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Show HN: JournalBook – Privacy centric, offline first, personal journal app
- muvek 8y agoIs there some kind of sync mechanism? I couldn't see anything about account creation. You say "offline first". Is it not "offline only"?
- trys 8y agoThere's no sync (at this point) and no account creation by design. It's all stored in your browser - I suppose in that regard it is not 'online'! Sync may well be coming, but I'm not yet certain how to do it securely. That being said, import & export is available now, so it can be manually sync'd.
- pretty_bubbles 8y agoClient side encryption with a passphrase derived key and synchronization to Google Drive? That would work great for me.
- vectorEQ 8y agoit would be easiest yes to use something avalablee to people for free where good encryption things are present. but i suppose a lot of the world is waking up to the fact these things aren't so nice really, and offline storage for personal things is better. it would be cool to have some export or import button to save everything into some kind of archive, then you can move it between offline machines and import it into the browser to use it there.
- trys 8y agoimport & export are already there on the settings page :)
- jatins 8y agoReally digging the design. Feels extremely light and calm. Although, all those animations might get a little annoying with everything transitioning-in the page. Good work, though!
- anonymfus 8y agoSo why it's web based?
- tga 8y agoHow about because it directly works on all platforms, mobile + desktop? Also it looks like it's the platform the author was most proficient in, which is always a good reason when choosing your stack.
- SCdF 8y agoIs there a way to speed up the animations? It may not be a real problem once I actually use it, instead of clicking around, but it makes it feel really sluggish at the moment.
- rudolph9 8y agoReally nice! Please get rid of the fade in fade out animation every time I click something. That time adds up, time I could be writing in my journal ;D
- sandrobfc 8y agoIt looks really great and I find it to be very fresh, but my main concern is... what happened the the real offline alternatives? Except for the way in which you write and access JournalBook, how is it different from a real journal that we can carry everywhere?
- _mischief 8y ago> real offline alternatives How about https://tiddlywiki.com/ https://tiddlywiki.com/ ?
- mcless 8y agoI thought the parent comment was referring to real offline journals made of treeware.
- sandrobfc 8y agoExactly. It's not that I don't see value in online alternatives, but in this case, if the main point is to access it offline, I don't see how different it is from a physical journal.
- _mischief 8y agoWhy use digital formats offline: - editing and reordering text - attachments - aesthetics - accessibility - hassle/weight optimisation Aesthetics includes theming, and also not everyone has good handwriting. Accessibility, because not everyone is able to hand-write in the first place. Weight optimisation, because if a laptop is non-negotiable, going digital means one less thing to remember about and carry with you. I have multiple physical notebooks/calendars and a digital commonplace book, they all have their place.
- developit 8y agoFor slow writers but quick typists, an app is always going to win out over a physical journal. Also interested in an event call export + parse.
- jug 8y agoOne thing about this browser storage.. How do you migrate if/when you change computer? Is the procedure browser-dependent? I always saw those storages as a bit more troublesome than a flat CSV or something.
- Timpy 8y agoIt looks like there's a 'download data' button for this
- windexh8er 8y agoYou could just run it in a container with a bind mount for the database path to a file path that's kept in sync with SyncThing or other alternatives.
- xerosis 8y ago"just"
- windexh8er 8y agoI'm curious what about running a container like this is hard as you've implied? Take for example all the great work Jessie Frazelle has done containerizing her desktop and apps (https://github.com/jessfraz/dockerfiles https://github.com/jessfraz/dockerfiles). Or the folks behind LinuxServer.IO. If you already have a container runtime on your system running this, as suggested, is a one-liner.
- 076ae80a-3c97-4 8y agoIt would be a great use case for a progressive web app.
- rzzzt 8y agoThe remoteStorage protocol attempts to resolve this problem: https://remotestorage.io/ https://remotestorage.io/ https://unhosted.org/adventures/7/Adding-remote-storage-to-unhosted-web-apps.html https://unhosted.org/adventures/7/Adding-remote-storage-to-u...
- helb 8y agoLooks great! My only concern now is that i won't use it a lot because typing on smartphones sucks…
- jsjdnfmd 8y agoAt the same time, voice to text works like a charm on smartphones. Especially for dairy-style note taking its really painless.
- helb 8y agoThanks. It occurred to me after hitting the "add comment" button, too. Still: - does not work all that great for some languages - does not work offline (or… maybe it does now? it didn't when i've tried it on android a while ago) - not appropriate everywhere (eg. public transport)
- alazel 8y agoLooks quite smooth and has a gentle feel, I like the design. How can you add it to your home screen? There is no link nor explanation.
- karma_fountain 8y agoScroll all the way to the top then a link will appear in a bottom toolbar type thing.
- trys 8y agoThanks! As far as I'm aware, you can't manually trigger the 'add to homescreen' prompt as it's a system-level interaction. Android Chrome & Firefox should trigger it, but if not it's under the default browser settings dropdown on Android, and under 'share' (I think) for IOS.
- helb 8y agoChrome on Androids offers it automatically for PWAs that meet some requirements. You can also add it manually from the browser menu. https://vgy.me/GbvnOM.png https://vgy.me/GbvnOM.png https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/app-install-banners/ https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/app-install-b...
- ntrue 8y agoHaven't used the app yet but the "Facebook"ish theme and illustration-style on the first page made me recoil reflexively. Maybe because privacy is a big concern when it comes to journals and we have come to associate that colorscheme with distrust and privacy breaches lately. I think tweaking the colors and illustration style might help.
- tomerbd 8y agoAny tips for a server side developers on how to create similar user interface? how was it created? fully custom? based on some frameworks?
- hiddevb 8y agoThe project is open source, the github link is on the same page. It's build with Preact, a small react alternative.
- asien 8y agoLooking at the source code it’s done with Preact and the css seems to be written by hand. I was a server side centric dev for a long period before being able to design decent apps. Here are my tips: - Spend as much time as possible on Photoshop / Adobe XD / Paint.Net or whatever software design you are using. Do not start to write any HTML or CSS before the design has all the pages done. - Spend time in Design Network like Dribbble to be inspired by top notch creators - Code stuff you see . If you see a design you like on Dribbble you should try to do it in HTML and CSS. - Frameworks will not make you a good front end developers. The majority of front end devs just use Flexbox these days, frameworks are less and less important for CSS you’ll be faster if you just learn the behavior of html and css without frameworks. - Be patient
- vectorEQ 8y agothere's so many frameworks etc to create interfaces, in so many languages.. this is made mostly in JS so it runs clientside / offline (i think that would be the motivation to do it in js). click view source in the browser :-) or 'inspect' if you use chrome, and look into the .js files which you find from there. Should get you on your way :) though if you are server side developer, maybe php is more interesting as it processes on server side and will be easier to interact with your server side developments css language is used for style related things in any case (where elements might be generated from code like js or php, but css still reflects the style in the browser)
- kerrsclyde 8y agoNice, am trying now. I am on IE 11 on my desktop (corporate environment, not my choice) and it just displays a blank screen.
- fhennig 8y agoWhat's the benefit over plain text files? Is it just the prompted questions?
- aosaigh 8y agoThis is great, but I'd be worried about easily losing all of my journals by simply clearning my browser history and wiping everything unknowingly. Any plans to wrap this as an Electron app or something that could be installed on the desktop?
- ClashTheBunny 8y agoThere is import and export in settings.
- iElectric2 8y ago+1 for syncing support between mobile/laptop. This is a must to have ability to write quick notes on mobile and prose on laptop.
- shpx 8y agoHere is my privacy centric, offline first, personal journal bash script EDITOR=vim journal() { mkdir -p ~/journal/`date +%Y` $EDITOR ~/journal/`date +%Y`/`date +%m-%d` } alias j=journal
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rekshaw 8y agoThanks. Are you planning on selling this as a service? Maybe with blockchain verification? How about creating a marketplace so that others can share journal templates? Is there iCloud backup? Would be nice to have private messages between members and social status that people can "like". :-)
- broahmed 8y agoFor those unaware: I think parent poster is being sarcastic. EDIT: my original comment was "Don't know why you're being downvoted. That's sarcasm people!". It was flagged. I wondered why and decided to check the HN guidelines. Sure enough, I violated one: Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Sorry about that!
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- unicornporn 8y agoFrom time to time I try these fancy journaling apps. A few weeks later I have to go through the hassle of converting the data to my good old plain text file journaling format.
- cloverich 8y agoThere are some journaling apps that target this mindset. This one[1] was posted a few days ago (in comments) and stores your notes as markdown in plain text. There are others (I am working on one as well, but its not ready). If the app forced a particular naming convention (e.g. 2018-05-10.md) would that be too restrictive? [1]: (https://github.com/fabiospampinato/notable https://github.com/fabiospampinato/notable).
- unicornporn 8y agoNo. Not really. http://jrnl.sh/ http://jrnl.sh/ looks good too if you're starting from scratch.
- baleb 8y agoIf you're looking for something simple like jrnl but as a desktop app with a GUI, you might be interested in Mini Diary which I just launched: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18934610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18934610. It also allows you to import your jrnl data and export your entries in a variety of formats.
- davidandgoliath 8y agoThanks for the heads up on this one! Looks great.
- noir_lord 8y agovscode-journal and vscode-journal-view (gives you a calendar view in the side bar) do what I need and are offline. I have vscode open anyway so path of least resistance applies.
- 076ae80a-3c97-4 8y agoThis has similarities to a Blazor (C# via Web Assembly) app I've been playing with recently, mainly offline only storage and import/export functionality. It works well but we're all so used to cloud syncing that it takes some getting used to when things aren't magically available on all our devices. https://do.lord.technology/ https://do.lord.technology/
- cyberpip 8y agoA real journaling app, for the hackernews crowd, must have syncing between any kind of device (imo), including the terminal. My solution is just nextcloud syncing text files, though that may be overkill. Anyone have a good or even elegant solution for web/phone/terminal text file syncing?
- piffey 8y agoI'm assuming this does local storage through the web browser. Does Firefox Sync or Chrome's Sync move that between devices for you? I don't do much web work so am unawares.
- IloveHN84 8y agoCheckout rclone Project then
- davidandgoliath 8y agosyncthing covers all of those, just note it doesn't support iOS.
- mxuribe 8y agoI also recently started using nextcloud syncing (among other files) text files; though i use the nextcloud mobile client to actually edit/draft notes on the go. Previous to this I was using dropbox...which was totally fine, functionally speaking. Their mobile file editor was decent enough. I just moved to nexcloud for reasons of privacy, control, and principle.
- cmpb 8y agoI'm concerned about the HTTP requests that fire off every time I navigate to a new page. E.g. navigating to my "Thursday 10th Jan 2019" note triggers [1]. It even includes a cookie in the request. Not completely private, it would seem, as you're very clearly collecting metadata about my app usage habits, even though it's not strictly required for the app to function properly. [1]: POST https://trys-tiny-tracking.now.sh/ https://trys-tiny-tracking.now.sh/ {"type":"hit","url":"/2019/01/10/"} EDIT: Looking through the src [2], it appears the site will respect the user's "do not track" browser preference [3], but that's not supported in all browsers [2] https://github.com/trys/JournalBook/blob/master/src/utils/beacon.js https://github.com/trys/JournalBook/blob/master/src/utils/be... [3] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/doNotTrack https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/d...
- trys 8y agoFair point, this is the beginnings of a basic hit counter that I'm working on. As there's no server (it's CDN hosted on Netlify), there's no way to see if anyone's even using the site. It's waaaaay less intrusive that GA, or other tracking tools. It's simply picking up page views - ignoring IP and any identifiable information (cookies obvs. included). It also respects do not tracking indicators in your browser. Tiny Tracking will be open sourced in time.
- cmpb 8y agoThanks for the reply. I figured it was, in reality, a pretty innocuous page view counter. But I also figured since your site is getting some attention on HN right now, it'd be best to make the finding public. Also, thanks for actually adding a 'do not track' check! Too few sites are doing that, even new ones like yours. I updated my comment as soon as I saw that in there
- vorpalhex 8y agoUnfortunately you're still sending a lot of data across the wire, so even though your intentions are pure, you've still opened a door to immense data collection for an app that bills itself as "privacy centric". If you passed your data to a third party for storage (Netlify for instance), they could glean an immense amount of information.
- roimor 8y agoIs there something "bad" about journaling in a text editor and syncing that to dropbox?
- thanatropism 8y agoFor a long time my whole life was in a textfile called 'phone numbers.txt'. It had started as a list of phone numbers of my friends (I didn't have a cell phone myself; dumb phones existed but I didn't want one) and grew into a huge repository of information. For a while now I've been using pieces of paper which I file in numerus currens style and keep inside shoeboxes. Many tend to be thicker "fiche de la police"-type cardboard so the whole thing stays up even if there are also many loose folded-in-half A4 sheets. OTOH I've almost lost notes in the laundry and still rescued them with the hair dryer. It's also hard to represent equations and diagrams in most note-takers. Interfaces, as the etymology suggests, really get in your way! The one drawback is to find oneself occasionally without paper. But again in a pinch even business cards and receipts (you can photocopy the termal paper at home later) are possible hacks. (Numerus currens is like paper nosql: when you file a new note, first you quickly browse through your archives for similar topics, otherwise you number it max_N+1. If there's something similar with number 110, you might number 110/A, 110/B, 110/C; if something that belongs with 110/B comes, it's filed as 110/B/1... but you can never shake the whole thing out and lose the order, so I wouldn't recommend this system to people with large dogs or small children.)
- hbbio 8y agoThis app would be a good candidate to integrate a E2EE framework. Disclaimer: I'm building one based on a API/SDK architecture. https://github.com/wallix/datapeps-sdk-js https://github.com/wallix/datapeps-sdk-js
- camnora 8y agoUsing text files as an offline solution works pretty well too.
- rammy1234 8y agodoes this not work in Firefox ? really ?
- rammy1234 8y agothis does not work in firefox .... really works only in chrome
- johnlp 8y agoWorked in FF no problem for me.
- diimdeep 8y agoMarkdown files + Sublime MarkdownEditing plugin
- c-smile 8y agoOr my html-notepad (https://html-notepad.com https://html-notepad.com) if you prefer to use better WYSIWYG. Markdown is "a poor man WYSIWIG" anyway. Especially if you need tables there or paste images from clipboard. Or just use https://notes.sciter.com https://notes.sciter.com application. It stores document tree (db) locally: https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-sdk/blob/master/notes/res/db/initial.tis#L25 https://github.com/c-smile/sciter-sdk/blob/master/notes/res/...
- estevaoam 8y agoGood work man. Don't mind all the criticism here in HN. ;)
- X6S1x6Okd1st 8y agoI've been using Joplin and been really happy with it for my purposes so far https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/ https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/
- mamicu 8y agoI might sound like a crotchety old man but I'm kind of tired of these JS and local storage browser apps. The tech is still just as clunky as if I were using a text file on my computer except you now require a browser to use it and run the risk of clearing your local storage or somehow corrupting it and losing everything, whereas local files a lot easier to keep track of and backup. At least that was my experience with laverna which this reminds me of. Trying to emulate an offline app via a browser seems flimsy to me.
- voidmain0001 8y agoIs there a OneNote, Evernote, <insert program/app name> that has the same feature set as ProtonMail? I like the idea of centralized cloud storage of notes for synchronization across devices with the same app/program, but with at rest encryption of the stored content that can only be decrypted on the client with the client's key.
- erredois 8y agoThere is standard notes that has the encryption and cloud sync. You can try it standardnotes.org
- hkon 8y agoI realized I could never be sure about this kind of stuff, so I made my own. Took me about 5 hours to write a wpf app, it's very crude, but it even flips pages like a book, looks like a book and stores the content encrypted with a huge password which if I ever forget means the entries are lost until someone can bruteforce it. Gives me much joy and I add features to it from time to time.
- zhynn 8y agoReally, no mention of NVAlt or Notational Velocity? Usually that comes up on these threads. I will probably use NVAlt until it doesn't work anymore, then endeavor to craft a replacement.
- netule 8y agoI've tried various journaling apps, but I keep coming back to Emacs Org-Mode for my journals and writing because of its excellent tooling and export abilities. I keep a single .org file per year and each entry is a high level heading. I sort by entries with the latest on top by default, but before I export, I use the built in Org-Mode sort to arrange them chronologically based on the associated date tags. It's an extremely simple system, portable, readable as plain text, and GitHub has syntax support. I can't recommend it enough.
- h0l0cube 8y agoThis is dead simple and flexible, I love it! I thought maybe I could use it to do a self-initiated daily 'stand-up' for personal goals. Right now, you use explicit URLs for each day, is there anyway you could make this static for bookmarking the current day's questions? I'd like to make it my default page for new tabs, such that I don't forget to write.
- JetSpiegel 8y agoHere is a better Android Diary app that saves a single .txt file per day on the sdcard. https://github.com/billthefarmer/diary https://github.com/billthefarmer/diary Then just use syncthing to syncronize those files to your other devices.