Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Project Notepad



I found myself keep having an impulse to take notes on whatever little tricks or
usage of important commands when I was developing applications. However, I didn't know if there is a good way to keep track of the developing process. Of course, writing a blog or a twit may help me to some extent. But, after all, they are not designed for the purpose. I want a simple application, which can record a small piece of command or code, some description for that command, and allow me to search quickly after. I often got into a problem that I was looking for same piece of information over and over again. And don't know if I have taken notes for it somewhere (in my notebook? or in some small piece of paper?) I didn't try to find a killer application to solve my problem, since I think this application is so easy that I can make by myself.

Therefore, I created a small application called "Project Notepad" using PHP+MySQL.
In order to practice Ajax and Javascript, so I used much of them as well.
In "Project Notepad", I can create, delete projects, create, delete, search memos by tags. Each memo is comprised of three elements: command, description and tags.
Tagging facilitate the searching afterwards.
The reason why I used PHP is because I want to use it in my computer and so far as I know the PHP interpreter can hook on the IIS server of Window7, so I can execute the application in my local host. Secondly, PHP is handy in developing such a small applications.

I spend some time in layout and design. I found a very handy tool in arranging colors:
ColorSchemeDesigner
It provides me a set of primary, secondary and complementary colors based on the hue,saturation,brightness and contrast I selected. I used colors from the suggested set of colors and build a nice-looking website quickly.

Here is my application:
Project Notepad

Some work still needs to be done. For example, providing a log-on/in mechanism, then more people can use it and export the memos in xml,text file then users can make a backup in their local machine. At the current moment, it meets my needs well :)

Update

The registration system was done! Now it allows multiple users :)
Give it a try and give feedback or report bugs at the bottom link of "report bugs" :)

2 comments:

  1. just checked! awesome idea!!

    plz create an account system,
    then I will def use it!!

    Mou-Chun.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ha, Mouchun, I don't know you are reading my blog.
    Thanks for your comment. Now it is open for multiple users, Give it a try and report bugs or feedback via the "report bugs" link in the bottom.
    Hopefully, it also helps you to manage those annoying commands :P

    ReplyDelete