
Show HN: Pastel, build better websites with sticky-note feedback - alokepillai
https://usepastel.com
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FTA
If you're looking for a free alternative, Genius has a web annotator service
[0], available either through their site or self-hosted. Registration is
required to make annotations, though.

[0]: [https://genius.com/web-annotator](https://genius.com/web-annotator)

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haneefghanim
Genius is definitely a great way to annotate and share text on the web. Our
tool is built with web creators in mind (think freelance web developers, web
designers, agencies, startups etc), and is more optimized for that use case.

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abejfehr
This is a really cool idea!

However, I don't think this works very well on websites where you have to
interact to get to other pages.

I just went to Google, searched something, and left a comment on one of the
results, but I couldn't view the comment afterwards.

I can imagine many websites that this could be a problem for, such as an
authenticated experience or a wizard where the step isn't captured in the URL
explicitly.

But I'll keep this in mind for getting feedback on static pages for sure!

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haneefghanim
Hey thanks! One of the founders of Pastel here. Re: viewing comments on apps
with complex state, it's something we've thought a lot about, and it's tough.
Our current solution is to take a screenshot and attach it to every comment so
that you can view the application state as it was when the comment was left.
Not necessarily ideal though. Do you have thoughts on this?

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sova
Very cool! Almost like Mixpanel in that any event can be caught, only this is
for tagging notes on sites. Well done, it looks very promising. Does it work
on full JS Single Page Applications?

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haneefghanim
Thank you - I love the comparison! To your question, Pastel does work on JS
SPAs. I'm actually using it currently on a React SPA (we like to dogfood our
product internally).

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sova
Hot diggity that's awesome dude. Was it hard to make? You strike me as ninja-
on-the-stratosphere with something like this

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haneefghanim
Haha thank you! Honestly yes it has been, and continues to be a tough product
to build. The first proof-of-concept iteration was not bad, but getting the
thing working correctly in most browsers has been difficult. We've learned a
ton about browser internals along the way though, and it's been a lot of fun.
:)

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hackathonguy
I love it. The design is beautiful and the tool makes perfect sense. Pricing
seems a tiny bit prohibitive to me seeing as there are free alternatives.

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haneefghanim
Thanks! We're actually exploring creating a free tier with a link creation
restriction. Additionally, we have a 50% discount for students, teachers and
non-profits on our paid plans.

