ZenPen

http://www.zenpen.io/index.html#4+IEgvDUnOT83FSFknyFqNS8gNQ8AA==#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

by nosecreek • 13 years ago

155 62 13 years ago

zenpen.io

pedalpete• 13 years ago

I didn't realize what this was at first. It's an edit in place javascript for a rather nice inline text editing.

ivanvanderbyl• 13 years ago

Ha amazing, I started a side project to solve the exact same problem a few months ago. Grats on actually shipping!

madiator2• 13 years ago

Does this allow hyperlinking? I guess not, and if so the front page is misleading since it gives the impression that one can put hyerlinked text. But seriously hyperlinking is not required..

beefman2• 13 years ago

Click the link icon in the upper left

tholman10• 13 years ago

I think he's referring to adding links when you're writing, much like you would bold, and italics. As it happens, its the first ticked I'd created in github - https://github.com/tholman/zenpen/issues/1

beefman2• 13 years ago

Compare to

http://www.jottit.com/

(a project of the late Aaron Swartz)

sfard2• 13 years ago

And http://throwww.com

(a project by me)

Mizza• 13 years ago

And http://gun.io/w/

(a project by me)

and http://litewrite.net/

(a project by @jancborchardt)

Hackers are picky! :)

swah• 13 years ago

You win in the taste department, IMO...

bergie• 13 years ago

...or my editor, http://hallojs.org/

dhaivatpandya2• 13 years ago

JS runs on the links abundantly. You are not sanitizing your inputs, and this is why contenteditables are bad (click on the "this is not a bad idea at all" to see an alert box).

http://www.zenpen.io/index.html#4+IEgojgYAA=#FY0xDoMwDEVncgo...

tholman10• 13 years ago

Heya, creator checking in. Surprised this popped up on HN so soon after release (or at all). Although this is exactly the type of feedback I'm after.

I've started looking into scanning, and stripping js/malevolence from the content ... just haven't got around to implementing anything just yet.

That said, the project is only 2 days old, if anyone is interested in contributing its all open source: https://github.com/tholman/zenpen

dhaivatpandya2• 13 years ago

Unfortunately, this problem that you are trying to solve has been tried numerous times and resulted in failure.

There's just too many inconsistencies in the way browsers allow loading of Javascript. Something that looks to a scanner as malevolent can actually turn up in the browser as something that ends up running.

So, unless you're somehow able to sandbox everything and able to stop causing the Javascript to poke out, it is incredibly difficult to scan for JS issues such as this one, especially when you're handling user-created HTML.

In fact, this is exactly the sort of problem why I created a Markdown no-nonsense editor instead (http://www.nimblenot.es/).

bengillies• 13 years ago

You might want to checkout the HTML sanitizer from the Caja project [1]. You'll need to build it with ant first, but it's pretty good and should be able to do what you want it to.

[1] http://code.google.com/p/google-caja/wiki/JsHtmlSanitizer

statenjason• 13 years ago

Image loading events can trigger JS without interaction.

http://www.zenpen.io/index.html#4+IEgojgYAA=#4+LiBAKbAjsum8z...

jonb• 13 years ago

Love this.

And the word count target is the best thing I've seen all day. Lovely.

twodayslate2• 13 years ago

What exactly does the word count target actually do? I couldn't get it to do anything.

I liked the experience of this web app. It was very clean.

tholman10• 13 years ago

You set an amount of words you wish to reach, and a small progress bar appears on the right hand side, which slowly grows as you write more words... Although I'm just finding out now that it sometimes gets obscured by people's scroll bars, and is a little hidden.

My UX certainly needs a bit more thought here.

dlf• 13 years ago

I like this a lot and might even use it myself. That said, the link generated is much too long for sharing, esp on Twitter, but probably anywhere. I'm guessing its a known issue though.

tholman10• 13 years ago

Yeah you're spot on. I'm trying to think of a way to solve this... but really trying to avoid having a back end/storing anything at all, though I'm not sure what else to do, if not through url's

If the url is less than 2000 characters, goo.gl (google's url shortner) will work, and that makes it much more sharable... but for bigger writings, I'm at a loss.

An export function would help here, but in the end, sharing from ZenPen.io would be preferable.

Open to any suggestions :)

the1• 13 years ago

if you want to store content in url, you'll hit limits sooner or later, unless writings are highly regular and can be compressed well.

feint2• 13 years ago

as opposed to pen.io's PenZen? Seriously

incision• 13 years ago

>Founder of Pen.io.

Well, that explains it.

Why are you talking about your own creation in that detached sense?

feint2• 13 years ago

Cos someone else built the current PenZen for the company as a side project, but we host it

emilioolivares• 13 years ago

This is very awesome! I actually wrote a couple of paragraphs upon first try, congrats!

duaneb• 13 years ago

Emacs keybindings appear to be messed up: C-a, C-e, C-k, C-y.

binarydreams• 13 years ago

We actually made something similar sometime back - http://solitarydesigns.net/write/

Also planning on adding features like Save+Share, etc. soon (just not getting enough time).

It's also open sourced on github - https://github.com/kushsolitary/Write

sfard2• 13 years ago

I also made http://throwww.com a while back. It started as something similar to this but evolved into a simple blogging platform as people wanted more feature...

tholman10• 13 years ago

Oh nice, I really like this. Especially the transition between markdown, and the rendered text. Will be interested to see where you go with it :)

dinkumthinkum• 13 years ago

This is neat. I'm interested to see where you go with this. Good job. :)

gbog• 13 years ago

Nice!

A question to the creators if they are listening. What is this medium.com you say have inspired you? I followed the link but it asks permission to access to the list of my followers on twitter even before I can have the slightest idea of what it is. I checked the read more thing, but after an empty tagline it starts telling the story of guys I don't know, and I have no time reading their stories.

tholman10• 13 years ago

Hey! Thanks for the kind words. Medium is a neat blogging platform with a focus on good quality content, although it is currently in its early stages and invite only.

The main concept in medium thats inspired me here, is their wysiwyg style editor (https://medium.com/about/df8eac9f4a5e) over markdown... although mine is a tad more minimal, I'd be lying if I didn't say they had a big influence on ZenPen.

jeswin• 13 years ago

Thanks so much for the link, for some reason I couldn't find this link. I don't write write access on Medium; was wondering how their editor worked.

I am working on an open-source app inspired by medium. Hopefully this should be done in a week's time. Here is work in progress: http://i.imgur.com/ZYWRc8k.png

I'll also borrow your/medium's idea of showing the toolbar when text is selected.

deadairspace• 13 years ago

I've come to really dislike websites and services that don't tell you what they're about straight away.

wusatiuk• 13 years ago

it would be cool to get the following featured integrated:

+ headlines (H1, H2, H3,...) + wordcount at the bottom, i don´t understand / get the wordcount feature working yet. + shorter urls + hyperlinks

tholman10• 13 years ago

You almost completely described the github issues/features list :) - https://github.com/tholman/zenpen/issues?state=open

kowdermeister• 13 years ago

Work on the URL-s. Consider that I write a page on iPad, and just want to copy the link to my laptop. /r53etZ would be better then a 1 mile long URL.

rntksi• 13 years ago

A few comments about the text editor:

1. The first line, once selected, show the (b/i/") box too high up to be able to click. Need to let the pop-up-on-hilight change orientation based on position on browser.

2. Once clicked, the " makes the paragraph a quoted block. But there's no feature to unquote.

nosecreek2• 13 years ago

2. Click the " button again and it will unquote.

korussian• 13 years ago

This is fantastic! I teach classes and need a quick way to jot something onto the screen. The one piece that's really missing for me, or 2 pieces really, is the ability to make big headers and bulleted lists. If you could process Markdown in real-time (on Enter), that would be super!

Bramble• 13 years ago

I like it, but I'm curious how long the links stay active for? As for feature requests, maybe make this an option (like pastebin does, with link expiration)?

tholman10• 13 years ago

Currently they last forever, since all the contents is stored in the url hash. I guess there is a possibility that will change, since it does have its length limitations.

solusglobus• 13 years ago

Awesome! I put it in my Dropbox public folder. I can access it from anywhere and start writing.

guynamedloren• 13 years ago

I'm confused... why would you need dropbox for this? What exactly did you put in your dropbox folder?

tariqr• 13 years ago

Great app. Kudos to you for open sourcing it! :)

lbebber• 13 years ago

I thought the "day/night" icon was a sideways smile face.

jijji• 13 years ago

What the world needs, another text editor. Thanks for your contribution to the betterment of computer science.

ayanb• 13 years ago

This sort of a snarky comment is absolutely uncalled for, especially when you are using a throwaway account. The real interactions that the OP is going through right now is valuable education.

king_jester• 13 years ago

Just what the world needs, another snarky comment about someone's project that puts it down.

Colliwinks• 13 years ago

Tool icons on the left need text (or at least a hover-over). Currently it's a complete mystery what they do, and users don't like clicking on mystery commands.

MichaelGG• 13 years ago

You may want to make the minibar less intrusive, like Office. Right now, as I select lines as I read them, I end up formatting when I did not intend to. Office solves this by making the formatting bar appear up and to the left of the selection, and is transparent until you move into it.

tempestn• 13 years ago

I'm assuming the URL is supposed to automatically update to 'save' my changes, but it's not happening in my Firefox 18.0.1. Hmm, nor in IE9, although I notice the default text is completely different. Is there a save button I'm somehow not seeing?

Also in IE9 I get this JS error: SCRIPT438: Object doesn't support property or method 'atob' editor.js, line 161 character 3, which prevents any of the controls from functioning.

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