4 years ago

A terrible product (none for Firefox) and has a user hostile attitude to export your data. Avoidable.

Diris• 4 years ago

A great product, it has support for practically any browser thanks to the bookmarklet and chrom(ium) extension [0]. I mostly use it on PDFs (e.g. papers). I definitely recommend it.

[0] https://web.hypothes.is/start/

max-ibel• 4 years ago

A big problem from what I recall were legal ones. E.g., owners of a website did not fancy random comments graffitied over their content. I believe a few lawsuits were filed. Also spam problems arose. This caused the makers of such software to hobble functionality, making the resulting product less interesting and so these products were not successful.

This may be a good application for decentralized storage with free browser extensions that would circumvent much of the legal threads - although I imagine lawsuits could and would still be filed against Chrome, Firefox etc for enabling such extensions, even if they were free.

netsharc• 4 years ago

I used this for a while in 1999...

http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~orit/utok.html

I imagine nowadays all the notes would just be like any online comments section: fighting and name-calling about anything and everything

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

this is fascinating, I was 4 years old haha

vxNsr• 4 years ago

StumbleUpon had something like this, you could go to a webpage and comment on it and others could see your comments. I stopped using it as it was a massive time waster/procrastination tool. But was pretty cool.

parentheses• 4 years ago

like everything else on the internet, this needs multiplayer ;)

lawrencehook23• 4 years ago

an intriguing idea :)

lifeisstillgood• 4 years ago

I had started work on something like this with another HNer ages back - the idea was to leave a distributed network of notes - so I could see what you notes in the site and vice verda - it did not go far but this is a great reminder - excellent work ! :-)

mywacaday• 4 years ago

Really like the implementation. Can see the corporate notification about not saving passwords on virtual sticky notes.

_HMCB_• 4 years ago

This is very cool. Thank you.

I use Apple’s Quick Notes in a similar fashion. It lets you highlight text in a web page and by choosing Create Quick Note, it will highlight the passage and next time you visit the site, a small modal appears in the bottom right of the page as you scroll by the annotation. Click the mini modal and Safari jumps you to the spot on the page. And what’s nice is everything is stored in Apple Notes so you can always save it elsewhere.

wahnfrieden• 4 years ago

More than two years ago, Apple told the FBI that it planned to offer users end-to-end encryption when storing their phone data on iCloud, according to one current and three former FBI officials and one current and one former Apple employee.

Under that plan, primarily designed to thwart hackers, Apple would no longer have a key to unlock the encrypted data, meaning it would not be able to turn material over to authorities in a readable form even under court order.

In private talks with Apple soon after, representatives of the FBI’s cyber crime agents and its operational technology division objected to the plan, arguing it would deny them the most effective means for gaining evidence against iPhone-using suspects, the government sources said.

When Apple spoke privately to the FBI about its work on phone security the following year, the end-to-end encryption plan had been dropped, according to the six sources.

rob74• 4 years ago

What I immediately noticed was the similarity between this extension's logo/icon and the Microsoft logo (https://www.logodesignlove.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/mi...) - four colored squares arranged like window panes. It even uses the same colors, albeit in a different order. IANAL, but that might get you into trouble with Microsoft...

thih9• 4 years ago

You could change the color of one of the notes in the logo to violet (also used by your app).

To offer another opinion, I didn’t think about the Microsoft’s logo at all.

I guess I see MS logo as a single object (used to be a flag) with a pattern, whereas this one as a collection of sticky notes.

Philipp0205• 4 years ago

I like to use single file for that. The approach differs, it downloads the website as a single file and allows annotations like sticky notes as well.

https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile

Show HN: WebStickies – Sticky notes for the internet

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