
Show HN: Freeter is out of Beta - AlexKaul
https://freeter.io/?hn=true
======
johnfn
I really don't understand what this is at all. The home page doesn't really
say and the examples listed in the guide are so different from each other that
I can't find the common thread.

The examples seem cool, but I would really like 1-2 "killer app" features that
your app can do, rather than a list of minor time saving shortcuts.

(I usually hate reading comments like this because I feel the commenter is
just being pedantic and didn't take 5 seconds to read the page. In this case,
I really have no clue.)

~~~
corobo
If you've ever used Grafana, Geckoboard, etc it feels similar to that but with
additional desktop (clickable/interactive) functionality.

You set up your widgets for a project - buttons for "git commit", "gulp
watch", "Open project in Sublime". Add in some browser windows for the project
management - Trello, Harvest, Slack channel. It then serves as a main hub for
the project you're working on. To me that sounded a little cumbersome but
after seeing the cmd-shift-f global keyboard shortcut (Open/Switch to Freeter)
I think I might try to use this on a couple of projects I have going.

Seems you can also set keyboard shortcuts for projects within the app too e.g.
ctrl+f1 could be a dashboard for Website A development, ctrl+f2 could be
Website B dev, etc.

Edit: Highly recommend taking a moment to read/skim through the guide. The
feature that sold me on it was being able to use Dropbox or similar to sync
projects between machines

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slang800
Grafana & Geckoboard are for displaying charts as a dashboard. Freeter looks
more like a mini window manager in an app... Even though you could just open
up your project-related applications in a workspace and lay them out on a grid
with i3.

~~~
corobo
I was saying the way you lay out the charts as a dashboard in Grafana is
similar to how you lay out the windows/buttons in Freeter. Not that the apps
are similar, just the interface.

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marmaduke
Taking it for a test drive after thinking "nope." I predictable wanted a
terminal.. my solution was grabbing a copy of wetty
([https://github.com/krishnasrinivas/wetty](https://github.com/krishnasrinivas/wetty)),
and adding a commander button to run wetty and browser set to the wetty url,
and now I've got a terminal.

pop one off the yak stack..

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sleepychu
I wish we'd stop using:

The $X for ... (a list of things but enumerated by an animation to type them
out and delete them a character at a time)

The animation is so obtrusive that it makes it really hard to use the page and
I see this on so many sites that it doesn't even feel novel anymore.

EDIT: Ctrl-Shift-F is a terrible choice for hotkey, used for "find but a bit
different" in lots of apps.

~~~
corobo
You can change the hotkey[1]. A little odd it's a selection of choices rather
than having the ability to record a combo but there's enough choice for my
liking.

[1] [https://i.imgsir.com/qRQZ.png](https://i.imgsir.com/qRQZ.png)

Edit: Just realised I'm commenting all over this comment section. Not
affiliated with the product at all, just refreshing HN each time I come back
from reading more of the guide

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jacquesc
Exactly the app I was looking for, purchased within 15min of playing with it.
When context switching between multiple projects, it's amazing to be able to
create a "space" for each one.

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mariust
Hi Alex, I like the idea but you need a couple of minutes to figure it out
maybe it would be awesome to start off with an demo dashboard that people can
use and get used to the app and maybe a guide on how to change things (sort of
like an on boarding in web apps). I am going to send you an email. Cheers and
keep up the good work.

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simplehuman
Didn't think I would see Linux only desktop software! Can you comment on how
big this market is? Obviously many people use Linux on desktop but I am
curious what is your experience non getting these people to pay for desktop
software.

~~~
hollerith
>Didn't think I would see Linux only desktop software!

I think you've misinterpreted what you saw: the contents of the web page
varies depending on which OS you use to access it.

When I visit the web page on a Mac, I see a big green "Download for Mac"
button.

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kintamanimatt
I don't get it. Your landing page doesn't make it clear what it does or what
value it would provide. I'm confused, and that might affect your
conversations.

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accountface
Took me a while to figure out what this was — seems to be a way to organize a
lot of disparate pieces and shortcuts into a project dashboard?

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exposheet
Sounds pretty good actually. However, it took me for a while to realize what
it really did.

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rememberlenny
What is it that it does?

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veli_joza
Congratulations! Are there plans on integrating some time tracking solution?
It could be integrated with the invoice generation, but even a simple timer
with play/pause button per project would be useful.

~~~
corobo
This was going to be my original comment but having given it some more thought
this might be a bit of a big ask when you consider you would want to be able
to export all of that data, generate reports from it and so on.

You could use something like Harvest, Toggl, etc inside a web widget

~~~
marmaduke
Toggl has an API, so a neat trick would to hook the built in timers to an API,
beit Toggl or taskwarrior or whatever.

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fiatjaf
This is a very cool idea.

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drcongo
Did this formerly have a different name? I remember trying something like this
out a while back.

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jazoom
The Home page says it's an organiser. It looks like it's a task switcher-type-
thingy.

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xname2
Does it only embed webapps? Can I put a desktop app, say MS Word, inside it?

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tomerbd
which technologies stack did you use to build this?

~~~
corobo
I found it on the privacy[1] page

> Freeter is built on top of Electron[2] which uses Chromium[3] for embedding
> web browsers into the app.

[1] [https://freeter.io/privacy](https://freeter.io/privacy)

[2] [https://electron.atom.io/](https://electron.atom.io/)

[3] [https://www.chromium.org/Home](https://www.chromium.org/Home)

