hydravion's recent activity

  1. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hydravion
    Link Parent
    Oh okay 😂 Sorry for the misunderstanding! Otherwise I think Featurebase should do fine.

    Oh okay 😂 Sorry for the misunderstanding!

    Otherwise I think Featurebase should do fine.

    1 vote

  2. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hydravion
    Link Parent
    Thanks for sharing your view! The general vibe seems to be that it would be fine to create a thread and link to the extension. I think I'll do that soon :) Thanks again everybody!

    Thanks for sharing your view! The general vibe seems to be that it would be fine to create a thread and link to the extension. I think I'll do that soon :)

    Thanks again everybody!

    2 votes

  3. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hydravion
    Link Parent
    Hey skybrian! Thanks for offering to help with the testing, much appreciated :) I would love to have you on board, I should be ready soon. That's actually a really good point, I'm sold....

    Hey skybrian! Thanks for offering to help with the testing, much appreciated :) I would love to have you on board, I should be ready soon.

    it will be easier to find, bookmark, or ignore.

    That's actually a really good point, I'm sold.

    I think Github issues and discussions are more appropriate

    Absolutely, I was thinking of using Featurebase for collecting feedback etc. Do you think that I should have a Github page as well?

  4. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hydravion
    Link
    Hey everyone, I'm getting close to releasing my Chrome browser extension for tabs and bookmarks management and I would like to share things about it on Tildes. Do you guys think that I should...

    Hey everyone, I'm getting close to releasing my Chrome browser extension for tabs and bookmarks management and I would like to share things about it on Tildes. Do you guys think that I should hijack one of these recurring threads or create a dedicated thread? Should I talk about my project in generic terms or can I get specific? Can I name it? Can I link to it? Can I ask for your feedback?

    I'm asking because even though it started as a personal project, it has since turned into a commercial "venture" where the goal would be to make a living off of it, so I'm not sure what the proper etiquette would be in that case. How would y'all prefer me to handle this? I think it'd be more fun to share the details, but I figured I should ask.

    Thanks!

    9 votes

  5. Comment on Which user feedback tools would you recommend? in ~tech

    hydravion
    Link
    I haven't done as much research as I would have wanted, because I am a bit of in a time crunch, but I have found Featurebase which seems really good, and has a very competitive pricing structure....

    I haven't done as much research as I would have wanted, because I am a bit of in a time crunch, but I have found Featurebase which seems really good, and has a very competitive pricing structure. I'll probably go with that, it seems great.

    1 vote

  6. Comment on Which user feedback tools would you recommend? in ~tech

    hydravion
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Hey thanks for the quick response, I'll check this out! The tangent is fine, it's actually exactly what I'm aiming to do. I agree with you on that. I find it sometimes frustrating when companies...

    Hey thanks for the quick response, I'll check this out! The tangent is fine, it's actually exactly what I'm aiming to do. I agree with you on that.

    I find it sometimes frustrating when companies do not listen to their users enough. I've once told a company that I would be more than happy to upgrade to a paid plan if only they would implement certain features in a product of theirs that I'm using every day, but that hasn't happened yet. Maybe my feature requests are not widely requested by the larger userbase, who knows.

    I think that it poses interesting questions in terms of "power", with regard to who gets to decide how a product evolves. At the end of the day, a product serves a userbase, so if users ask for a feature, why not implement it? Even if only a few of them ask for it, maybe it's very important to them, so much so that they literally spontaneously tell you that they want to pay. I find it frustrating when companies do not listen, and it may not even be in their best interest because a user may decide to launch their own product and then they have a new competitor. This isn't exactly the scenario I am currently in, but it's somewhat close.

    I went on a tangent of my own.

    Thank you again for the helpful response, and thanks for the kind words too

    Edit: have you ever heard of Canny by any chance? It seems good at first glance.

    1 vote

  7. Which user feedback tools would you recommend?

    ~tech Ask (recommendations)
    Hey everyone, I'm currently getting close to releasing a piece of software and I think that engaging users and collecting their feedback to inform the development of future features is valuable....

    Hey everyone,

    I'm currently getting close to releasing a piece of software and I think that engaging users and collecting their feedback to inform the development of future features is valuable. So, I am currently evaluating different specialized solutions to see which one is best.

    Does anybody have a preference for a particular tool, or otherwise know which tools are the best in terms of functionality etc.?

    Thanks in advance for your input!

    I'll go back to comparing options and I'll check back in here later on. Have a nice one.

    Edit: To clarify, I am looking for an end user-facing tool for a (currently closed-source) SaaS (I may eventually open-source it, but I'm a bit on the fence-I would have to weigh the pros and cons).

    8 votes

  8. Comment on ArcFox, an opensource project to make Firefox flow like Arc browser in ~tech

    hydravion
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I've been working on a tabs and bookmarks management extension for the past 1.5/2yrs so I'm glad to see that topic randomly pop up on Tildes! My extension also features a side bar (as a separate...

    I've been working on a tabs and bookmarks management extension for the past 1.5/2yrs so I'm glad to see that topic randomly pop up on Tildes! My extension also features a side bar (as a separate popup for now) with access to both tabs and bookmarks in a tree structure with folders (like for a file system, but with tabs and bookmarks instead of files). It also supports tags, filters (to filter by tag, node type, i.e. tabs and bookmarks), a dynamic informational box with additional info about the item you're hovering over, a button to quickly close all your tabs (handy if you need to close tabs because you got distracted, need to update your browser, or are simply in a hurry and need to leave), drag & drop, a search bar, a zoom-in feature to show only a given folder (to focus on the part of the tree you need right now and hide the rest), a breadcrumbs component, etc. It also features themes (you can create custom themes as well), and multiple languages.

    In the future, I'd like to add features such as split-screen (to work with multiple trees), drag & drop between trees, a mobile version, integrations with third-party software like Obsidian, Workflowy, Notion, etc., sessions to easily resume your work, undo-redo with a bin, keyboard shortcuts, and probably other things as well that I'm not thinking of right now.

    I should clarify that the extension displays both tabs and bookmarks together (or only one or the other depending on filters). Tabs and bookmarks are treated as very similar entities conceptually speaking. The extension lets you turn a tab into a bookmark and vice versa very easily. So when you're done browsing, you don't need to save your bookmarks, in fact, they are already saved! The extension wil add and remove bookmarks and folders to your profile as you browse, so they are kept in sync with the extension, so to speak.

    This helps you avoid ending up with multiple folders of bookmarks and lots of duplicates. Instead of saving your tabs in a bookmarks folder and resuming your work another day, and then saving your tabs again in a new folder, you just keep browsing using your current tabs/bookmarks. You don't end up with multiple snapshots of your browsing session, but your bookmarks are kept in sync with your browsing session as your browse, so you don't even need to save anything when you're done, it's already there in your bookmarks, it's been all along. So, no duplicate folders and no duplicate bookmarks. Just resume your work and stop when you're done for the day, it's all taken care of.

    I intend to launch it this month so I'll probably make a post about it on Tildes soon, but I still have a number of things to do before I'm ready. I'm in a bit of a hurry to be honest.

    It'll be available on Chrome first due to resource constraints, but I'd like to support other browsers, like Firefox, in the future as well.

    I hope you guys will like it if you ever check it out.

    By the way, if you have any feature requests, let me know and I'll see if I can add them to the roadmap. Feel free to describe to me your dream tabs & bookmarks management extension!

    I like to think that my product offers good value and is based on a good idea, but maybe I'm missing something that users really want, so do let me know.

    2 votes

  9. Comment on How to find purpose in life? in ~life

    hydravion
    (edited )
    Link
    Hey there, I've experienced some of what you've described in the past, namely feeling unfulfilled with life and endlessly wondering about its meaning. I cannot really say that I have found a...

    Hey there,

    I've experienced some of what you've described in the past, namely feeling unfulfilled with life and endlessly wondering about its meaning.

    I cannot really say that I have found a satisfying answer to the meaning of life, but when it comes to feeling fulfilled, the following has helped me, and maybe it could help you too:

    Find goals that you want to achieve and get busy realizing them.

    First, the part about being busy helped me with the thoughts about the meaning of life and the negative feelings they can cause.
    If you're too busy working towards your goals, you simply will not have time to think about these things and ask yourself such questions. You may still think about them from time to time, maybe late at night, but you may also remain busy until you go to bed and not think about them at all.

    Second, I've found the act of working towards your goals very satisfying, and depending on how much you value your goals, very fulfilling.
    Every day, you get busy getting closer to reaching your goals, and it gives you, or your life, some sort of direction. And at the end of every day, if you've worked hard, you feel like you've been productive and have gotten farther in life. You're not standing still pondering its meaning, but you're moving forward building it.
    This very act of working towards your goals and being productive is very satisfying to me. It's almost like a drug, it's very addictive. When I wake up in the morning, I look forward to a good day's work, and every evening when I go to bed, I can't wait to wake up the following day to start again.

    When I started doing this, I didn't necessarily feel good, I may still have been somewhat depressed or felt hollow. And the goals I was working towards were not particularly exciting. I simply had a long to-do list of things that I needed to fix in my life, so I started working on that and ticking them off one by one.

    But over time, not only did my life get better simply because I was fixing these things on my to-do list, but I eventually found goals other than fixing things on that list. I found goals that were exciting and inspiring to me. Goals that were fulfilling, that made me content and happy. Goals that made me feel alive.

    Nowadays, I consider myself a happy person, most of the time. I may still suffer some bouts of depression here and there, or ponder the meaning of life. But most of the time, I'm just too busy working towards these exciting goals that matter to me to ask myself such questions, so I just bypass that problem entirely. I may not have solved it, which would have been better, but failing that, I just walk around it and keep moving.

    As a final note, if you struggle to be productive and make the most of your time, and tend to waste your time a lot like I used to, I would suggest trying to use a time-tracking app. This has helped me tremendously. I used to waste my days watching videos on YouTube, but once I started time-tracking, I had to consciously set a timer for that. So after I had wasted four hours watching random videos when I thought to myself that I would stop after 30 minutes, I had that timer, that number, that really reminded me of how I was spending my days: four hours simply gone, wasted. By the end of the day, I had a report on my phone that showed me how unproductive I had been. I already knew that I wasn't being very productive, but seeing that report really put me in front of that reality.

    This makes you feel uneasy, maybe even guilty, so you try to do better the next day, and eventually, you'll be spending most of the day working (if that's what you want to do), and barely waste any time. Then, when you look at that report, you feel content and happy with yourself. You've spent the day like you wanted.

    Time-tracking helps you see if you've worked that day as many hours as you thought you did, and how much time you've actually lost to some distraction. Having actual numbers helps you reach your goals better. You know exactly how much time you've spent working, being distracted, or doing other things. Then you can learn to maximize some numbers and minimize others depending on your priorities (whether it's working, doing some hobby, exercising etc.).

    I do not know if this piece of advice will help you or not. But for me, it was life-changing, so hopefully it can benefit you too. Regardless, I hope that you find something that works for you, no matter what it is.

    I hope that you will have a tremendously happy and fulfilling life, and that you'll get there as soon as possible. Let us know how it goes, if you find something that works for you. Keep us posted. Wishing you all the best and take care!

    6 votes

  10. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hydravion
    Link Parent
    Hey, thanks for the feedback! I apologize for lacking clarity, what I meant to say is that I would offer a full, clean free trial, and only then would I cycle between the base and the full...

    Hey, thanks for the feedback! I apologize for lacking clarity, what I meant to say is that I would offer a full, clean free trial, and only then would I cycle between the base and the full versions. So, you get the full version for say a month, and then, instead of being downgraded to the base version until you pay to upgrade again, you are still downgraded to the base version, but you are then regularly upgraded to the full version for free, but for a limited amount of time (so you are downgraded again, and the cycle repeats).

    So, instead of just getting the base version after the free trial, you regularly get access to the full version. You get a repeating free trial in a sense. Would that clarified scenario be a deal-breaker for you?

    PS - Wouldn't you use some sort of P2P alternative to tildes and reddit by any chance?

    2 votes

  11. Comment on Fun programming challenge: figure out which sets of passports grant visa-free access to the whole world in ~comp

    hydravion
    Link Parent
    Thanks for linking your websites! They look like interesting tools.

    Thanks for linking your websites! They look like interesting tools.

  12. Comment on Fun programming challenge: figure out which sets of passports grant visa-free access to the whole world in ~comp

  13. Comment on Fun programming challenge: figure out which sets of passports grant visa-free access to the whole world in ~comp

    hydravion
    Link Parent
    I'm wondering how we could easily tell which countries each passport adds to the set of countries one will be able to visit visa-free to know which passports we can choose to forgo to reduce the...

    I'm wondering how we could easily tell which countries each passport adds to the set of countries one will be able to visit visa-free to know which passports we can choose to forgo to reduce the number of years we need to dedicate to acquire them.

    I suppose that if you wanted to minimize the number of years dedicated to acquiring passports while still being able to access most of the world visa-free, you would need to go with a combination like Canada + Australia + Singapore, but this is just me guessing, and I don't really know how many countries (and which ones) would still be left inaccessible visa-free. According to the data given by @xk3 this would probably take only around 9 years? This seems much more manageable, although it may not be the most optimal combination if you already own a powerful passport, like the French or German ones?

    1 vote

  14. Comment on Fun programming challenge: figure out which sets of passports grant visa-free access to the whole world in ~comp

    hydravion
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Hey krellor, that rocks! I like your unusual angle, I actually didn't even know about such methods! Is there a way to list all the optimal solutions that exist using this method? PS - Interesting...

    Hey krellor, that rocks! I like your unusual angle, I actually didn't even know about such methods!

    Is there a way to list all the optimal solutions that exist using this method?

    PS - Interesting to see that many powerful passports fail to grant you visa-free access to India, but the Maldives' passport does, and also that Singapore's passport grants you visa-free access to China.

  15. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hydravion
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    The Chrome team stated on the official website that they would deprecate MV2 on pre-stable versions of Chrome in June and then on the stable version starting in July, where they say it would take...

    The Chrome team stated on the official website that they would deprecate MV2 on pre-stable versions of Chrome in June and then on the stable version starting in July, where they say it would take at least a month (they wrote 1-X months somewhere) to roll out MV3 gradually.

    You're welcome! I hope you'll be successful, but bear in mind that many of these extensions will probably be updated in time to MV3 though. If you intend to launch paid extensions, would you mind talking about their monetization? Are you going to go the freemium route?

    3 votes

  16. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hydravion
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Thanks! Yes, I agree with you, which is why I intend to offer the base functionality for free under a freemium model, just like the abandoned extension with 100'000 users. I also intend to offer...

    Thanks! Yes, I agree with you, which is why I intend to offer the base functionality for free under a freemium model, just like the abandoned extension with 100'000 users. I also intend to offer the paid version for a very affordable price (so little that you wouldn't notice the difference at the end of the month), since it's "just an extension" and not a revolutionary product like ChatGPT. I mean, even ChatGPT Plus is cheaper than Netflix's most expensive plan, so I better not ask too high of a price.

    Striking just the right balance between offering features for free and enticing users to upgrade with some features put behind a paywall is going to be tricky...

    I was thinking about some unusual variations on the typical business models, what do you guys think about them?

    I was thinking to offer some mix between:

    • a free trial (start with that)
    • then switch to a freemium type of model where only the base version can be accessed for free
    • while users are on the free version, I'd regularly give them access to the full version to give them a taste of the paid features, but then I'd also take these paid features away regularly to encourage them to upgrade (so the users would maybe have access to the base version for 3 weeks, then the full for 1 week, then again the base for 3 weeks, then the full for 1 week, etc.). This is to keep the benefits of the paid features fresh in their minds and regularly reignite interest in these features, while still keeping them regularly behind a paywall to encourage them to upgrade.
    • maybe go even more extreme and do the opposite: offer the full version for 3 weeks, and then downgrade to the base version for 1 week, and repeat the cycle. This way, users would have access to the full version most of the time and fully make use of it during that time, but they would then regularly experience the inconvenience of losing access to some features for a short while, before gaining access to them again. I think that people would upgrade just to get rid of these regular and inconvenient downgrades. However, I'm afraid that this model (even though it may be the most beneficial to non-paying users since it gives them the most days of free access to paid features) would still face backlash from users and generally not be very well received. What do you guys think?

    In any case I think I should probably try different models with different cohort of users and see which one fares better, then switch everyone to that same model.

    Edit - As for the beta test (it just occurred to me that I forgot to answer that, my bad...), I need to make a few more important changes, fix some bugs breaking important functionality and to implement or integrate some sort of free trial mechanism, but then I would probably be ready to release a beta version :)

    2 votes

  17. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hydravion
    (edited )
    Link
    For the past 1-2 years, I've been working on and off on a Chrome browser extension to help me manage my tabs and bookmarks. According to the time-tracking app I use, I've spent around 1228 hours...

    For the past 1-2 years, I've been working on and off on a Chrome browser extension to help me manage my tabs and bookmarks. According to the time-tracking app I use, I've spent around 1228 hours of dedicated, focused work (excluding breaks) on this project. This includes starting with reading a book on JavaScript because I was not familiar enough with it.

    At first, I was just doing this for myself because I could not find a tabs & bookmarks management extension that answered my needs, so I thought that I would just reuse an existing open source project and modify it free-style to just have a quick and dirty tool to get the job done. But I soon realized that that was not going to work, and that I needed to actually learn the programming language they used in the project to get this done. I ended up starting a new project from scratch.

    For quite a while, as I said, I was just doing this for myself, but one day it clicked in my mind that what I was building could actually be useful to other people. There were plenty of such browser extensions available, and some of them had more than 100'000 users even though one of them seemed to be abandoned by its developer. Being a part-time minimum wage worker with quite a low income for where I live, I saw in this an opportunity to start a business and started dreaming that it could become successful. I told myself, there is definitely a need for such a product, hundreds of thousands of people are already using similar products, even though some of them are literally abandoned, why not try to launch your own? Who knows, if you end up with a large, worldwide userbase, and even if only a small fraction of them became paying customers, you would still earn much more than you are currently earning with your part-time minimum-wage job.

    I thought, the infrastructure is already there, the internet is already there, payment service providers are already there, people all have computers, it's a digital product, you need no warehouse, you need no large upfront investment, people have a real need for such a product, what are you waiting for? This felt like an awesome opportunity that I would not have had had I lived only a few decades ago.

    So this became the focus of my life. I would go to my minimum-wage job during the day, and work on my program during the evening. Then, during the evening and the night. And then, during the evening, the night, and the morning. I would still try get some sleep here and there, enough to remain productive, although sometimes I would get so deep into it that I would barely get a few hours of sleep before going back to my day job.

    I hope to be able to ship the first version of this program before June, or maybe July. I've had to strip away a lot of features and requirements to be able to finish on time, and even then, I am not sure that I will be able to make it. Why June? Because that's around the time where the Chrome team will start to roll out Manifest V3, the latest version of the extensions platform. And this is a breaking change, meaning that extensions still using Manifest V2 that are not updated to MV3 will stop working around that time.

    Remember these abandoned extensions with dozens if not hundreds of thousands of users? These users will be looking for an alternative, and that's why I'm in a hurry to ship my product before then so that I'll be able to gain these users when they start looking elsewhere.

    I think I'll probably make a dedicated post about my product when I release the beta version. I would love to get you guys' opinion on it and get some feedback, and maybe fix bugs that I haven't noticed yet.

    To talk about the product itself:

    It aims to give users the tools to organize their tabs and bookmarks when they are conducting long research sessions on their computer.

    It also aims to make the user's computer faster by reducing the internet browser's memory consumption. Indeed, having many open tabs can consume a lot of RAM, and when the computer has to fall back to using the hard drive, performance takes a hit, as the hard drive is much slower than the RAM.

    My tab manager aims to offer many features that are not found everywhere else.

    A major advantage of my program is that it helps users avoid ending up with many similar bookmarks folders. When saving tabs in a bookmarks folder, and resuming your research the next day, one opens some bookmarks of the first folder and again saves tabs as bookmarks in a second folder. This results in having two folders, with some bookmarks in the first, others in the second, and some in both. After a few days, one has many folders with many duplicated bookmarks across several folders, and it becomes very disorganized.

    I'd say that this program would be useful to master, PhD students and academics in general, software engineers, journalists, etc., basically anyone who does a lot of research on the internet and ends up with dozens, if not hundreds of tabs open at any one time.

    Here is a list of the main features (some are still under development and others probably won't be implemented before some time):

    • Display of tabs/bookmarks/folders (the "entities") in a tree-like hierarchical structure (like with folders and files in your file system, but with tabs/bookmarks instead of files)
    • Ability to close a tab without removing it from the tree (to be able to reopen it later)
    • Ability to "zoom in" on a part of the tree (to focus on and work with that part only)
    • Robust local data backup in case of browser crash
    • Automatic data backup to an online storage space
    • Real-time automatic synchronization of entities in the tree with Google Chrome's bookmarks
    • Use of folders and tags to organize bookmarks
    • Annotations (for taking notes)
    • Undo-redo functionality
    • Trash feature
    • Filters (by type (tabs, bookmarks), tag, date, URL, ...) and sorting (alphabetical, chronological, ...)
    • Search bar
    • Split screen with multiple tree instances to work with different parts of the tree at the same time
    • Drag-and-drop, in a tree or between multiple trees (in split screen mode)
    • Floating and dynamic informative box (displays additional information (like the full title, URL, tags, a screenshot of the web page) without taking up space in the user interface when the box is not displayed)
    • Collaborative mode (with other users, interesting for teams)
    • Different display modes: sidebar, overlay, and separate window (popup)
    • Sessions (to easily resume work where one left off)
    • Mobile version
    • Synchronization across multiple devices
    • Data import and export
    • Keyboard shortcuts
    • Context menu (right-click)
    • Integrations with third-party software (e.g., WorkFlowy/Obsidian for note-taking, etc.)
    • Light or dark mode
    • Translations in several languages for a global audience
    • Aesthetic design
    • Tutorial for new users

    I am not done yet, but I hope to show you guys a beta version soon, and hopefully, version 1.0 before June.

    Thanks for reading, and take care folks!

    13 votes

  18. Comment on Fun programming challenge: figure out which sets of passports grant visa-free access to the whole world in ~comp

    hydravion
    Link Parent
    Well you can include it in your solution if you want, even though most people would not be able to get a hold of one.

    Well you can include it in your solution if you want, even though most people would not be able to get a hold of one.

    7 votes

  19. Comment on Fun programming challenge: figure out which sets of passports grant visa-free access to the whole world in ~comp

    hydravion
    Link Parent
    Nice! A quick Google search also yielded this and this. Thanks again!

    Nice! A quick Google search also yielded this and this. Thanks again!

    4 votes

  20. Comment on Fun programming challenge: figure out which sets of passports grant visa-free access to the whole world in ~comp

    hydravion
    Link Parent
    Even the most powerful passports won't let you travel in the whole world visa-free unfortunately.

    Even the most powerful passports won't let you travel in the whole world visa-free unfortunately.

    4 votes