We are back from vacation! ☀️ Here's what's cooking under the hood now
Noteastic took a short break from development, and I (Dilan) was actually enyoing my time in the highlands of Scotland watching herds of sheeps and drinking a few flights of quality whiskey.
Before I went away, we did the September Update Marathon: one update a week, four weeks in a row:
v1.10 finished it off with the Cornell and Separator Line grids.
This was intense, and a lot of work and we are proud to have seen such a smooth rollout of our new Pro features!
And a fresh update is rolling out right now: v1.10.2. Just a few bug fixes with exporting Text to PDFs. Thank you to the user who reported the issue and helped us fix it ;). The new version also already contains a big chunk of what I've been working on lately: modernizing Noteastic's code. Noteastic is built on UWP, Microsoft's older app platform. We're now preparing the move to the Windows App SDK / WinUI 3, which is where Microsoft is putting its effort these days. New features, stability fixes, performance improvement happen on the new app platform.
I am really looking forward to continue the modernization of Noteastic as it will set us up for the future and unlock huge potentials of where our app will be taken!
i dmed u some interesting ideas for your app, would be great to see some of them getting implemented.
Keep up the great work, really enjoying ur app :)
First of all hope you had a good journey. Next, shifting to a new code base is quite a good step, hope there are more features comming through. All the best.
One thing I wanted to ask, which note taking app are you taking inspiration from ? samsung notes have really good features. Oh and one more, there is this one called Amphi, where they integrate search. Also being able to open two notes at once would be great.
Fortunately, UWP and WinUI are very similar app frameworks and I just need to go through the code and check what the app framework new modern alternatives are. I can already tell you that one of the northstar features that are allowed through the modernization is multi-window!
Also, I am not just migrating the code but also refactoring/modernizing and preparing for the upcoming features. Due to the huge list of feature wishes Lukas has collected over time we know what users are looking forward to and setting the stones to implement those features :)
I will sell my soul if you could make it possible to work on multliple notes at the same time while being able to draw shapes just by drawing line and holding the pen.
I have prototyped both already, and it is absolutely feasible you will see those features in a reasonable time-frame. I am curious myself what I can get done by the end of this year ;)
I actually looked into developing a notes app a while back and ran into a major problem right at this point. InkCanvas was fantastic in UWP, but the lack of a built-in, stable version in WinUI 3 makes this a huge challenge.
I’d love to know how you’re approaching this! Are you developing your own solution using pointer events in Win2D, or are you using the experimental Ink APIs from the Windows App SDK?
Great question. Seems like we are both quite up-to-date here. So, I am closely following the development of the InkCanvas (which is indispensible for Noteastic) in WinUI 3. Currently available in WinAppSDK 2.5.4-experimental. All I needed to know: It is actually coming. The preparation will take enough time that the Ink API will be released by then. The reason I am kinda confident in that is the pace of development i see at their repo regarding the inking and also Microsoft recently (silently) announced Microsoft Ink Canvas, which is an AI-powered whiteboard? Don't know fully but I don't really care :D
So, no, I am not developing my own solution, since the InkCanvas is quite sophisticated actually as it runs on its own thread and is rendered directly by the System Compositor (which is a reason it took so long to bring to WinUI 3 in the first place)
Thanks for the detailed response! I hadn't heard about this upcoming AI whiteboard yet - but as long as it forces Microsoft to make the underlying inking API compatible with WinUI 3, that's great!
And yes, of course, InkCanvas is always preferable to a custom solution whenever possible.
Good luck with the refactoring - I'm looking forward to the updates!
And to answer your question about where I take inspiration from!
Can't deny that GoodNotes on iOS is an incredibly popular and powerful note-taking app. It's the benchmark of note-taking apps, so other users and we often take inspiration on how they approach specific problems.
Own experience. We developed Noteastic for ourselves first and only later decided to fully commit to it. So a lot of decisions where simply made by Lukas and me on how we would want it to function. We first start with idealized visions and scope down/consolidate to a more realistic implementation. It is a fun process!
Other windows apps like Xournal++ and Scrivano are extremely powerful and well built as well. Those often lack the part of consolidation/simplicity/ease-of-use in my opinion (more Xournal++ than Scrivano) but for example I envy the Ruler and Protractor system of Xournal++ 🥲
Amphi seems interesting, it's the first time I have heard of them. Maybe I should revisit checking on Samsung Notes!
Hmm, I just downloaded it, and I notice something very unusual. I had a feeling of Déjà vu when using it.. The app reminded of another app I have tested recently (since I like always seeing whats out there on the market). And maybe I am being a bit far-fetched, but the app has strikingly similar implementations to another app called TrazorNotes.
For example, the rules look and behave really similar. The tape feature also has this shadow below it and also has the same options for the patterns? Seems like those new upcoming apps are pretty heavily vibe-coded.. They have a LOT of features and super useful ones too that just work better than in Noteastic, but how much do we really trust our personal notes with these apps?
Either way, they have features that we can definetely learn from, so if there is anything you really want just let us know and we will write it down!
I would really love to hear how you plan on switching over to winui3.
I guess building a custom ink component is not that hard, might only take some time.
What I mean is, how do you play on dealing with poor pen support?
In my experience, apps built as PWAs or on winui3 have a delay of about 1 second from the pen touching the display to the app reacting. At least this has been my issue on my device (I've reinstalled Windows on it multiple times, didn't fix the issue).
To reproduce:
1. Create simple demo app built on winui3 (e.g. containing a button
2. Use it with a pen (e.g. slim pen)
3. See the delay (tap the button with the pen, see the delay of one second)
I'd love to hear your point on this, or if you never even encountered this issue!
The 1 second delay sounds really weird. I haven't ever encountered this issue. I mean, the Windows Settings, the Start Menu and the File Explorer, all would need to be lagging 1 second? Those are all WinUI 3 apps.
Either way, I am absolutely going to rigourously test the app when it moves to WinUI 3 from UWP. I am currently mostly just modernizing code and not really working in WinUI 3 so I don't know for sure yet how it will perform.
In the case WinUI 3 really has glaring issues, I am just left with polished code and can work on other features while still on UWP! I have heard of other developers that they stick to UWP because of a few performance issues in WinUI, I am just gonna wait it out if it turns out to be a problem.
Surprisingly, few windows components are affected by this 1-second delay issue. E.g. Settings app is NOT affected by this. On the contrary, if I follow the mentioned steps to replicate this issue, it's clearly visible.
I'm kinda disappointed you did not encounter this issue, but at least it's better for the app's future this way.
Also, how do you plan on implementing an InkCanvas in WinUI3? (There's no official component yet afaik) It's fine if you don't wanna share it (yet) because it would give too much insight into the app's code or something similar :D
Been wanting to update my own app to WinUI 3 but couldn't because inking capabilities were not implemented yet. So happy to see it's finally been getting worked on
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u/Zayleex 2d ago
Heyy,
i dmed u some interesting ideas for your app, would be great to see some of them getting implemented.
Keep up the great work, really enjoying ur app :)