Cerveau public release - Neuron

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Sridhar Ratnakumar

https://www.cerveau.app/ is pretty much ready to be opened to the public. But before I announce it everywhere, would anybody like to 'test drive' it and let me know some things that absolute must be changed before wider announcement?

Sridhar Ratnakumar

Alright, I've opened up the beta to everyone: http://www.cerveau.app/

Just announcing it to selected places for now. A wider announcement will be made in a day or two, along with a blog post re: technology.

Alex Chapman

Minor suggestion: redirect cerveau.app to www.cerveau.app.

Alex Chapman

So another minor point of feedback: I signed up, connected it to my Github, then scratched my head for a moment until I saw the '2. Install Cerveau ...' link, so I did that, then went back and nothing seemed to have happened. Eventually I saw that the page had changed, there was now a 'Your repositories with Cerveau installed' section, and no problem, I've found it. So there's no technical problem here, everything works. It just wasn't bleedingly obvious what I should be doing. I would suggest more hand-holding: Maybe something like three big button-links across the top of the 'Welcome to Cerveau' page: "Create your Neuron", "Install Cerveau", "Visit your Cerveau". Grey out the ones that won't work yet, give a bright colour to the next step, and a great big tick on the ones that are done.

Sridhar Ratnakumar

@Alex Chapman Awesome, thanks! That's useful feedback. Once you click one of the repositories under the repository list, it would take you to z-index view -- any thoughts on that UI there?

Alex Chapman

Now that it's installed, my user experience is still a little jerky: I don't remember my full Cerveau URL (and it's long), so while I'm still too lazy to bookmark it I go to www.cerveau.app to get there, but then I have to wait for it to redirect me to 'Welcome to Cerveau', and then I have to click on the link to my repo.

Sridhar Ratnakumar

I should shortern to the URL, to something like https://www.cerveau.app/@/srid/notes/foo

Sridhar Ratnakumar

And put the dashboard in its own route, like /dashboard so there is not that janky redirect

Alex Chapman

On the z-index... it seems odd at first glance that the repository revision is featured at the top like that. It's good that there's mouse-over text for it, but maybe say why it's important? Or link to something that does?

Alex Chapman

Maybe the tree view could have 'Add zettel' links?

Sridhar Ratnakumar

You mean in addition to the "+" button in the top bar?

Alex Chapman

Yeah, just a thought...

Sridhar Ratnakumar

btw, roadmap is here: https://github.com/srid/cerveau-issues/issues

link autocomplete is super important i think

Bugs, suggestions or free discussions about Cerveau - srid/cerveau-issues
Alex Chapman

When I 'Add a new zettel', the choice on whether to have a Custom Zettel ID is disconcerting... what's the significance of this? Should it be the post title? Can I see what the random one would be?

Sridhar Ratnakumar

Hmm, yea, the UX there can be improved. Zetel graph is available in frontend, so we can generate and show the random ID in the dialog box.

Sridhar Ratnakumar

If using custom ID, that would be something the user chooses - and not always the post title, eg: https://github.com/srid/alien-psychology

3rd Rock From The Sun episodes tagged with psychological concepts - srid/alien-psychology
Alex Chapman

That would be good. Default to the random ID but let me edit it if I want?

Alex Chapman

So let the user know what their choices for custom ID are, in the interface, e.g. by linking to a discussion of this from the 'Add a new zettel' page.

Alex Chapman

I'm assuming very naive users -- if you're expecting your users to already be expert Neuron users then no problem.

Sridhar Ratnakumar

/me records this convo at https://github.com/srid/cerveau-issues/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3Apublic-beta

Bugs, suggestions or free discussions about Cerveau - srid/cerveau-issues
Alex Chapman

When editing (again as a naive user), I expected Ctrl+S to save the note, but it tries to save the html page. I think there must be a js API to override this?

Sridhar Ratnakumar

Right, keyboard shortcuts -- last time I tried doing this there were some issues on the reflex side. I also want to do ctrl+o for quick open of zettel

Alex Chapman

Oh, this is Reflex? NIce.

Alex Chapman

Oh, and don't let me leave the page with unsaved changes! I made a change, then clicked the 'Back arrow' (which I now see says "Cancel editing"), and lost my changes.

Sridhar Ratnakumar

i plan to write a blog post describing the tech stack behind cerveau, along with the official announcement of public beta

Alex Chapman

I look forward to that :)

Sridhar Ratnakumar

it compiles neuron source code (the library) to javascript

Alex Chapman

Oh yeah, I see that, 17MB js file :)

Sridhar Ratnakumar

if you are on mobile, you can use 'add to home screen' to make it an app.

Alex Chapman

Looks like a bug: In Firefox 79.0 on NixOS, from the edit-zettel page, click 'Lookup ID', none of the pages in the search list are clickable at all. The dialog does nothing except list pages I can't get to.
image.png

Sridhar Ratnakumar

That's expected. "Lookup ID" exists as a workaround until proper link autocomplete is implemented. It exists so you can copy-paste the ID manually into the textbox, without leaving the editor (or having to open another tab/window)

Sridhar Ratnakumar

I should probably put what I just said in the textbox

Alex Chapman

And link to the syntax from the edit page?

Sridhar Ratnakumar

Deployed new verison with new short URLs

Joel McCracken

Is this eventually going to be open source?

Sridhar Ratnakumar

If I get enough sponsors, yes. :nerd:

Sridhar Ratnakumar

Anybody want to review the draft blog post for Cerveau (to be announced tomorrow)?

Alex Chapman

Looks pretty good after a quick read-through. Typo at the end though: sponsership

Sridhar Ratnakumar

posted in HN https://news.ycombinator.com/newest (upvote will count only from this page or the main page)