WideArea
Dev tools
javascript ui component
SHOW HN2013
192points
66comments
#76of 1,739 in 2013
Top 5%of 2013 by points
How HN took it
MixedNo clear lean
13 positive, 17 neutral or asking, 6 mixed, 10 critical, out of 46 comments about the project. Thread score +0.04.
Design: 6 for, 6 againstIdea: 5 for, 0 againstExecution: 0 for, 3 againstPerformance: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Clean, useful, distraction-free writing UI
From 4 comments
First of all, this is awesome. Great idea, can't believe it hasn't been around till now, and will definitely be using it. The only thing I could change here is the "x" icon when…
jenius on HNYou guys do great work! This is the third thing from your group in probably as many months that is simple, clean, and useful. Thanks!
durkie on HNExcellent. Nothing sucks more than having to use a tiny textbox or fiddle with a resizeable one when you are trying to write something longer than a few lines. It would be nice…
oftenwrong on HNWow, what an excellent zen writing resource. Will be using for longer writing projects I'm sure!
jjmardlin on HN
Similar to GitHub's comment editor
From 2 comments
If I remember rightly, Github has something just like this for its pull request description textarea. :) It is a very nice UI control.
davedx on HNGithub uses similar editor in their comments textarea. Very cool.
websymphony on HN
Objections
Full-screen mode hides borders, making the active area unclear
From 2 comments
The fact it has no borders in "full screen mode" is really disorientating. I like the concept but wouldn't use it because of the loss of visual feedback (but full screen mode is…
UnoriginalGuy on HNThis looks great! One suggestion is that in full screen mode, the textarea doesn't stretch across the screen (it's a centered column) but since there are no borders it is hard to…
mgeraci on HN
Disables native textarea resizing
From 2 comments
The fact it has no borders in "full screen mode" is really disorientating. I like the concept but wouldn't use it because of the loss of visual feedback (but full screen mode is…
UnoriginalGuy on HNFirefox and Chrome already allow you to re-size textareas. At the very least this library shouldn't shut that functionality down.
romaniv on HN
The X close icon is frightening
From 2 comments
First of all, this is awesome. Great idea, can't believe it hasn't been around till now, and will definitely be using it. The only thing I could change here is the "x" icon when…
jenius on HN+1 "X"s are frightening. You might just give it some tooltip text.
jjmardlin on HN
Mobile landscape rotation breaks layout
From 1 comment
Somewhat broken on android for me - maximise in landscape, rotate the phone, and it goes Wrong. The text wrapping doesn't realign, and the close button is left off screen.
regularfry on HN
Requests
Restore textarea resizing
From 2 comments
Bring back the ability to re-size the smaller box, and add a key board short cut and this will be glorious :-) Nice work!
tjbiddle on HNFrom a quick look, it looks like it's reasonably simple to add resizing back in. The CSS on the textarea has resize:none - removing that and removing the max-width should add…
illdave on HN
Keyboard shortcut to enter and exit full-screen
From 2 comments
I suggest to add key-bindings: <Control-Space> for going to wide-mode and <Escape> for getting back.
daGrevis on HNBring back the ability to re-size the smaller box, and add a key board short cut and this will be glorious :-) Nice work!
tjbiddle on HN
Auto-expand as you type
From 1 comment
This is awesome but it would be great if it also expanded as you type. Like on Facebook when you are typing a status update that is long. The box expands vertically as you type.…
electic on HN
Local backup of entered text
From 1 comment
Very nice, going to use this in a project now, so thanks a lot for this. It would be fully featured and extra sweet for me with some kind of lightweight feature to save a local…
beggi on HN
Browser extension version
From 1 comment
Perhaps this would also be useful as a browser extension so it could be used across the Internet.
AndreasFrom on HN
Questions
How does it handle multiple textareas on one page?
From 1 comment
How does it handle multiple textboxes on the same screen?
Pezmc on HN
How to populate the full-screen box without placeholder text?
From 1 comment
How would you go about populating the full-screened text-box if the regular text-box has no placeholder text?
instakill on HN
Alternatives named
GitHub zen writing mode and comment textarea
From 2 comments
https://github.com/blog/1379-zen-writing-mode
dybber on HNWas this inspired by GitHub's new distraction-free comment feature? The styling looks exactly the same.
aniketpant on HN
OmmWriter
From 1 comment
Very cool. Reminds me of http://www.ommwriter.com/. I like using minimal text editors like this when I'm brainstorming or making a first pass at something; good for simple,…
pkfrank on HN
Garlic.js and Sisyphus.js for local backup
From 2 comments
I also used Garlic.js (http://garlicjs.org/) in a project. Also requires jQuery or Zepto but I was really pleased with it. Pretty lightweight.
proexploit on HNJquery required, but there's http://sisyphus-js.herokuapp.com/
evilduck on HN