Twere is a journalling webapp for developers. It's intended to be a natural everyday work tool which allows you to keep track of the things you're doing, a place to save code snippets and useful links, and to help you keep track of the things you want to get done.
You can try it out at https://twere.io
The more you use Twere, it will become a rich resource you can easily search, to retrieve the useful things which your brain has evicted from it's RAM, and to give you insights and hints about the work you do.
Twere is a vanilla JavaScript applicaiton which runs exclusively in the browser. Data stays with you, on your device, works offline and doesn't require any kind of login (unless you want the option to lock your data).
At the moment Twere is a very early proof of concept and is in a pre-alpha state — a straw man implementation. The plan is to have an alpha release ready for testing as quickly as possible, closely followed by a more formal beta release. Watch this >< space!
Twere is being developed as an open-source progressive web application (PWA). All of your data is stored locally, and is intended to be a ridiculously simple tool which you are using all day, every day.
The idea was inspired in part by the idea of a did.txt file, which was created and implemented by Patrick. It also emerged from a frustration with traditional task trackers and GTD applications. Almost every modern application will focus on the things you are going to get done. The onus is always on forward momentum, completing tasks and then discarding then.
But almost all of the things we do, and the things we learn — including the mistakes we make — have value. We should be able to refer back to a clever command snippet, or a useful link about something or other, or a headache-inducing gotcha — because they are useful things we have experienced or learned from. And it's useful to be able to put a pin in something during a busy period, or to be reminded of something useful to return to and absorb when we have more head space available.
Notebooks, note apps, reading lists, task managers, bookmarks, calendars, are all really useful tools. Twere aims to augment the best of these traditional tools, and then sprinkle in the ability to easily grab things you've stowed, or forgotten about, and even to help you work healthier through break reminders, or Pomodoro.
Design-wise, iA Writer is also an ispiration: the clean, distraction-free interface, with a focus on beautriful typographic design is something which works well in a development toolset. Fira Code and it's typographic ligatures also opened up the idea of a text-only application.
It's early days for the project, and there are plenty of challenges ahead. But the hope is that Twere can become a tool which allows us, as developers, to be nourished by the things we find, learn and do — and to have an opportunity to reflect on the great things we did as much as the great things we are going to do.
Twere is being developed with some important guiding principles.
Twere is an application which runs exclusively in your browser, and data is stored on your computer. The server is only contacted when the application assets need to be updated. There are no cookies, there is no need to authenicate. Your data is kept where it belongs: with you. You can even run it offline.
KISS is a valuable design principle. The application is being written using vanilla JavaScript modules and web components, with zero deployment dependencies. It's intended to be easy to understand and maintain, by aspiring to Unix philosophy and the DRY principle. No frameworks, no cruft; low bandwidth, fast runtime.
This application aims to take advantage of exciting, modern web APIs, and will require a modern, mainstream browser. Considering the target user is the mighty software developer, in most cases, that should be a great fit.
But what about an aspirational startup in a developing country; a disabled person doing great things in their profession, using assistive tools; somebody who has no desire to conform to being "upwardly mobile", but is nonetheless impassioned to use technology to inspire change?
Twere is designed to be a modern web app. But there is also an aspiration to make it accessible and progressive. A difficult, but important task which will be discussed more soon.
Twere is being designed to stay out of your way; but be close to hand when you need it. Notification noise is a huge problem nowadays: apps resort to pestering and nagging us in a faux-friendly manner, and we all only have so much attention. The UI for Twere will be obsessively simple; it is command-led and will only prompt you when absolutely necessary, or on your terms. It is being designed to infer the context of your interactions, and where your attention is focused.
The following is a list of some of the development tools being used:
- https://yarnpkg.com/
- https://standardjs.com/
- https://github.com/zeit/serve
- https://karma-runner.github.io/3.0/index.html
- https://pptr.dev/
To fire up a development server:
$ yarn serve
To run tests:
$ yarn test
Testing is currently focused on Firefox, Chrome and Safari desktop browsers. Internet Explorer, Edge and mobile will be added soon, with the help of the lovely guys at Sauce Labs.
Cross-browser Testing Platform and Open Source ❤️ provided by Sauce Labs