A simple text scratchpad that saves your thoughts.
Ponder is available on my website at https://ponder.joeldare.com/app or you can download it and host it yourself. To create your own version do the following.
- Clone the repo
- Open
app/index.htmlin your favorite browser
Ponder is a static web app. It stores it's data in local storage in the web browser. It can be hosted anywhere static sites can be hosted or it can be opened directly from your disk.
Notes in Ponder are temporary and private. Your notes are never transmitted out of your browser.
The down-side of this approach is that your notes only exist in the browser where you created them. For example, if you create notes on desktop and then open Ponder on your phone, you'll have a different set of notes on each device.
The notes are NOT backed up over the internet. You can lose notes if your browsers cache is cleared. This makes it a good solution for a temporary and private scratch pad.
Although private, your notes are not encrypted or secured. There is no username or password mechanism. You should not use Ponder from a public computer as a later user could see your notes.
I use Ponder as a quick scratch pad in my browser. As a web developer, I spend most of my day in the browser and Ponder is a quick and easy note tool for me.
I use it to jot down quick notes while I'm in meetings. If parts of those notes turn out to be important, I can copy/paste the notes to a more permanent document, into emails or messages, etc.
I use it to write longer comments that I'm going to send in chat apps like Slack. This prevents me from showing up as "Joel is typing" as I compose a longer message or response and it prevents me from accidentally sending something that I wasn't finished writing.
I use it to write letters that I don't intend to keep electronic copies of. When you print ponder it hides the navigation, resulting in an old-school typewriter looking printed document.
Ponder is free and distributed as open source under the MIT license.