Simplicity is the key
Today I went from v0.27 to v0.36.
From morning to afternoon it was one small improvement after another, mostly from things that bugged me while reading. The cursor turns into a pen over the text. Notes fold themselves into small sticky notes once you're done writing, so they don't block the page. Translation now works in 19 languages. You can copy selected text with one click. A single click in the table of contents bookmarks a chapter. And one thing had been bugging me for days: with translation on, the translated text would jump to the next page before I'd finished reading. Now the translation flows continuously, one page after another.
In the evening I made a bigger decision. The tool did plenty by now, but the toolbar had become bloated. I've always believed simplicity is the key, so I redesigned it in three steps:
- A minimal mode and a pro mode. Books open in minimal mode with only the essential buttons. People reading research papers can switch to pro mode with one click.
- One clean, Apple-like look across the whole app, with dark mode.
- A new home screen, bookshelf and notebook.
At night I started building this website. It went live the same night, and I set it up so that AI drafts a log entry every day.
What I figured out today: adding a feature now costs almost nothing. The real work is deciding what not to add.
Versions today: v0.27 pen cursor, sticky notes · v0.28 no pen when auto-highlight is off · v0.29 translate into other languages · v0.30 Copy button, one-click chapter bookmarks · v0.31 continuous translation · v0.32 bookshelf refreshes itself · v0.33 highlight the original inside the translation panel · v0.34 minimal / pro mode · v0.35 unified visual design · v0.36 new home screen, bookshelf, notebook