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)