[HN Gopher] Notion Timeline View
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Notion Timeline View
Author : AlphaWeaver
Score : 155 points
Date : 2020-11-11 19:15 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.notion.so)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.notion.so)
| lordleft wrote:
| Notion is a great tool and I recommend it as a solid "all-around"
| personal-wiki / notetaking tool.
|
| That being said, the fact that it's electron-based means it's not
| always as snappy as I'd like it to be when I want to quickly
| capture a thought -- sometimes the "page" has to reload, even
| when I'm using the desktop app. I also notice that like slack, it
| suffers from the same in-line text formatting woes, which can be
| infuriating if you're trying to escape out of a code block or
| something.
|
| Still, it's a good tool, and this is a neat feature I'm excited
| to try.
| aidos wrote:
| I find the same. For my workflows the performance gets in the
| way. I saw another similar tool the other day by the same guys
| that did Linear (which I _love_ ) that looked awesome. If we
| weren't deeply embedded with Notion now I'd give it a try.
|
| https://www.getoutline.com/
| nsriv wrote:
| Was curious about Linear, assuming you meant
| https://linear.app/ ?
| aidos wrote:
| Indeed. We switched to it a few months back and I couldn't
| be happier. The interface is lovely, especially for a power
| user. Performance is killer. We actually had a call with
| them about their architecture and borrowed some ideas for
| our own product.
| baron816 wrote:
| Always a complaint about Electron on here. Frankly, Notion and
| it's ilk would not be nearly has great or feature rich without
| Electron. It perhaps wouldn't even exist. Trust, it being an
| Electron app is a good thing for you, despite its limitations.
| testnew2 wrote:
| You're absolutely right. If the performance boost afforded by
| native apps was more important than the feature set provided
| native would be winning over electron. But it's not. If you
| think I'm wrong you should be excited because there is a
| massive market opportunity for you.
| jeromenerf wrote:
| > You're absolutely right ... If you think I'm wrong ...
|
| Is there really a right and wrong yet? There are so many
| note taking and project management apps, it's unclear there
| is yet a dominating leader in usage or tech design.
|
| Moreover, native seems to be losing some traction on the
| desktop, but on mobile?
| tomjen3 wrote:
| You don't get a productivity boost with electron over
| something like XAML. What you get is the ability to reuse
| your web code in an app, access a few more APIs and call it
| "native".
|
| Most apps today are so bloody slow they are unworkable.
| Remember your program absolutely positively have to respond
| in under 100 milliseconds or won't be perceived as instant
| and will thus be a hindrance to thought, rather than a
| benefit to it.
| guessmyname wrote:
| > _Frankly, Notion and it's ilk would not be nearly has great
| or feature rich without Electron. It perhaps wouldn't even
| exist. Trust, it being an Electron app is a good thing for
| you, despite its limitations._
|
| Google Mail (Gmail) is very successful despite not having an
| official desktop application, even though Electron and other
| web wrappers exist. I am confident that Slack, Discord,
| Messenger, WhatsApp, Notion, among other web applications,
| would exist without Electron, and the features would be the
| same.
|
| If you are a macOS user and want to have a better experience
| with hybrid web applications, I highly recommend Fluid [1] or
| Unite [2]. They both create wrappers for web applications
| using WebKit, which performs several times better than
| Chromium on macOS.
|
| [1] https://fluidapp.com
|
| [2] https://www.bzgapps.com/unite
| hackerbob wrote:
| Discord is also an Electron app and I see few complaints.
| Sometimes it just the case that some apps give the rest a bad
| name.
| guessmyname wrote:
| > _That being said, the fact that it 's electron-based
| means..._
|
| At my current job, management jumped into the Notion wagon some
| time ago, then told IT to force-install the desktop web
| application in every computer. The moment I realized it was an
| Electron app, I stopped using it. Nowadays, I sporadically open
| the web application, which is one click away from my browser
| bookmarks.
|
| Safari executes JavaScript code much faster on my computer than
| Chromium, so the experience of typing and navigating Notion is
| much better on the web (native browser) than on the other web
| (hybrid Electron). The same thing with Slack. It is much more
| reliable in the native-web than in the hybrid-web/desktop
| Electron wrapper, which continuously restarts and consumes an
| unnecessary amount of memory that other more essential
| applications (Docker, IDE, debugger) could use.
| rattray wrote:
| That's interesting! Anything special about the computer
| you're on?
|
| Would the apps be just as fast if they used a cocoa web view,
| or is Safari faster?
| rattray wrote:
| Self-answering to some degree, it looks like WKWebView on
| macos is similar to safari but may be behind on version
| number (presumably updated only when the OS is updated) and
| thus slower.
|
| You can also embed an actual safari view, but it doesn't
| let your control things, so it'd have to be more strictly a
| "dumb shell": https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=trjs0tcd
|
| Of course, I'm not sure how either compares to electron,
| and I'm sure it depends on the app.
| dmix wrote:
| That's some great web design. Both in the app screenshots and the
| guide/marketing website.
| Closi wrote:
| Any plan to add dependencies? It seems to be missing from lots of
| platforms that have this sort of view.
| stevenalowe wrote:
| it's... a gantt chart without the dependency lines?
| [deleted]
| krono wrote:
| I have some serious data privacy concerns with Notion. The
| excruciating slowness of the platform in all its forms and
| iterations is also completely unworkable.
|
| A real shame as I really need something like this in my life -
| both personal and professional.
| threatofrain wrote:
| While this has become a thread for talking about alternatives,
| has anyone found a solution with a premium Latex + markdown
| experience? So far I've found VSC to be the best experience.
| CryingSofa wrote:
| I'm a huge fan of obsidian.md. It should tick all your boxes.
| bosie wrote:
| what do you use on ios in your workflow?
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Zettlr.
| aidos wrote:
| I mentioned https://www.getoutline.com/ below that I haven't
| tried but looks great. Would be interested in hearing from
| anyone who's tried it.
| krono wrote:
| Nice try, Outline marketing team ;)
| aidos wrote:
| Haha. I'm definitely sounding a bit that way. Though, it's
| opensource, so nobody needs to be sold on it.
|
| We're too deep in Notion internally to jump to something
| else now, but if was going to try anything else, given the
| Linear.app team's track record, this would definitely be my
| first evaluation.
| krono wrote:
| I've checked out Outline but that was some time ago. Its
| featureset seems limited to just regular notes.
| Definitely well put together, but the version I tried
| really wasn't a replacement for something like Notion.
| alexh1 wrote:
| Take a look at Portabella (https://portabella.io), we're not
| feature complete with Notion but making serious progress!
| hrktb wrote:
| Looks nice ! Sorry I couldn't find the help, is there a way
| to format tables in the documents ? (sadly for me "portobella
| table" is basically impossible to web search...)
| alex_portabella wrote:
| Not yet, need to add that component. We're using Slate.js
| under the hood so it doesn't come out of the box.
| Osiris wrote:
| From the website it looks like Portabella is a more focused
| application, while notion is anything from a wiki to a Kanban
| board.
|
| My company is evaluating Notion as a replacement for
| Confluence mostly, though we are looking at it's Kanban
| features also.
| jczhang wrote:
| Well that's very different and not comparable to Notion
| because Notion is first for documentation and only secondly
| for project management
| scrollaway wrote:
| I don't see a way to self host it. Are you willing to
| consider it? It seems like you're targeting a particular
| niche and not having it open source or self hostable seems
| like a mistake.
| alex_portabella wrote:
| No way right now. I do think that self hosting takes away
| most benefits we provide.
|
| Hopefully open source soon!
| krono wrote:
| I actually will.
|
| Am also keeping an eye on https://anytype.io but I still
| haven't been drawn for their closed alpha grrrr
| icu wrote:
| I share your concerns, that's why I made sure they are GDPR
| compliant before becoming a subscriber. If you're not based in
| the UK or EU, say you're in the US... well good luck. Swiss
| cheese has fewer holes than US privacy laws!
|
| Having said all that, as a user of Notion I've been incredibly
| impressed. Their support staff seem friendly and responsive and
| they keep making the product better and better.
|
| My only gripes are the weird password email confirmation of the
| mobile app login, and that I can't use it as a Zettelkasten.
|
| Other than that, it really is fantastic. The Kanban and other
| features meant that it's replaced other apps I was using for
| both work and personal. It really is worth a try.
| krono wrote:
| GDPR Compliance is nice and all, but as long as their staff
| has the ability to access my data, I just can't legally host
| most of my business data on that platform.
|
| Other than that and the terrible performance I love Notion
| and I really hope they get this sorted. I'll even keep paying
| for my personal account (drop in the bucket, I know) in the
| hopes that they will.
| icu wrote:
| For me GDPR was a make or break. I know I'm putting faith
| in Notion staff to follow GDPR guidelines because if they
| accessed my information without an extremely good reason it
| would be a breach.
|
| The only other option would be for me to create my own
| solution, and while I could do that, I don't have the time
| or the desire to do it.
|
| I think you got to be careful and read the TOS and know
| what you're in for. For example, I stopped using the free
| version of Grammarly after I found out they weren't GDPR
| compliant and their support wouldn't confirm if they were
| going to be GDPR compliant. A year later I evaluated
| Grammarly again and they were, so I subscribed to Grammarly
| premium.
|
| However some companies are so egregious in their lack of
| respect of privacy that I will never trust them again, for
| example Facebook. Others are so impossible to get away
| from, like Google, that I limit my exposure as much as
| possible.
|
| Bottom line is be aware of how your privacy will be handled
| and make sure you're conscious of the trade off decisions
| you're making.
| krono wrote:
| For private individual usage this should be enough.
|
| In the case of business data governance, though, the
| legal requirements for storage, security, and privacy go
| far beyond GDPR. The difficulty there is that even small
| things such as contact info, appointment locations and
| dates, timelines, etc. are covered by those contracts.
| kbos87 wrote:
| Can you elaborate on what some of those data privacy concerns
| are? I've centralized more and more in Notion and I'm
| admittedly a layperson when it comes to really understanding
| what questions I should even ask to judge the security of
| something like Notion.
| krono wrote:
| The fact that Notion staff technically has unrestricted
| access to all user and account data legally prevents me from
| putting the vast majority of my work-related items on there.
|
| On top of that there's so much tracking going on that even
| Facebook would be jealous.
|
| And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Check out their T&C
| and Privacy Policy:
|
| https://www.notion.so/Terms-
| Conditions-4e1c5dd3e3de45dfa4a8e...
|
| https://www.notion.so/Privacy-
| Policy-3468d120cf614d4c9014c09...
| dvt wrote:
| Not sure how this is different from something like Dropbox
| (which stores stuff on S3 iirc). So technically, you can
| have Dropbox people looking through your stuff, and you can
| also have Amazon people looking through your stuff.
| Obviously, if this ever happens without a good reason,
| employees that do this can get fired and/or sued (and the
| company itself might also be held liable). Everything is
| also logged, so there's a paper trail. I skimmed over both
| the T&C and the Privacy Policy and it doesn't really seem
| that Notion breaks from this norm.
| krono wrote:
| A gentleman's agreement with some foreign entity just
| isn't good enough.
|
| At least on Dropbox, S3, OneDrive, etc. we can encrypt
| our own data (which I actually do). There is no such
| option in Notion.
| dvt wrote:
| This is an extreme use case. For example, S3 is HIPAA
| compliant, so I'm sure there's plenty of very private
| medical data that's not encrypted on S3.
| SahAssar wrote:
| All of those are blob/file based, when the service
| provider needs to offer services like search and ways to
| make deeper inferences between pieces of data it's pretty
| much impossible to have all the encryption handled
| client-side.
|
| I'd be interested to see examples/arguments where it
| works though.
| misttar wrote:
| Not sure about DropBox, but AWS has alot of protections
| around what goes into S3. I have worked with them to
| address issues that come up in the service, and they
| couldn't access our data, even when we would have been
| fine with it. Had to copy it somewhere else for them.
|
| All they could access was a service logs.
|
| See https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/data-privacy-faq/
| dvt wrote:
| These are merely _procedural_ rules (access keys don 't
| grow on trees), which I'm sure Notion also has in place.
| capableweb wrote:
| Fabulous that Notion now have Gantt charts. Only things that are
| missing for planning heaven now is being able to declare
| dependencies and timelines moving automatically on schedule
| change.
| janlukacs wrote:
| Notion now has a timeline, it's not a Gantt chart :) What you
| said next is a Gantt chart.
| capableweb wrote:
| A timeline for scheduling is a Gantt chart. Dependencies
| wasn't part of the first versions of the Gantt charts.
| opdahl wrote:
| This is such a phenomenal update! I've been waiting for this
| feature for ages. Our company uses Notion for managing objectives
| in a hierachical structure that all need to be looked at in
| different timeframes. Our Campaigns are measured in years,
| missions in months, projects in weeks, milestone in days and
| tasks hours. Being able to easily change the granualirity of the
| timeline views make it so we can actually use it for all levels
| of our system.
|
| Now if only Notion could add the option on adding
| requirements/logic to parameters I will have very little I feel I
| can't do in Notion.
| FirstLvR wrote:
| still no 2FA? or encryption?
|
| Notion is amazing, but lack of security/privacy options for me
| thom wrote:
| You can technically hook it up to SAML and so enforce 2FA
| elsewhere but I assume that'd be absurd levels of overkill for
| most people.
| niels_bom wrote:
| I've been using Notion quite a lot the last 1.5 years at work and
| I've got similar gripes as others have already written about.
|
| My major wish, and this has been on their roadmap for a while
| now: an API.
|
| Question: how many of y'all use Notion in the desktop client
| version (which seems a bit faster) vs. in the browser where you
| can have multiple tabd open?
| xrisk wrote:
| My only problem with Notion seems to be that it doesn't play well
| at all with SEO. Google doesn't index my blog which is hosted on
| Notion; presumably because it's all rendered client-side.
| tomasreimers wrote:
| Notion seems to be one of those companies going wide before they
| go deep. By my count, they want to be a: * Todo
| list / task manager / long-term planner *
| Blogging/publishing platform * Internal wiki * Note-
| taking app
|
| One of the more cynical takes I've heard is that this is the
| result of an incredible product sense without the necessary
| direction to support it. Regardless of the reason, they seem to
| be releasing features without a coherent narrative of how they
| grow the company's placement and who their target user is.
| Previous companies which have done this (e.g. Evernote) grow
| really quickly with a lot of user-love and then stagnated in
| growth without a clear sense of what to do next.
|
| With all that said, I'm a happy notion user, so maybe they're
| onto something...
|
| I wonder if internally they have that sense of direction (e.g.
| they want to compete head-on with Monday) and, if so, how scoped
| it is (e.g. do they want to replace ALL internal tools / do they
| think that's tractable)?
| tmpz22 wrote:
| They've raised $68.2m they no longer have the option to make a
| really great product that follows the unix philosophy. They
| have to do anything they can to attract enterprise customers
| which is where the real investment-justifying money will be,
| and for the most part that means having an infinite list of
| features at a competitive price.
|
| Granted, for selling out to VC they've still done a good job
| with design and product. But they have one path through their
| self-imposed blizzard and the footprints leading the way are
| clearly marked "Evernote".
| tomasreimers wrote:
| Yes, and I believe a lot of startup advice is to do one thing
| well (serving a specific market) before trying to branch out.
| Or are you saying they're trying to throws things at a wall
| to see what sticks with enterprise customers?
| tmpz22 wrote:
| On paper they've already done the whole MVP/product-fit
| phase and are using the money to fast-forward into
| $100m-$1B ARR territory. This thread is talking about a
| relatively minor update as part of that phase, and leading
| people to point out the various flaws in their product with
| the corollary that they aren't really worth $100m-$1b
| territory in the first place.
|
| Then again who knows, surveymonkey is an example of a
| company that nobody thought would "get there" and yet they
| did.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Equating Notion to Unix - I don't follow. In what sense? Unix
| philosophy is hardly relatable to Notion.
|
| For one, I can't stand their frivolous design - emojis
| everywhere.
| evanpw wrote:
| Unix philosophy meaning tools that do one thing
| tmpz22 wrote:
| By my definition in a platform/product sense unix
| philosophy = not trying to do all the things and being
| happy about it. But yeah, same idea basically.
| [deleted]
| alexh1 wrote:
| Anyone have insight into how they built this? Custom Gantt
| solution or you think they bought one?
|
| There are no good and free JS gantt libraries, but many, many
| paid ones. I've been trying to find a good one for Portabella
| (https://portabella.io) as they're an essential part of project
| management platforms, but no luck yet.
| ConcernedCoder wrote:
| we use https://www.bryntum.com/
| the_arun wrote:
| We use smartsheets. It has Gantt chart
| jitl wrote:
| We build this ourselves. It's React with little in the way of
| 3rd-party "magic".
| daltonlp wrote:
| You're right, there are no good and free JS libraries for gantt
| charts (or even timelines). It is a non-trivial problem domain.
|
| I know, because I helped build a product
| (https://peachyplan.com) much like Notion's timeline view :)
|
| The notion team did a phenomenal job. This is one of the best
| timeline views I've seen, and I've looked at hundreds.
| Lazare wrote:
| I love the idea of Notion, and I love what the team is trying to
| do, and I love almost all of Notion.
|
| Unfortunately, it's _too slow_ , at least for me. For a tool like
| that I need it to be a frictionless as possible, and Notion (for
| me!) is just a bit too annoying for me to put up with after
| extended usage.
|
| If you value features over snappiness, Notion may be great for
| you though. It's an amazing concept! And I certainly understand
| why they'd choose the tech stack they did...
|
| ...but I'll stick with Joplin. :)
| arnaudsm wrote:
| I don't understand how Notion pages take 2+ seconds to load on
| 12-core machine with a gigabit connection.
|
| And you can't load multiple pages at once, it has to be in
| focus!
| chpmrc wrote:
| I've been waiting for their apps to be snappier and have better
| offline support for almost 2 years. I'm so glad to have found
| Joplin. It also supports E2E encryption so damn well. Support
| for plugins was also recently added and that's a _big_ plus.
| rattray wrote:
| I don't use notion, so I'm curious - what kind of slow? UI lag?
| Page load? API responses?
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Page load, painting, uploading, everything. It's all very
| very slow. I use Notion very heavily at work, and until March
| of this year personally. In early 2020 I switched to Roam and
| I can't go back now. Roam is so amazingly fast it's like
| they're cheating or something. I wish every app would adopt
| the way Roam does it. Load everything up front.
|
| But, everything is slow these days. Aside from Roam, HN and
| maybe a handful of native iOS apps, I can't really name any
| app/site that I use on daily basis that isn't painfully slow.
| thom wrote:
| As someone who wants to replace a bunch of stuff in Jira with
| Notion I have never really perceived performance problems, but
| I guess it isn't the snappiest.
| eropple wrote:
| First time I've seen Joplin--can it handle multiple users
| partying on the same pages at the same time?
|
| EDIT: apparently not, according to [
| https://joplinapp.org/conflict/ ] -- that's a bummer, it rules
| it out for my use cases :/ I really don't think a filesystem-
| based sync mechanism works great for a collaborative tool,
| which is much of the value of Notion to me. It seems really
| cool for single-user, never-shared stuff, though.
| Scarbutt wrote:
| _For a tool like that I need it to be a frictionless as
| possible_
|
| This is way so many just try to fit their the
| note/task/wiki/etc.. flows to their text
| editors(vscode,emacs,vim)
| jeromenerf wrote:
| Notion is indeed slow. Slack is slow. Google drive is slow.
| Trello is slow. Some local/native alternatives can be snappier.
|
| Speed and snappiness don't always come together, but when they
| do, there is no going back to something even a little slower or
| less reactive.
|
| That's why I don't test nor try new hardware until I actually
| need more than what I have. It's too strong to resist ;)
| dilap wrote:
| Haven't used it in a while, but I always found Trello to be
| extremely snappy. Once of the things I really liked about it,
| and that competitors like ClickUp and (more tangentially)
| Notion are missing.
| BenGosub wrote:
| I think that Trello is pretty fast on all platforms and
| notifications are sent instantaneously
| pwython wrote:
| I had no doubt the top few comments would be critical of post.
| But Joplin? I'm not sure I even understand this one. I have
| used Joplin for years and I can't figure out how it would
| replace Notion.
| mrlala wrote:
| Have you ever tried using that Wiki inside of Microsoft teams?
| If you want to talk about slow.. dear lord, it's like every
| action I do is manually being forwarded to a country with cheap
| labor to approve my action before it's approved in the dtabase.
| iKlsR wrote:
| Notions needs basic analytics, if I share a page I'd like to see
| the amount of hits it gets at least.
| grinnick wrote:
| You can hack the embed blocks to get basic analytics:
| https://apption.co/apps/2
| Spivak wrote:
| Your best bet for that at the moment is to use one of the
| unofficial Notion APIs and write an article-to-static-HTML
| converter and host it on your own site.
|
| https://presstige.io/ is an IRL implementation of the idea.
| carolus4 wrote:
| I've seen reference to https://super.so/ used for this also.
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