[moron4hire]

It's interesting that people forget the iPhone was originally HTML5-apps-only, there was no app store, there were no 3rd party native apps. The roots are there. They just need to be watered.

I've been tinkering with HTML5 apps for the last few years. If you're on the desktop, I don't think there is reasonably anything you can't do. On mobile, there are still a lot of problems with audio. That is very unfortunate for a host of different types of apps, but for a lot of others it is no big deal.

There are things that I'm doing with my current project, https://www.justwritedammit.com, that I just don't think would be possible without HTML5. Building a cross-platform experience has been significantly easier than Java ever allowed me to do, and I'm getting to hit more platforms. I can deploy changes NOW and I can do it 20 times a day if I want. And I have 100% feature parity between desktop and mobile.

[rhythmvs]

JWD looks nice! Hope to see this evolve into a great option for online writing.

Just wondering: do you plan on supporting Markdown? If not: is that by design? Plans on any formatting syntax whatsoever (considering ePub is the main target export format)?

[moron4hire]

Thanks, that means a lot to me.

I've toyed with the idea of using Markdown. As long as the formatting doesn't get in the way of the writing is the key. People have a real problem with focusing on the work that matters. It's really easy to procrastinate by doing busy-work like making sure you're using the right type of bullets for your lists.

My original idea was to have formatting be a completely separate mode. But the more I think about the problem in general, I realize that at some point, it's impossible to 100% disassociate content from presentation. Markdown is probably the best compromise. Some other people have had success with writing full, going-to-print books through Markdown. It's certainly a better choice than a full WYSIWYG or GUI editor.

Formatting is also one of those features that people think they need when they don't. Currently, you write into individual chapters, and the chapters get concatenated correctly to have page breaks and headers. There are many different types of books that need no more formatting than that, novels in particular. I'd rather spend time working on getting full ePub docs implemented (I can write HTML files to ZIP files right now, but haven't done much beyond that, more just need to read the spec and get it done at this point), or getting some of the flow-encouraging mini-games made. Or finally building a real server (this is all 100% client-side right now) so I can let people publish their writing directly to their own blog.

I also need to spend some time in the marketing department. There is a lot to do. It's been just under a month since I threw away the work I was doing in Java (from a year and a half ago) and restarted in HTML5.

I could certainly use some help ;)

[bowerbird]

hi. bowerbird here, checking in with you two. i haven't forgotten you, just been working on smoothing out the latest wrinkle in my thinking, which i do believe has made a huge improvement. i'll get some stuff to both of you, quite pronto.

-bowerbird

[rhythmvs]

Would love to see what you’ve been working on.

Meanwhile, I took the liberty of browsing through your .zml demo’s¹. I can say your manifesto² got me intrigued. Do keep me posted!

¹ http://www.z-m-l.com/ ² http://zenmagiclove.com/marchforth/march-forth-manifesto.zml

[crapiola]

Really nice app! could not go back and forward, though. (I'm on firefox)

[moron4hire]

Thanks!

I'm sorry you're having trouble. Do you have version info available? I just tested it on Windows 7, Firefox 28 and it worked. I started building this in Firefox, though now I mostly use Chrome (IDK, Firefox has felt like a beast lately, and I get antsy with browsers).

Sometimes, not all of the javascript files load in the right order and an error occurs because of a dependency. I'm fixing it right now, but maybe reloading the page will help with your issue.

[crapiola]

I'm on firefox 28.0 on mavericks. keep up the good work!