Notesaic - A Collaborative Note Builder

Technical Details

Speed/Response Issues

At the moment, Notesaic is hosted on through my web host so the response time is directly related to the load that my web server can handle. At the moment the server can only handle 25 simulatenous requests. Due to the asynchronous nature of Notesaic overloading the server, in theory, should be rare. I was thinking of posting a server load meter but that would take away another call from the server. Generally not good. Some other ideas are to put a "loader" graphic but that might be too distracting. I've noticed that more and more the web host seems to be experiencing lots of failures :( two in the past week (Nov 7-Nov. 11).

ActiveX and AJAX

I am happy to report that Notesaic DOES NOT USE ActiveX. Although it uses a ton of Javascript for its AJAX-like behaviour. Is it AJAX? well, sort of; to get around using Ajax-like protocols for IE but the application does not explicitly manipulate XML to get updates and refreshes.The entire data is asynchronous meaning a user could perform multiple tasks and the returned data would be processed by the defined callback. In order to do this I created and modified several objects and work with some iframes to handle the calls.

Compatibility with MSN Messenger on Non-Windows OS

At the moment this isn't possible due to the use of the IE-only ContentEditable attribute. This is what allows you to change stuff directly without creating a new textarea. It also enables you to 'save workspace' by not using up extra room for editing. ContentEditable also keeps inline with the whole AJAX paradigm for keeping the focus.

Links target the activity window-What the Heck?

For this version, if you copy and paste an HTML link text from some rich-content and then click on the link the default target will result in changing your activity page and a 'close' session event. I haven't quite figured out how to solve this yet... I have a few ideas :P

Future Versions?

Haha well I have quite a few ideas for where Notesaic could go... (see list below). It's very close to being adaptable for infinite* users working on a single note. (*Infinite=limited by the number of connections my poor web server can handle :-P). This is dependent upon what Microsoft wants to do with this.

Rich Text Control to allow for more control on formatting such bold,
Saving/Opening document through multiple chat sessions. (SEE PRIVACY NOTICE)
Clipboard Copying feature to allow for quick copy and paste into any other application
Save customized CSS stylesheets.
Customized Shared CSS Styling/control
allows you to change the style of the document on the fly.
Timestamping notes
Different types of documents (actual documents, S5 documents)
Edit text regions so two people can work on a section instead of two seprate sections
Have more than two (infinite?) parties working on document
Ability to embed graphics and pictures... can kind of do this already.

I think this is neat! Can I Help?

Thank you! :-D I'm glad you liked it. If you want to, you could help me make it more popular by voting for it on the contest's website[worldsbestapp.com] and telling people to visit www.worldsbestapp.com. Check out some of the other applications on there as well :-)

Alternatively if none of that is your style you can always email me feedback at: dan at danieltse.com