The first donate a year later. FAQ Net – Notebook, Notes Program (Free)
Information that is stored as files on our computers only makes sense when it is organized into sections (folders) and file names.
But even the most ordered file system needs a quick search across all documents, and I want the search to be not only by the file name and creation date, but also by the content inside the files and several words at once, regardless of their order. When buying a new computer, everything starts with a blank disk and you think that I will no longer create temporary files, but this garbage still accumulates over time if we do not use a note-taking application. I have used different note-taking applications, I have always lacked the simplicity and convenience in finding information.
Requirements I have for a note-taking app
Portable application. The program should not be installed on a computer, everything should work from a USB flash drive without installing additional components
Work under all Windows versions starting from XP and higher
All documents (notes) must be stored in one database file with a reliable portable (Embedded) version of the DBMS
Database backup / restore capability
Fast and convenient search through the content of all documents
Creating tables and images
Text formatting
Follow links to documents inside the application
Ideally, these are Word and Excel, which would work with several files at once, store them in a database and search for a file by content. Unfortunately, there are no such features in Microsoft Office.
It was decided to write a custom note-taking application that would satisfy all these requirements.
Development History FAQ Net
To begin with, I chose a component that can format text. I chose between RTF and HTML formats. Comparing the sizes of files with the same content, the size of the HTML file was 2 times larger than the RTF file, so I chose RTF.
The FAQ Net application uses the standard RichTextBox component, but the component out of the box has a problem with displaying the table, it turned out to be easy to fix. Then I developed an interface based on the CHM format (help file or program manual).
As a result, the interface consists of two parts: on the left there are tabs for quickly searching for documents, on the right, a list of documents or the contents of a document is displayed.
Several years later, I decided to talk about FAQ Net on the Internet. He created a group in VK, shot a video clip and told his friends about it. I thought that the number of users would grow by itself, but it doesn’t work that way. After posting my first article on Habré, I don’t know why, but it was in the top for a week. During this time, the application has been downloaded more than 500 times. It was a great success for me. Positive feedback and the first users wrote me suggestions for improving the FAQ Net, and I, on joyful grounds, actively improved my application.
In order to increase the interest of users, I decided first of all to make a bright interface in which the user himself would customize the color scheme (theme).
After the next update, I wrote another article on Habr. Unfortunately, this article received a lot of criticism.
At this point, I did not understand why there are so many negative reviews. Perhaps there is a problem with the matched colors in the screenshots, which I whipped up.
Despite this sad experience, thanks to my benevolent users of the application, I decided on another update that could make the FAQ Net application unique.
The next article, “Pop-up tips in the FAQ.Net note program, or navigating RTF documents without changing the documents” was printed with high hopes that there would be more reads than my first article. Before publishing, I decided to check the review and sent the text of the article to the user of the FAQ Net application, who was also sure that this article would deserve another interest from readers. This article, unfortunately, was read by the least number of people in comparison with the previous articles. Perhaps the problem is in the weak title of the article (in my opinion, it is the most useful and unique).
After releasing several more versions, I published an article “FAQ.Net – a free note-taking program for Windows with an updated design”, but here, too, there was another criticism.
Conclusion
One year later (all this time, the FAQ Net has not been updated), I received the first donate from a new user of the FAQ Net application. His message: “Thank you for your work! So well the application fell on my idea of how it should be.”
Thanks to this feedback, I released another update to the FAQ Net and wrote this article.
I hope that every programmer will find such an application that will be in demand, even in a small number of users.
I have two such applications that I share for free, for your kind word:
FAQ Net (note taking app) and ImportExportDataSql (for MSSQL developers and users)
All the best, good luck and success!
