4 ms·

Looks really awesome. I dig the clean interface/presentation. The app is done well enough where nothing is overtly bad or glaring. That being said, I do have a

by zbanks 16y ago

Looks really awesome. I dig the clean interface/presentation. The app is done well enough where nothing is overtly bad or glaring. That being said, I do have a few light thoughts & suggestions. - I agree a source textbox for citations would be nice, but it's not too pressing considering you can include it at the end. In a similar vein, an author box would be nice too. - Any reason why the URLs are 5 letters long? Not to undervalue the popularity of the service, but you could easily start out with 3 letter abbreviations, which would give you ~150k URLs. - For that matter, what is your character set? Are you using just letters, or alphanumeric characters? Again, I'd prefer the former since you aren't going to get a significant boost from the extra choices. You might also want to take out 'O', 'o', and 'l' so its unambiguous when written out. - Finally, although I'd be weary of allowing crazy markup systems, it might be good to implement a lightweight format such as Markdown. Nothing too fancy, but it's nice to be able to add emphasis without having to SHOUT. For fun, my comment on tidypub: http://tidypub.org/moAbu http://tidypub.org/moAbu

icco 16y ago
I agree with the points here. Markdown seems like a great idea. Maybe have a toggle for what the post is in (Markdown / Plain text)? Also I'd like to see a post date on the page. Finally is it open source?
- chancecarroll 16y ago
  I agree with having both the post date (optional?) and the markdown option, I like the idea of being able to toggle markdown, you could still default to plain-text and so preserve perfect backwards compatibility. Also I can't help but wonder about expiration dates and the ability to edit or delete, maybe have an optional password?
akkartik 16y ago
At least linkify urls. It's trivial; use http://daringfireball.net/2009/11/liberal_regex_for_matching_urls http://daringfireball.net/2009/11/liberal_regex_for_matching... Interestingly I chose 5 letters as well for my url shortener. e.g. http://twitter.com/akkartik/status/7915316453580803 http://twitter.com/akkartik/status/7915316453580803
- joshfinnie 16y ago
  Link to updated article: http://daringfireball.net/2010/07/improved_regex_for_matching_urls http://daringfireball.net/2010/07/improved_regex_for_matchin... Save you a click.
  - akkartik 16y ago
    Ah, didn't know about that, thanks.
jules 16y ago
> Any reason why the URLs are 5 letters long? What has Twitter done to this world? I for one would like to see the title you type appear in the url.
- zbanks 16y ago
  Actually, it's more of an issue with writing down the URL and passing it on. Less characters means its harder to screw up. Question marks and random letters make non-techie people anxious. If its short, it at least helps.
dsingleton 16y ago
> For that matter, what is your character set? Are you using just letters, or alphanumeric characters? Again, I'd prefer the former since you aren't going to get a significant boost from the extra choices. You might also want to take out 'O', 'o', and 'l' so its unambiguous when written out. I'd suggest using New Base 60, which has some smart readability built in: http://tantek.pbworks.com/w/page/19402946/NewBase60 http://tantek.pbworks.com/w/page/19402946/NewBase60
vvpan 16y ago
Thanks for the feedback. Much-much appreciated. I was thinking of adding an "author" field, and now that you and some other people mention it, I think I will follow through with it. Honestly, you seem to have put much more thought into URL shortening than I did. I am using just letters for the character set. Shortening the URL sounds like a good idea. And removing the O's and l's is also something that I think I would do. Great suggestions, thanks! Markdown is actually in the code, but commented out for the "release" =) So it should be coming soon. Thanks again.
- rwolf 16y ago
  I'd recommend against shortening the key length, given that keeping the keys hard to guess is how you're keeping them private. See https://gist.github.com/722474 https://gist.github.com/722474 for a proof of concept scraper. If the key length dropped to 4 chars (and you kept l, o, L, and O in the set), there would only be 7,311,616 urls to try to find all the notes.

by zbanks 16y ago

icco 16y ago

I agree with the points here. Markdown seems like a great idea. Maybe have a toggle for what the post is in (Markdown / Plain text)? Also I'd like to see a post date on the page. Finally is it open source?

chancecarroll 16y ago
I agree with having both the post date (optional?) and the markdown option, I like the idea of being able to toggle markdown, you could still default to plain-text and so preserve perfect backwards compatibility. Also I can't help but wonder about expiration dates and the ability to edit or delete, maybe have an optional password?

akkartik 16y ago

At least linkify urls. It's trivial; use http://daringfireball.net/2009/11/liberal_regex_for_matching_urls http://daringfireball.net/2009/11/liberal_regex_for_matching... Interestingly I chose 5 letters as well for my url shortener. e.g. http://twitter.com/akkartik/status/7915316453580803 http://twitter.com/akkartik/status/7915316453580803

joshfinnie 16y ago
Link to updated article: http://daringfireball.net/2010/07/improved_regex_for_matching_urls http://daringfireball.net/2010/07/improved_regex_for_matchin... Save you a click.
- akkartik 16y ago
  Ah, didn't know about that, thanks.

jules 16y ago

> Any reason why the URLs are 5 letters long? What has Twitter done to this world? I for one would like to see the title you type appear in the url.

zbanks 16y ago
Actually, it's more of an issue with writing down the URL and passing it on. Less characters means its harder to screw up. Question marks and random letters make non-techie people anxious. If its short, it at least helps.

dsingleton 16y ago

> For that matter, what is your character set? Are you using just letters, or alphanumeric characters? Again, I'd prefer the former since you aren't going to get a significant boost from the extra choices. You might also want to take out 'O', 'o', and 'l' so its unambiguous when written out. I'd suggest using New Base 60, which has some smart readability built in: http://tantek.pbworks.com/w/page/19402946/NewBase60 http://tantek.pbworks.com/w/page/19402946/NewBase60

vvpan 16y ago

Thanks for the feedback. Much-much appreciated. I was thinking of adding an "author" field, and now that you and some other people mention it, I think I will follow through with it. Honestly, you seem to have put much more thought into URL shortening than I did. I am using just letters for the character set. Shortening the URL sounds like a good idea. And removing the O's and l's is also something that I think I would do. Great suggestions, thanks! Markdown is actually in the code, but commented out for the "release" =) So it should be coming soon. Thanks again.

rwolf 16y ago
I'd recommend against shortening the key length, given that keeping the keys hard to guess is how you're keeping them private. See https://gist.github.com/722474 https://gist.github.com/722474 for a proof of concept scraper. If the key length dropped to 4 chars (and you kept l, o, L, and O in the set), there would only be 7,311,616 urls to try to find all the notes.