Hi Adri.
I have Stumbled across this website earlier, but coming back to it yesterday, I found out you had a beta, so I signed up for it.
I love this.
The concept is amazing, the execution and simplicity to use it is amazing, this feels like a tool that I can really use.
Adri, you know how scatterbrained I am ;) I’m unable to think in a straight line, I’m always jumping all over the place, I find it very difficult to write elegantly because of this problem, I am always jumping forwards and backwards, thinking about things I should bring up in another part of my document, WHILE writing another part.
I just started using Gingko, I’m not setting up the document right, simply because of the 3 columns, (I should have put my contents of column 2 in column one, but this is something I will learn), but even with this I’ve discovered something amazing,
You’ve given me the ability to THINK more clearly.
I can get distracted, I can create a footnote in another Card, just so I don’t forget it, then go back to what I was writing. I was LITERALLY talking to Karine the same day I discovered Gingko about wanting to attempt to write a book (even just short stories) because it was something I thought I might be interested, but my ability to formalize a storyline in a linear path is beyond the scope of what I felt like I was capable of doing.
I can see myself using Gingko to help me in that. I can see myself using Gingko to write a game design doc, I can see myself using it to start planing out my life, to get my shit together.
As a web developer, I firmly believe in the ONE TWO technique for providing Praise, Comments, Bugs and suggestions, this is where you Praise the person, then give two pieces of suggestion or questions, and repeat. I am horrible at this; on more than one occasion I have been called arrogant or even “asshole-ish”, and I want you to know straight from the start that is not my intention.
From the day that I saw your Habit Shaper, I knew you’d be making great things. I don’t know how else to put it.
I put together a email to say I came across an issue, and I was unsure if you were aware of it, but while typing it up I figured I’d use your site a bit more to try to organize the email, and it sorta morphed into this.
#Be forewarned:
I have never talked to you about Gingko, I have not told you I saw it, I do not know your plans for this site, I do not know if any issues I came across are currently being fixed, I do not know any of this, and as such I am only letting you know what I encountered as a client thinking “outside the box.”
I have tried to keep everything Factual. I can do better, but this is the first time I am using it.
If you do not wish to read further, do not, I would hate to come off as an asshole, I look forward to using your site more and more.
-Maral
I am pretty sure these are bugs, I’ve tried to give as much information as possible. I will update each as I test it in new browsers.
I am not sure if it’s a bug or if its a feature. :p
Suggestions for the Site itself, not related to the Trees part of the website.
How about an account page for the user?
Fresh install, and the browser seems to be hanging when typing into the webapp.
clicking on a Box to drag it turns it into a dashed box in FF 18.0.2, only way to reload it is to refresh page. unable to proceed past the “Let’s drag & drop to rearrange things.” page in tutorial.
makes the iframe (if it is an iframe), appear longer than the document window, making the down arrow disappear
typing a paragraph, then hitting enter will enter a carriage return, placing another one then “publishing” the card will result in no space between the paragraphs.
When I edit a Card, leave it, and then come back to edit it, the cursor is in the last position. ie: If I edit the title in a card, save it, add another card then come back to my first one and hit “enter” the cursor will be in the title.
I am unable to edit a card, and place the cursor in the text with the mouse, I must navigate the cursor with my arrow keys.
When no Card is selected, and hitting the backspace, the browser will navigate back to the previous page, I do not know if it is possible to override this, THANK GOD for your automatic saving!
When opening a tree as a shared tree, the menu does not update from “share this tree” to “unshare this tree”
I left home for work super excited to try this out, and when I came back to the beta page, I realised it asked me to register again, I would probably make the default a “log in” page with a button that says “register” instead of the opposite.
possible “unsure if bug”
If users are able to create their own URL for sharing (beta.ginkoapp.com/mytitlehere) what happens when two trees with the same share are connected? should it be seperated by the user name, (beta.ginkoapp.com/myusername/mysharedtree/)
In tutorial on step 2 put the green “back button” on the left of the “next button*.
How bout spending 50$ a year to get a SSL for your website, so that users feel like their documents would be a little safer, have clients working on their Trees be connected via a secure line.
When a tree is shared, it is public, hoever, when editing that tree, it does not show as public. Maybe something in the header while you are editing a tree such as “this tree is public” where clicking on the link will open the public view of it, Just for a reminder.
For Basic Users Basic users have interface hints, When editn a card, a few simple buttons are on top, clicking each one will insert the type code for it. for example, by clicking the B button, it will insert “STARSTARtextSTARSTAR”
under the card will be a “cancel” and a “save” button.
For Advanced users it works exactly as you have it now, no need for the user to even touch their mouse, the Hints don’t even show up!
Interface looks beautiful on windows 8, but the scroll bars look a little distracting on windows 7.
Default the app to beginner mode. in the menu have a “switch to advanced mode” toggle. which will reload the Tree, but in advannced mode with a popup that says “you are now in advanced mode, all hints/GUI buttons are off, to switch back click on the menu and select ‘switch to beginner mode’”
ALL SUGGESTIONS IN THIS (MY) DOCUMENT THAT IMHO WOULD HAVE AN OPTION FOR BEGINNER/ADVANCED WILL BE MENTIONED
When a New card is created, it is already Populated with The hashtags relative to the card depth, with the cursor immediatly to it’s right. ie: creating a new card in the third column will create a card with the contents “###” with the cursor immidiatly after it.
Having a tag that can link to a Card, I do not know how feasable/overly complex it would be to do, but let’s suggest a shortcut of ( and ) let’s say I make a card with a suggestion in it, and I want a card at a later date to referance that card, I can make a symbolic link between the two by doing (IDOFCARD) example: (12) which yould output a blue “12”, clicking on it, will move you to card 12. if you drag card 12 into the 13th position, the card will now have an ID of “13”, and the card referencing it will automatically have (12) updated to 13 via it’s symbolic link.
When adding a detected url, it turns into a clickable link
Share this tree only with a specific user(s) on the website.
Enter their name, and it will share with them. enter their email address and it will send a request for them to signup with a basic account on your site, unless that email address is already linked to an account, at which point it just shares with the user.
some of these may exist already, have not verified, also, some of these I’ve taken from Reddit. EACH ONE is a suggestion, the actual code for each format can be different.
1) Ordered and unordered lists: Adding a 1) then text, followed by a carrige return, then a 2) will turn them into an ordered list. alternativly a * Preceeding a paragraph turns it into an unordered list.
2)text inside a span
text will output “text” in italic.
text will output “text” in bold
(text)[www.cnn.com] will output “text” as a hyperlink to cnn.com
text will output text that is underlined.
3) Div boxes:
will create a Div box around the paragraph it is preceding. Optional: something like >red will output a red div box. >blue will output a blue one…
Holding CTRL+clicking on a series of cards will select them. they are given order priority in the order they are clicked. Alternatively, you can hold CTRL and press up or down to select a series of cards.
With this done we can do multiple things1)Link them together
2) hold Shift + up and move all the cards up, or SHIFT+Down and move them all down.
3) selecting them by MOUSE will give them a numerical value, and moving them will re-arrange them into that order whereas CTRL+arrows will move them like a GROUP.
I was going to suggest using arrow keys to move between Cards, and I was happy to see it was already implemented.
How about Moving existing cards into new locations? with a card selected, but not in the editable state, hold shift+up will move the card up, and down will move it down.
Create a free signup with a starter package that allows people to create X amount of trees, with X amount of features, Pro users, paying X amount a month, have access to extra features.
Your text file that you’ve saved, would there be a way to import it back in? (probably useless however)
Option to export to PDF, pretty much The same as the text editor, but looking a bit more polished.
bonus: export pdf’s with themes.
For Basic users: PDF exports with watermark at the bottom: something like “Document created by Gingko” or “plan envisioned by Gingko” or something along those lines.
For advanced users: Option to disable Watermark in user settings.
Maybe when your Tree is finished and ready to move to the next step, you can export it as a document to Google drive to begin collaboration? (need to figure out if this is possible with Drive API)
Feilds could be:
1) Username
2) Email address
3) Basic/Advanced mode
4) Shortcut Cheat sheet with Advanced/Basic toggle.
5) Signup page for basic users to upgrade
kkk
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