
Show HN: 5iler – a repurposable minimalist notepad - sidyadav
http://5iler.com/
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guptaneil
Neat, minimalist idea. I like it.

Small nitpicky feedback: Your keyboard shortcuts say to use cmd + 1/2/3 to
switch files. In Safari, that will load the first/second/third bookmark. The
correct shortcut for Safari is ctrl + 1/2/3

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sidyadav
Thanks! I'll update the Shortcuts modal to reflect this.

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jimmyhmiller
Three finger swipe on the mac app would also be wonderful. Any chance of open
sourcing this?

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adestefan
You might want to fix your shortcut help. I don't have a cmd key on my Linux
system.

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sidyadav
Thanks! I'll update it to reflect OS/Browser.

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hluska
I like 5iler a whole lot and I second adestefan's advice. I use a Linux system
and don't have cmd keys. I'm wondering if, since some browsers (at least
Chrome + Safari) use cmd+1/2/3 to switch tabs, if maybe replacing cmd with
ctrl would be easier for everyone involved?

Great app and excellent design. Call me a fan!

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sidyadav
Appreciate it :)

Actually, you can already use Ctrl+Numbers -- command is essentially just an
alias for Macs (i.e. the Shortcuts modal is the misleading part).

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adestefan
I was a bit obtuse in my original comment. Ctrl does work fine. I then tried
Alt since that's in the position of the Cmd key, but that didn't work (which
is a good thing because then it doesn't eat the browser's tab switch keys.)

Of course the same is also true on Windows.

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sidyadav
I've updated the Shortcuts help screen on Windows :)

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adestefan
Still missing in one place. When you hide the menu the little tool tip says to
use cmd + E to restore it.

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V-2
It also recommends Cmd + S as a way to enforce synchronization

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lobotryas
Cool idea, nice implementation!

Feature request: please implement lists either as a keyboard shortcut or as a
text macro. Both ordered (numbered) and un-ordered preferred.

BTW, for anyone who didn't catch it: you can change the name of each notepad.
Just double-click the name, type what you want and it'll be saved.

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sidyadav
Thank you! As a matter of fact, Markdown support is the next big thing I'm
working on, and I plan to look into incorporating lists.

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beefman
I'm probably in the minority, but I would vote against markdown support. There
are tons of minimalist markdown editors out there (have a look in the Mac app
store for starters). At least make it switch-offable.

I'd vote against list automation too, because it changes the way the cursor
and keyboard behave.

URL detection would be nice though, since it only affects the visual display
and mouse behavior.

I'd also vote for a constant-width font option. Preferably Consolas or one of
its knock-offs.

It would be nice if the line number, column number, and number of characters
in the buffer were reported in one of the corners.

Comments based on the web version (Firefox Mac).

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sidyadav
Interesting, thanks for the feedback. I definitely plan on adding an off
switch for Markdown, and will only be going through implementation if it
doesn't impact speed/usability in a noticeable way. The plan is to make it a
minimal implementation (i.e. keyboard shortcuts only) and barely something you
would notice you had.

The reason I'd like to add it is because having switched over from TextEdit
and Evernote, the one thing I miss are the Cmd+B,I,Us etc.

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bebna
Have you thought about a subtle markdown support like a syntax highlighter?
Vim does this for example. Bold things get displayed bold with there stars,
headings get bold and colored (red in my case). It allows to read the markdown
source and have the effect of formatting at the same time.

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dmd
Two requests:

1) I'd like the titles to be Markdown-friendly headings instead of C comments,
personally.

2) I'm not sure if this is within scope - maybe this is just something to do
on my own in Dropbox - but it would be neat if there were an 'archive' button.
Let's say I'm done with one of my files and I want to clear it out. Push the
button, and that file would be moved to archived/DATETIME.txt or something
like that, and cleared.

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sidyadav
Hi! Thanks for the feedback.

1) I'm working on implementing Markdown and will be using friendly headings
once we sort that out.

2) I love this idea! In fact, it's been on my wishlist for some time now -- I
plan on shipping it this week. I've been calling it "Snapshot Backup", but I
think "Archive" is a much better word for it. Thank you :)

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gniquil
Great job! Like the concept. But here's another nitpick.

I see when you activate a file, the animation first shrinks the file a bit and
then expands it out. Is it possible to remove the shrinking? It makes the app
"feel" a bit jerky. I think the reason is when you shrink the activating file,
all other files expand by a bit. This causes the whole screen shifting a bit,
leading to a somewhat jarring experience for a split second.

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jason_slack
Interesting app. I actually like it because I use a paper planner that is laid
out in columns like the app. (like this:
[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UQkLuS4qZtA/UTyyzpS9suI/AAAAAAAAAH...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UQkLuS4qZtA/UTyyzpS9suI/AAAAAAAAAHs/cDQdsRTHKFw/s1600/M-F+Column+Grid.jpg))

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jogloran
Text editor-like tabbing behaviour (new line preserves last line's tab level)
for indented lists would be quite useful.

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sidyadav
That makes sense. I'll try my best to include it in the next version!

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cliveowen
Really nifty and very well done.

If you have time down the road you could think of implementing one feature
that every modern text editor for some reason lacks: autocorrect. TextEdit on
Mac has some form of autocorrect but mostly sucks, I don't know why in 2014
we're still using the backspace but I feel it's time to move on.

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brightghost
isn't the same auto-correct system in TextEdit.app available by default in any
cocoa text-fied on OS X? And if you think that system 'mostly sucks', perhaps
it is because you are vastly underestimating what a difficult feature it is to
implement?

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cliveowen
I didn't say it was easy and I'm not underestimating anything, that doesn't
change the fact that autocorrect on Mac sucks.

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ThatFontFace44
In Chrome, the font is rather difficult to read. For example, l and t look
very similar.

Great idea - it looks very promising :D

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sidyadav
Thanks! :)

Had a few complaints about the font, working on adding customization in the
next version.

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edwinyzh
why not just change it to a better default font? It's cool, btw.

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cshimmin
Cool idea, not sure I like how the web app hijacks Command+N keys though (I
use these often to switch between browser tabs). Lately I've been using a
similar ~5 categories, and just emailing things to myself. I put the "tag" in
the subject line have gmail filter them into labels.

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sidyadav
Thanks!

Out of curiosity, which browser are you using? As far as I'm aware, I didn't
build in any Cmd+N hijacking into the app (I did do Cmd+S for syncing/saving
though, and Cmd+1,2,3,4,5 for switching between files -- is that what you
mean?).

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dylandavidson
Yea, he means Cmd + Number I believe. In Chrome Cmd + 1 goes to the first tab,
Cmd + 2 to the second and so on. So it can be somewhat annoying for someone
who frequently uses those shortcuts to change tab.

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sidyadav
Sure -- right now, Ctrl+Number works as an alternative, so considering getting
rid of Cmd+Number all together.

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mwalsh
I really like this, especially that it handles the tab key properly. I find it
frustrating that it hijacks ctrl+tab and ctrl+shift+tab as well though. I use
those to switch browser tabs. I'm on Linux + Firefox.

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newsomderek
I'm interested in what 5 categories people would use in their own 5iler?

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sidyadav
Since I built the first prototype a few weeks ago, it's been changing every
day for me! Interesting to observe the change in contexts.

Right now it's: Thoughts, Code, 5iler, Today, Private

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Jonovono
Looks nice. I have been using
[http://selfcoded.com/justnotes/](http://selfcoded.com/justnotes/) instead of
evernote, but I will check this out!

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brightghost
I don't get what the 'insert line divider' is meant to be. It seems to just
insert a large, fixed amount of whitespace characters?

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sidyadav
Try it out! It's a hyphen-based separator I found myself using to divide
chunks of text. For now it almost functions as "sub-notes" feature.

The keyboard shortcut is Cmd/Ctrl + /

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brightghost
Yes, I did try it out-- for me at least, on FF/Win7, it just inserts about 20
whitespace characters.

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luchosrock
Good idea! it works pretty good in FF but in Chrome when I type "-" nothing
gets printed, and when I type = it prints "-".

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comrh
Nice, I really like it.

My suggestions might be out of line with the minimalist philosophy but:

1) Code coloring or at least code blocks

2) The ability to open two at the same time, side by side

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alokedesai
For the desktop version, I'm having problems with undo. Occasionally, if I
delete something, I won't be able to undo it.

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sidyadav
This may be a known issue: it has to do with the fact that whenever Dropbox
syncs, the undo state is reset. If you haven't setup Dropbox sync and have
been experiencing this, let me know.

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alokedesai
Yeah I actually haven't synced Dropbox, though I can't seem to reproduce this
on a consistent basis. Huge fan of this though, definitely going to be
something I use on a consistent basis.

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alokedesai
Also, redo isn't working for me at all.

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alokedesai
Jk, I was using the wrong shortcut :)

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sidyadav
FYI: I am planning to open source the code within the next two weeks. Please
get in touch if you're interested in contributing!

hello@5iler.com

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jonathanmarvens
I absolutely love this!

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sidyadav
Thanks!

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darkstar999
> 5iler (pronounced ‘filer’)

No. This isn't intuitive at all.

Five-iler?

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jwarren
Is that really the most constructive thing you could say and the most
constructive way to say it?

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resu_nimda
Probably not, but I agree that it's worth mentioning.

It doesn't follow any common verbalization of the '5' character. It's also at
the front of the word, so you have no clues to start you off on the right
path. Even when you know how to say it you still want to say "five" when you
read it. I would give the name a very low usability/accessibility score, and
frankly it pushes me towards not using the product ("yeah I use this thing
called filer - if you want to check it out it's actually spelled with a number
five, and then 'iler' \- yeah I don't get it either"). If we're going with the
5 theme I would have preferred 5note or 5notes.

