Hello,
Thanks for looking at my little noetbook app. I've wanted a simple,
easy-to-use online Noebook app forever but I've always been too lazy
to write one. Then along came Google
Notebook and, while a bit rough around the edges, it is very nice. Seeing
it, I was inspired, so I sat down and pounded out a cheap copy of it (~75 lines
of PHP) in an afternoon, which I then adapted to (hopefully) work well for
the iPhone (which I don't own) just because I thought it would be neat to do so.
(Other reasons this exists, when Google Notebook is so nice:
1) Google Notebook doesn't work in Safari, and
2) someone might want the functionality of an online notebook that they
can host on their own server.)
Usage notes/app logic
This app is very simple. Enter as much text as you want into the text boxes.
Click 'Save' at the bottom to save your changes. The screen will be redrawn with
a new textbox that holds as much text as is present plus a couple extra lines
to make it easy to add more text. The buttons at the top behave like tabs.
They also
secretly function as 'save' buttons so switching from one tab to another will
automatically save whatever you just typed. This saves keystrokes and
page load times: to write on one tab, save it, and switch to another tab,
you don't have to click save, wait for the page to reload, click another
tab, and wait for that page to load--you just click the tab you want and
your works gets saved and the new tab loaded. So instead of click, load,
click, load, it's just click, load.
This is just dummy/test data so feel
free to add and delete stuff to see how it works. Use the
last tab as a 'guestbook' if you like.
Code
The code for this app is nothing to write home about. It is done with
basic PHP (about 150 lines) and produces valid HTML 4.01
(Transitional) with a table-based layout. Data is saved into a tiny MySQL
database. Only the current data is saved but it would be trivial to have
it keep a history. The PHP and database stuff is super simple so the pages
should get generated in no time, and the pages it makes (unless you've
got tons and tons of text) are less than 2kb so performance should be great, even
on EDGE.
I'd like to make it into a
nice proper iPhone app
with proper CSS, features that'll optimize its use with a horizontally-
or vertically-oriented iPhone, etc etc etc. Maybe add a nice @media stylesheet
so it works well with all PDAs, and have it automatically open larger if
you're visiting with a desktop browser.
Also: remember the searchable floormap that was demoed at the 2007 WWDC
keynote? I wrote something just like that years ago. If you would like
me to build something similar for your company, feel free to contact me.
-----brian
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