4 ms·

This is very cool. BTW, when developing single HTML file apps, instead of localStorage, one can use the HTML as the source of truth, so the user can just save/s

This is very cool. BTW, when developing single HTML file apps, instead of localStorage, one can use the HTML as the source of truth, so the user can just save/save-as to persist. I had mentioned my quick and dirty attempt at an image gallery that is a self-contained html file and some really liked the concept, if not the "app" itself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41877482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41877482

gcr 2y ago
TiddlyWiki famously does this! It's a great system for what it needs to be. https://tiddlywiki.com/ https://tiddlywiki.com/
xandrius 2y ago
Wait, so every time I make a change I need to remember to save or it's all lost? Or am I missing something?
- egeozcan 2y ago
  Yes, is that a no-go? Maybe I’m just being too old-school :) It does make forks a lot easier, though! Another advantage is that it makes it clear what you’re saving, reducing the likelihood of errors being persisted.
  - ffsm8 2y ago
    There is a pretty newish filesystem API around. You could probably make auto saving possible via that - at least after a prompt for the filesystem permission. Or keeping it as it. That's fine too. It just came to mind
- FrancoisBosun 2y ago
  Not so different from Word/Excel/Lotus 1-2-3 from the 90s! I like that most software saves-as-I-type now, but that was the workflow back then. Ctrl+S was the most used key combo on my keyboard back then. Now, it's `:w<Enter>`.
- breakfastduck 2y ago
  My god this comment made me feel old. God forbid you have to remember to save your work!
  - billiam 2y ago
    The mental model my kids have for work is that typing or even thinking is itself a finished product. For my generation that idea of a conscious action of saving your work on a computer made me think more about what I was doing and how I was doing it. But I am an old.
    - endofreach 2y ago
      I understand the overall contrast you're sketching here. But can you elaborate on > typing or even thinking is itself a finished product Any specific examples where you notice the difference?
    - nuancebydefault 2y ago
      If you go back in time, there were editors that by default would save the previous version of a file to .bak, each time you saved the current status. The fear of accidental saving or editing and hence overwriting old good stuff was higher than accidentally loosing new good stuff. There was less protection of system files, config files etc, so chances were you would brick apps or even the OS. Things got more forgiving since.
  - mock-possum 2y ago
    I mean - yeah, honestly, god forbid. Requiring manual saves with limited change history (or none at all) was the bad old days. That was bad UI/UX, literally everybody had a “oops I forgot to save” and a “oops I saved and I didn’t mean to” horror story. Things are better now.
    - jjeaff 2y ago
      I wouldn't say it was totally awful. At least, prior to having an Undo option or perhaps an undo but that can only go back 3 steps, saving as before making any large changes was a pretty common workflow. I might end up with 50 versions of a document numbered incrementally by the time I was finished. that is still a necessary workflow for certain types of documents. I don't necessarily want everything saved automatically all the time.
- darrenf 2y ago
  I mean, that’s what I have to do in vim, so why not?
- kaimac 2y ago
  You can get the browser to confirm you want to close the tab. That's what I did with my little single-file scrapbook thing: http://kaimac.org/posts/scrapbook/index.html http://kaimac.org/posts/scrapbook/index.html
- rpdillon 2y ago
  If you construct the file to be able to save a copy of itself with updated data, then it can do so automatically without any user interaction, either on a timer or in response to some event.
- WickyNilliams 2y ago
  You could combine localStorage and manual save. Anything unsaved goes to localStorage, on save write to html and clear local storage. Best of both worlds?
AlphaWeaver 2y ago
Came here to comment this as well! TiddlyWiki uses this as it's default storage format.
smusamashah 2y ago
Does using save as retain changes you make in the HTML (like aedits on a contenteditable element)? In my experience it does not. When you save, the originally loaded html will be saved, any changes in html stay in your browser.
- egeozcan 2y ago
  My bad, I should have mentioned that you should choose the option to save the complete web page. It becomes default on Firefox once you select it. Not sure about Chrome and others. It looks like this on Firefox, Windows: https://imgur.com/zNlEGgK https://imgur.com/zNlEGgK
  - rollcat 2y ago
    Great idea, as usual killed in its infancy by lacking UA UX. We even already have an API to ask the user not to close the web page, because there's unsaved work; but it wouldn't work with "Save as...", because you can't detect that, and the browser won't do it for you, even if it knows you're editing a local file. Same for all of the pointless cookie banners - they could've been UA prompts instead, putting the user in charge of setting a policy ("always trust example.com", "never trust example.net", "accept example.org for this session", etc). But building such prompts into a browser would've been a nuisance in 1997... So we ended up with that nuisance anyway, just enshrined by shortsighted laws, that target each and every website - rather than the three remaining browser engine vendors.
    - egeozcan 2y ago
      It's not killed IMHO, I actively use a fleet of such single HTML file apps that I save locally and even share with people. My initial comment has an example of a gallery, works wonderfully.
      - rollcat 2y ago
        Well my issue is you forget to hit Ctrl-S/Cmd-S and your changes are gone. I've been using computers since early 90s and haven't found one program that does that; heck many apps don't even have an explicit "save" button, saving (and syncing) is transparent. The web "browser" wasn't "intended" for this use case, hence the issue. This could be easily fixed though -- just like cookies.
65 2y ago
How would this work without manually editing the HTML file?
- egeozcan 2y ago
  You write Javascript to read and write to HTML, like, develop a single page app that treats HTML as the view and the database, and restores state on DOMContentLoad from the HTML. Super easy and maintainable for micro apps. You can also use the contenteditable attribute and use no JS, so you basically have a notepad.
pyinstallwoes 2y ago
I like urls as source of truth. It’s beautifully deterministic

gcr 2y ago

TiddlyWiki famously does this! It's a great system for what it needs to be. https://tiddlywiki.com/ https://tiddlywiki.com/

xandrius 2y ago

Wait, so every time I make a change I need to remember to save or it's all lost? Or am I missing something?

egeozcan 2y ago
Yes, is that a no-go? Maybe I’m just being too old-school :) It does make forks a lot easier, though! Another advantage is that it makes it clear what you’re saving, reducing the likelihood of errors being persisted.
- ffsm8 2y ago
  There is a pretty newish filesystem API around. You could probably make auto saving possible via that - at least after a prompt for the filesystem permission. Or keeping it as it. That's fine too. It just came to mind
FrancoisBosun 2y ago
Not so different from Word/Excel/Lotus 1-2-3 from the 90s! I like that most software saves-as-I-type now, but that was the workflow back then. Ctrl+S was the most used key combo on my keyboard back then. Now, it's `:w<Enter>`.
breakfastduck 2y ago
My god this comment made me feel old. God forbid you have to remember to save your work!
- billiam 2y ago
  The mental model my kids have for work is that typing or even thinking is itself a finished product. For my generation that idea of a conscious action of saving your work on a computer made me think more about what I was doing and how I was doing it. But I am an old.
  - endofreach 2y ago
    I understand the overall contrast you're sketching here. But can you elaborate on > typing or even thinking is itself a finished product Any specific examples where you notice the difference?
  - nuancebydefault 2y ago
    If you go back in time, there were editors that by default would save the previous version of a file to .bak, each time you saved the current status. The fear of accidental saving or editing and hence overwriting old good stuff was higher than accidentally loosing new good stuff. There was less protection of system files, config files etc, so chances were you would brick apps or even the OS. Things got more forgiving since.
- mock-possum 2y ago
  I mean - yeah, honestly, god forbid. Requiring manual saves with limited change history (or none at all) was the bad old days. That was bad UI/UX, literally everybody had a “oops I forgot to save” and a “oops I saved and I didn’t mean to” horror story. Things are better now.
  - jjeaff 2y ago
    I wouldn't say it was totally awful. At least, prior to having an Undo option or perhaps an undo but that can only go back 3 steps, saving as before making any large changes was a pretty common workflow. I might end up with 50 versions of a document numbered incrementally by the time I was finished. that is still a necessary workflow for certain types of documents. I don't necessarily want everything saved automatically all the time.
darrenf 2y ago
I mean, that’s what I have to do in vim, so why not?
kaimac 2y ago
You can get the browser to confirm you want to close the tab. That's what I did with my little single-file scrapbook thing: http://kaimac.org/posts/scrapbook/index.html http://kaimac.org/posts/scrapbook/index.html
rpdillon 2y ago
If you construct the file to be able to save a copy of itself with updated data, then it can do so automatically without any user interaction, either on a timer or in response to some event.
WickyNilliams 2y ago
You could combine localStorage and manual save. Anything unsaved goes to localStorage, on save write to html and clear local storage. Best of both worlds?

AlphaWeaver 2y ago

Came here to comment this as well! TiddlyWiki uses this as it's default storage format.

smusamashah 2y ago

Does using save as retain changes you make in the HTML (like aedits on a contenteditable element)? In my experience it does not. When you save, the originally loaded html will be saved, any changes in html stay in your browser.

egeozcan 2y ago
My bad, I should have mentioned that you should choose the option to save the complete web page. It becomes default on Firefox once you select it. Not sure about Chrome and others. It looks like this on Firefox, Windows: https://imgur.com/zNlEGgK https://imgur.com/zNlEGgK
- rollcat 2y ago
  Great idea, as usual killed in its infancy by lacking UA UX. We even already have an API to ask the user not to close the web page, because there's unsaved work; but it wouldn't work with "Save as...", because you can't detect that, and the browser won't do it for you, even if it knows you're editing a local file. Same for all of the pointless cookie banners - they could've been UA prompts instead, putting the user in charge of setting a policy ("always trust example.com", "never trust example.net", "accept example.org for this session", etc). But building such prompts into a browser would've been a nuisance in 1997... So we ended up with that nuisance anyway, just enshrined by shortsighted laws, that target each and every website - rather than the three remaining browser engine vendors.
  - egeozcan 2y ago
    It's not killed IMHO, I actively use a fleet of such single HTML file apps that I save locally and even share with people. My initial comment has an example of a gallery, works wonderfully.
    - rollcat 2y ago
      Well my issue is you forget to hit Ctrl-S/Cmd-S and your changes are gone. I've been using computers since early 90s and haven't found one program that does that; heck many apps don't even have an explicit "save" button, saving (and syncing) is transparent. The web "browser" wasn't "intended" for this use case, hence the issue. This could be easily fixed though -- just like cookies.

65 2y ago

How would this work without manually editing the HTML file?

egeozcan 2y ago
You write Javascript to read and write to HTML, like, develop a single page app that treats HTML as the view and the database, and restores state on DOMContentLoad from the HTML. Super easy and maintainable for micro apps. You can also use the contenteditable attribute and use no JS, so you basically have a notepad.

pyinstallwoes 2y ago

I like urls as source of truth. It’s beautifully deterministic