New software toy: Right Now!

[elfs]

Quick, what web page do you look at most often in your day-to-day life? Not the one you spend the most time on-- that's probably Facebook or Twitter or something like that. It's the page you see on a regular basis but pay very little attention to.

For me, that page is the "New Tab" page on Chrome. It's the page that comes up when you first start the browser, and every time you open a new tab with the Ctrl-T keystroke, or by clicking on the [HOME] button with the middle mouse button. I see that page every day, often many times in the day.

I decided I didn't want the basic utility offered by Chrome, and replaced it with a static home page, a kind of memento mori. It's based on an idea by Merlinn Mann, I think-- it was a long time ago-- and the idea is that every time you pull up that page it shows you a list of the things you ought to be concentrating on. It is emphatically not a to-do list; it's more like a project list, and it has categories to let you describe different "realms" in which you have your projects. Mine looks like this:

Wouldn't you rather be:

• Programming:
  • A better Facebook
  • The next Pinterest
• Writing:
  • The great American novel
  • The great Martian novel
• Playing:
  • With your kids
  • In your garden

The problem with this set-up is that it was static. Sure, I'm a fine HTML monkey myself, but I wanted something that I could change without having to pull up an editor and look at a ton of HTML every day. So I hacked together this:

Right Now!

Okay, it's a blank page. But if you click on the "Wouldn't you rather be" header on the right, you'll get an opportunity to create a new category, and then under add a list of projects.

Here's the (somewhat) nifty part: Your data is entirely stored on your computer. I taught myself to use Zepto and Lawnchair, a micro-DOM framework and a toolkit that uses the new "local storage" engines. There's no server. There's no off-line storage. Nobody else can see your data.

And it's fast. You don't even notice the post-download draw. There are still some tics, but on the whole, this is what I wanted to achieve: when I change or abandon a project, the next time I see it, I can make it go away. And when I start a new project, I can put it on the list.

Even better, since I used Zepto and Lawnchair, I was able to write it without using Backbone. As much as I love Backbone, this didn't need it, and figuring that out necessitated a re-write. So although the tag is "v0.2", it's more like "v0.4", but that's git for ya.

Anyway, go ahead and enjoy it. The code isn't gorgeous, but for 140K, it's a nice, sweet hack. And it means that my project list is now updatable. I'm no longer looking at an outdated list.

Comments

[urox.livejournal.com]

Why? Why would you want to program a better Facebook? Why? Social media is *soooooooo* flooded right now. Even Yammer is copying Facebook and selling it to businesses.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

It's just an example. The real one has smaller project names.

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

Ok, this I want to try out. I have serious attention problems that tend to lead to an inability to really focus on making choices about what I'm doing at any given time. This... this is relevant to my interests.

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

is it possible to have this replace the Most Visited page in the New Tab window? Your post implies that it is, but I can't find how.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I use Chrome, so I just set the "On Startup" and "Home Page" settings. It seem to work for me.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

There's a "new tab" feature that needs an override. I forgot that I had installed it: New Tab Redirect (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/icpgjfneehieebagbmdbhnlpiopdcmna). There may be others. This seems to be a common problem.

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

This sounds a little like Schemer (to which I'm happy to issue invites). In fact, it might be the sort of thing that would get me to actually visit my Schemer account, since I'm not interested in endlessly creating new schemes.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

It's not, really; this is much more of a "keep your focus" home page thing. And it's downloadable; you don't need to link to my site to use it, just grab the copy off my Github (https://github.com/elfsternberg/rightnow) and link to the index.html file as a file:/// extension.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Although I will say, great Ghu, that is a gorgeous home page Schemer has!

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

I was able to set this as my Home page in Chrome, but not the New Tab page. Do you have a trick for that?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

New Tab Redirect (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/icpgjfneehieebagbmdbhnlpiopdcmna) is an extension that sets the "new tab" to your home page, or any other page.

[woggie.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm in Firefox.

I downloaded rightnow.htm and when I managed to open it, I ended up on what appears to be your github page.

What do I do now?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how that happened. It looks like you actually downloaded the github content, not the zip file. You want the ZIP file from here (https://github.com/elfsternberg/rightnow/downloads). Unzip it, then browse to:

file:///wherever/you/downloaded/it/to/index.html

Three slashes are important! And let me know if it works! :-)

[woggie.livejournal.com]

I discovered how important the three slashes were.

Thank you for providing the zip file location, I was unable to get it from your github page. Or maybe that zip was the one for your github page, I don't know. :)

It seems to be working. I'll play with it more in the morning and we'll see if I can break anything.