2018/Baltimore/offlineposting
Offline Posting was a session at IndieWebCamp Baltimore 2018.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8ewm3BRH1I
Notes archived from: https://etherpad.indieweb.org/offlineposting
IndieWebCamp Baltimore 2018
Session: Offline Posting
When: 2018-01-20 13:15
Participants
gRegor Morrill (session facilitator)- Matt
- Derekt
Jonathan Prozzi- Darius
Chris Aldrich- Add yourself here… (see this for more details)
Session Overview
- The session is about offline posting. Being able to write a post or notes offline and then post to a site/CMS when reconnected.
- Could be his own site, or a method for posting to any site or CMS
Goals
- Be able to open site that doesn't require connectivity and start typing notes
- Ideal would be having an auto-save in this state
- Could be used for offline collaboration
- Could this be a service?
- Connect a micropub service: Login, type offline into an interface such as Quill, and then it preserves it until you're connected
- Does Quill have this?
- Maybe a progressive web app?
- Store in local storage in browser?
- An inactive save feature could be useful
- Focused primarily on mobile app/service for this
- Be as plaintext as possible
- Plaintext with tagging
- Hierarchy of tags?
- Plaintext with tagging
- Don't want it to be cumbersome while capturing the content of the notes
- Tags emerge when needed: default would be a 'blog' or a 'general' if not tagged, but then if needed could add a tag in to classify
- Start simple and always iterate
Ideas/Resources
- Progressive Web App with service workers to do this
- Matt: Has tried lots of apps and tools for this process:
- Early 2000s: Single page wiki (notes wrapped in an HTML file). --> TiddlyWiki
- This gave lots of speed to populate content into categories and then it was a single file
- This could be offline. When wanting to use collab features it got really tricky
- Single tool features work well but when he starts integrating collaboration, it starts to fall apart
- a current favorite in terms of an effortless UX - [Agile Tortoise Drafts](https://agiletortoise.com/drafts/) (not as capable as Taskpaper and various other tools, but has never failed me)
- important for Matt has been that the notes themselves and all significant features are always wrapped up in plaintext-readable markup
- Early 2000s: Single page wiki (notes wrapped in an HTML file). --> TiddlyWiki
- Jonathan: I like the workflow of writing in Markdown locally when offline and then pushing to github OR CMS when live
- Issue: Wouldl be nice to have this for mobile! Computer is cumbersome for this, but effective
- And useful resource for ios text editors (fairly comprehensive, longterm project): Brett Terprstra (creator of [Marked](http://marked2app.com/) markdown preview tool) [iTextEditors chart]()http://brettterpstra.com/ios-text-editors/)
- Putting lots of work into a specific note that is a prelude for a later post * how does this relate to the later output
- Should be able to always have a fresh note when you open something and then save it for later
- Older notes would be preserved until deleted
Tools
- Drafts: iOS, Android, Desktop.
- Always starts with a new note, and when you close the app it auto saves and tucks it away
- This has been useful for his lifestyle but has still found certain things lacking
- Saves locally? Saves to cloud?
- Nice interface for accessing drafts
- Google Keep, works offline on mobile (maybe not on desktop)
- Google Keep Chrome App: DOES save offline notes and should pull offline notes when connection is reestablished
- Links notes to sites via Google account
- Noter Live does a pretty good job of saving notes in the browser (local storage) in case the app crashes or problems occur prior to posting
- SimpleNote: multi-platform software kind of like Evernote, Google Keep. Plaintext focused. Might be rewritten with offline capabilities (need to confirm)
- Matt uses this - There is a way to sync with them but could also sync with other tools
- update from review of https://simplenote.com/help/#syncing -- can write offline, and any action that creates, edits, deletes, or accesses the note when online potentially syncs it
- Chris Aldrich I'll often use bookmarking tools and IFTTT workflows (PESOS) to trigger things quickly on the go that create drafts with timestamps that I can later update/publish when I'm back online.
- Example: Diigo and Reading.am
- Reading.am allows me to post via email and then IFTTT picks it up via RSS and posts a draft read post
- Diigo also allows direct integration to IFTTT to pick up posts there to PESOS as bookmarks and or pick up annotations later.
- Example: Diigo and Reading.am
- WordPress has the ability to post via email, so one could draft a post in email and send it that way when later connected (pseudo-offline)
- Day One:
- Mac Tool (OS X, IOs) - Is there a way to syndicate this to a site, possibly via XML?
- Start writing, and then it pulls info and preserves it for later
- indieweb.org/offline
- MarsEdit
- Ulysses
TODO
- What can we do today that will allow us to build something specific tomorrow?? **
- Does Quill have an offline writing feature?
- it preserves drafts
- Would be nice if one could draft something via email while offline and send it to Quill or another endpoint for processing and ultimate posting via micropub
Questions:
- Is context information important for the notes?
- Title + Body for POC, possibly timestamp
- Example: Gregor listening to a podcast while traveling and wanted way to preserve this for later reflective post/note online
- Title + Body for POC, possibly timestamp
- How to save the datetime for the post? What should the datetime be? The drafting time or the ultimate posted later time?
- Are we writing plaintext into the app or HTML?
- Formatting: do we want sequential posts or is it a scratch/draft for later revision/reflection?
- How many pieces would we be writing?
- Gregor's usecase would be few times a year since he'd usually be connected (except during flights, travels)
- If using hashtags to tag and classify, how to identify?
- Fewer and more precise if for a specific project
- Could be more general for blogging
- Build ontop of Quill as starting point?
- Extend the offline/draft features present in Quill -> Ability to save more than 1 draft note at a time
- Does Quill populate hashtags as they're typed?
- Email to Quill for processing/posting?
- Does Etherpad also work offline?
- no, it doesn't. one of the other similar projects might tho (e.g. hackpad)