
Show HN: Ctxt.io – share context of whatever you see with others in seconds - kahseng
https://ctxt.io
======
kahseng
Built this when I was looking for a rich-text pastebin and couldn't really
find any around. This works instantly in seconds without any account and
prioritizes just giving you a link to share.

Ended up being really useful whenever I wanted others to see what I had
experienced on personalized websites (e.g. ranked feeds that would look
different on different accounts, or change if reloaded e.g.
[https://ctxt.io/2/AAAAiPRWFg](https://ctxt.io/2/AAAAiPRWFg)), interview
feedback, or even paywalled content if I just wanted to share a little snippet
for fair-use and keep the HTML styles,
[https://ctxt.io/2/AAAAACI6FQ](https://ctxt.io/2/AAAAACI6FQ). Scroll to the
bottom of the page for these examples.

The main technical difficulty here was in trying to get all the CSS styles to
be as accurate as possible, and the browser extension solves many of these,
including proxying requests whenever necessary to bypass some restrictions.
The browser extension doesn't request any permissions, and won't inject any
content scripts on your page, so as someone who cares about security, is what
I wouldn't mind installing personally.

One cool thing I've discovered after building it is that it's super useful for
web developers to modify the DOM of pages and redo mockups and then use
Context to re-share them with others for them to also modify: e.g.
[https://ctxt.io/2/AAAA0KGcFA](https://ctxt.io/2/AAAA0KGcFA)

Everything is free for now (don't worry about the $ signs), mainly interested
in feedback. Thanks in advance!

~~~
chatmasta
Pretty cool. Similar to www.archive.is.

~~~
H4CK3RM4N
But it also looks like it A) emphasises the important bit and B) expires after
a while to minimise leaks.

------
mcpherrinm
Your TLS configuration is broken, in a way that often happens:

You aren't serving the appropriate intermediates. It's only serving the leaf
certificate, but should also serve intermediates that get us to a trusted
root.

Because browsers cache intermediates, this obscures the problem much of the
time.

This is pretty amazing though. I copied some Go code from Gogland and got it
in a browser, syntax highlighting and all!
[https://ctxt.io/2/AAAAwO9VEA](https://ctxt.io/2/AAAAwO9VEA)

~~~
kahseng
Thanks for this great feedback and TLS tip. I'm using GAE to host this, and it
only has these options
[https://ctxt.io/2/AAAAACLGEg](https://ctxt.io/2/AAAAACLGEg). Do you think
this is broken or how I generated the cert?

I think I followed instructions from here to get the certs:
[https://github.com/arkarkark/letsencrypt-
nosudo](https://github.com/arkarkark/letsencrypt-nosudo) but I can try all
this again.

edit: Looks like this is the solution, thanks for pointing this problem out:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17746643/how-to-set-
the-i...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17746643/how-to-set-the-
intermediate-certificates-on-gae)

------
justusthane
Wow, this is amazing. Seems like magic once I wonderstood what it does.

Like others here, at first I thought it was just another pastebin. I didn't
realize what it could do until I read your comment here in this thread. Seems
dumb, but I didn't notice I could scroll down for examples, and I also would
have had no idea about the browser extension. I would have dismissed this
almost immediately had I just visited the page. Perhaps you can make this
things more obvious?

Also, any plans for a Firefox extension?

 __Note __: "Wonderstood" was a typo, but I'm leaving it because I like it :)

~~~
kahseng
Point taken and thanks for the positivity! Had been balancing utility and
explanation, and can swing more a little to the latter.

Yes Firefox shouldn't be too hard, I don't use anything too Chrome specific,
and I have built extensions for FF and Safari prior (wink wink).

~~~
severine
[this is an explicit upvote re: Firefox extension]

~~~
kahseng
Firefox extension done and under review: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/context-ctxt-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/context-ctxt-io/)

------
bootsz
Couldn't help myself... [http://imgur.com/a/7j5RH](http://imgur.com/a/7j5RH)

Kidding aside, this is a cool idea

~~~
kahseng
Heh you should share that contexption!

------
thewavelength
I still don't get it. Every page I try to contextify (wat) is looking like
pasted in a 1999 WYSIWYG editor. How do you all get the correct styling etc
with you? I'm using Firefox with uBlock and Disconnect.

Example page: [https://www.golem.de/ticker/](https://www.golem.de/ticker/) \-
I tried to copy some listed links but they just look like standard Times New
Roman after contextification:
[https://ctxt.io/2/AAAAAPxhEA](https://ctxt.io/2/AAAAAPxhEA)

Anyway, nice idea. I have ever used screenshots so far.

~~~
kahseng
Yeah strangely Firefox has these design decisions on how to handle copying out
styles (doesn't pick up from stylesheets unlike Webkit):
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116083#c3](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116083#c3)
[https://github.com/textAngular/textAngular/issues/534](https://github.com/textAngular/textAngular/issues/534)
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1273836](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1273836)

Firefox extension or the bookmarklets on
[https://ctxt.io/faq](https://ctxt.io/faq) would solve this and the former
should be out soon: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/context-
ctxt-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/context-ctxt-io/)

~~~
brcha
Oh, an extension already :) Excellent.

Although, at this moment, my Firefox (52.0.1 on GNU/Linux) says the extension
cannot be installed because it is faulty what ever that might mean.

~~~
kahseng
The extension needs to be reviewed by Mozilla and signed unfortunately. 80%
get done within 5 days but unclear if this will be the case here. Meanwhile
you can use the bookmarklets at [https://ctxt.io/faq](https://ctxt.io/faq) but
those won't work on CORS/CSP restricted sites.

------
olalonde
Pro-tip: be careful when you copying websites you are logged into as you could
leak CSRF/authentication tokens.

~~~
kahseng
Good point, I'll work on stripping these where possible. No cookies are
obtained and I would hope CSRF tokens expire quickly.

~~~
zulln
> CSRF tokens expire quickly

Dangerous guess.

------
rectangletangle
I really like the clean UI first layout, but it could use an arrow/indicator
to emphasize the content below the fold; especially for first time visitors. I
wish more sites prioritized their layout like you did. The core functionality
seems solid, Nice work!

------
wjdp
Took a little while to work out how cool this is, initially just thought it
was just-another-pastebin.

~~~
kahseng
Thanks! Exactly... it's not and you should really give the browser extension a
go if you enjoy it. It has 70% of the features coded up and works the best.

------
dimasf
So I tried copying the site with fixed header and it broke the layout of your
site - [http://imgur.com/a/OADih](http://imgur.com/a/OADih)

Otherwise, I like it for its simplicity.

~~~
kahseng
Heh thanks yeah the nature of content editable. If you can still submit (use
keyboard to tab-enter), it'll hopefully preserve that fixed hleader in the
paste.

------
gcr
I don't think I quite get this. Everything I paste here shows up in plain
text. It doesn't automatically do any syntax highlighting; it only seems to
work if you're already copying rich text to begin with.

~~~
kahseng
I guess I have to do better on the value proposition. Yes, there are many
other of pastebins that work on code or plaintext for syntax highlighting
(which might be the use case you're thinking of), but there is virtually no
solution that works on rich text. Pasting rich text into any of these
solutions wouldn't work, and many times I would love to keep the styles and
just make the content readable (e.g. tables, paragraphs, headers, stay the
same etc.)

~~~
H4CK3RM4N
Does Sublime Text's syntax highlighting count as rich text for this?

~~~
Nadya
Not by default.

But you can install a plugin: [http://monkeyhacks.com/post/sublime-
text-3-copy-as-rtf-and-h...](http://monkeyhacks.com/post/sublime-text-3-copy-
as-rtf-and-html-with-sublimehighlight)

------
simplehuman
Is this the best site ever? Scrolled a bit and I completely got what it does

------
itsutsu
I'm not quite sure I understand how you've done it but it's really nice
(although I'm also concerned about cookie, csrf token issues as well).

------
willempienaar
Working well, thanks!

Do you have any plans to release the source code?

~~~
kahseng
Thanks!

Is this because you would rather verify things are what I say they are (no
content stored elsewhere) and use this service, or to run your own, or just
learn?

Right now, code quality isn't in a state to open-source, but I'm thinking
about it.

~~~
staz
The first two for me ;)

~~~
kahseng
To understand your stance here: What would it take for you to trust this
service without running your own?

~~~
aryamaan
Good question- would like to know more what are good practices in such cases
w/o making your work open sourced.

------
mbayer
Interesting and simple concept, works great. Reminds me of a similar service I
saw a few weeks ago, txt.fyi.

~~~
kahseng
Yep, I saw that and this was about 80% built at the time. Was still wrangling
with all the style capture and couldn't capitalize on all the attention it was
getting then. ;-)

But this has a different primary use-case, more on transient context sharing,
and caring about accuracy in the short term. And not about publishing per se.

~~~
mbayer
You're right, the transient nature of this service sets it apart from other
similar offerings. I like your monetization approach and how you tied it to a
useful feature. Great implementation.

------
Svenskunganka
This is very well made, I'm going to add this to my bookmarks. Thank you &
good job!

------
nmstoker
Anyone else getting a certificate warning on mobile Chrome?

~~~
amree
I'm seeing it too. Chrome on Android.

~~~
kahseng
Just checked and it worked on my Android's Chrome too. Any details on what the
error message says?

~~~
ritonlajoie
Net::err_cert_authority_invalid

~~~
kahseng
Yup this should be fixed now, thanks to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13945560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13945560).

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
> the hassle of secure clean-up within minutes.

The people that professionally create a hassle of security will beg to differ.

Edit: So just ignore them when they do that.

------
lutusp
> share context of whatever you see with others in seconds

ITYM "within seconds, share with others the context of whatever you see". Yes?

------
math0ne
Look idea, but I think it needs a better explanation, its a relatively
complicated concept.

------
racl101
Woah! What sorcery is this?

~~~
aryamaan
Yea, could someone give a good explanation of what's happening here.

~~~
nperez
Basically this

[http://stackoverflow.com/a/29094545](http://stackoverflow.com/a/29094545)

Rich text format supports font colors, images etc

Pasting this in a browser is explained well here

[http://stackoverflow.com/a/30904519](http://stackoverflow.com/a/30904519)

