Built this when I was looking for a rich-text pastebin and couldn't really find any around. This works instantly in seconds without any account and prioritizes just giving you a link to share.
Ended up being really useful whenever I wanted others to see what I had experienced on personalized websites (e.g. ranked feeds that would look different on different accounts, or change if reloaded e.g. https://ctxt.io/2/AAAAiPRWFg), interview feedback, or even paywalled content if I just wanted to share a little snippet for fair-use and keep the HTML styles, https://ctxt.io/2/AAAAACI6FQ. Scroll to the bottom of the page for these examples.
The main technical difficulty here was in trying to get all the CSS styles to be as accurate as possible, and the browser extension solves many of these, including proxying requests whenever necessary to bypass some restrictions. The browser extension doesn't request any permissions, and won't inject any content scripts on your page, so as someone who cares about security, is what I wouldn't mind installing personally.
One cool thing I've discovered after building it is that it's super useful for web developers to modify the DOM of pages and redo mockups and then use Context to re-share them with others for them to also modify: e.g. https://ctxt.io/2/AAAA0KGcFA
Everything is free for now (don't worry about the $ signs), mainly interested in feedback. Thanks in advance!
p.s.: I've solved the problem with fixed headers using a fixed header with a high z-index
(unfortunately this hides the fixed header of the copied website).
p.p.s.: Maybe it's possible to build it as a small community-maintained project, that would be great.
"I was looking for a rich-text pastebin and couldn't really find any around. This works instantly in seconds without any account and prioritizes just giving you a link to share."
You should say this on your site. Found it rather confusing until I read your reply here.
How does this work? When I copy past above comment, it preserves the font, background, and other things. Does that mean clipboard always captures these data but other things discard them?
Your TLS configuration is broken, in a way that often happens:
You aren't serving the appropriate intermediates. It's only serving the leaf certificate, but should also serve intermediates that get us to a trusted root.
Because browsers cache intermediates, this obscures the problem much of the time.
This is pretty amazing though. I copied some Go code from Gogland and got it in a browser, syntax highlighting and all! https://ctxt.io/2/AAAAwO9VEA
Thanks for this great feedback and TLS tip. I'm using GAE to host this, and it only has these options https://ctxt.io/2/AAAAACLGEg. Do you think this is broken or how I generated the cert?
Wow, this is amazing. Seems like magic once I wonderstood what it does.
Like others here, at first I thought it was just another pastebin. I didn't realize what it could do until I read your comment here in this thread. Seems dumb, but I didn't notice I could scroll down for examples, and I also would have had no idea about the browser extension. I would have dismissed this almost immediately had I just visited the page. Perhaps you can make this things more obvious?
Also, any plans for a Firefox extension?
Note: "Wonderstood" was a typo, but I'm leaving it because I like it :)
It was harder that I thought, lots of quirks and behavioral differences even though the APIs used were relatively simple. Needed for example `e.preventDefault()`, requiring `<all_urls>` (unfortunately! - but that might allow me to allow copying styles from selection) and a bunch of style fixes just to get to parity.
I still don't get it. Every page I try to contextify (wat) is looking like pasted in a 1999 WYSIWYG editor. How do you all get the correct styling etc with you? I'm using Firefox with uBlock and Disconnect.
The extension needs to be reviewed by Mozilla and signed unfortunately. 80% get done within 5 days but unclear if this will be the case here. Meanwhile you can use the bookmarklets at https://ctxt.io/faq but those won't work on CORS/CSP restricted sites.
Yep, discovered Firefox doesn't copy styles the same way as other webkit-based browsers like Chrome/Safari. Working on a Firefox extension which will solve all this, but even that has been a ton of quirks to deal with. 7% of my visitors used FF, 20% Safari and 66% Chrome, so I think my prioritization so far made sense. Will keep you posted on an FF extension.
I believe ctxt.io requires Chrome extension to work properly. It does seam like a good method for sharing web pages, but, as I too use Firefox, not the thing for me (for now).
Thanks! Exactly... it's not and you should really give the browser extension a go if you enjoy it. It has 70% of the features coded up and works the best.
I really like the clean UI first layout, but it could use an arrow/indicator to emphasize the content below the fold; especially for first time visitors. I wish more sites prioritized their layout like you did. The core functionality seems solid, Nice work!
Heh thanks yeah the nature of content editable. If you can still submit (use keyboard to tab-enter), it'll hopefully preserve that fixed hleader in the paste.
I don't think I quite get this. Everything I paste here shows up in plain text. It doesn't automatically do any syntax highlighting; it only seems to work if you're already copying rich text to begin with.
Here's an example. Using Chrome on OSX I did a quick `select-all` then `copy`, switched to the ctxt.io tab, gave the text area focus then `paste`. I ended up with this - https://ctxt.io/2/AAAAYGAfEw
I think "only works if you're copying rich text to begin with" is the kinda the point.
(I'm not affiliated with ctxt.io at all, just trying to understand it like you are.)
I guess I have to do better on the value proposition. Yes, there are many other of pastebins that work on code or plaintext for syntax highlighting (which might be the use case you're thinking of), but there is virtually no solution that works on rich text. Pasting rich text into any of these solutions wouldn't work, and many times I would love to keep the styles and just make the content readable (e.g. tables, paragraphs, headers, stay the same etc.)
You can paste snapshots / screenshots. With mezer tools, I can do a quick Win S, two clicks, one paste, copy/paste the URL and you get https://ctxt.io/2/AAAA4MNyFw .
Which page did you do this on? You might need to use the browser extension for some pages. Some styles do not transfer without it. I can show you what it looks like with my browser extension if you let me know the URL you tried this on?
Does your IDE/editor support copying out as rich text? The ones I tried did and it worked. Maybe there's a setting for copying out with styles. If not, this isn't a use case I've primarily worked on yet, but I can try to support it later.
I can't see any such option in Atom, Sublime, or Eclipse to copy as rich text.
To be fair I didn't really expect it to work with automagically copying the syntax highlighting from my IDE, but it made it sound like it could.
It's definitely a useful project, and surprising that nothing else like it exists, but may be worth making it clearer that it's designed for rich text, and may or may not work with formatting when pasting for various programs.
Fair, I think I extrapolated too eagerly. Will think of a solution, including dropping the code use case. Terminal and web based output works at least.
Is this because you would rather verify things are what I say they are (no content stored elsewhere) and use this service, or to run your own, or just learn?
Right now, code quality isn't in a state to open-source, but I'm thinking about it.
Yep, I saw that and this was about 80% built at the time. Was still wrangling with all the style capture and couldn't capitalize on all the attention it was getting then. ;-)
But this has a different primary use-case, more on transient context sharing, and caring about accuracy in the short term. And not about publishing per se.
You're right, the transient nature of this service sets it apart from other similar offerings. I like your monetization approach and how you tied it to a useful feature. Great implementation.
Ended up being really useful whenever I wanted others to see what I had experienced on personalized websites (e.g. ranked feeds that would look different on different accounts, or change if reloaded e.g. https://ctxt.io/2/AAAAiPRWFg), interview feedback, or even paywalled content if I just wanted to share a little snippet for fair-use and keep the HTML styles, https://ctxt.io/2/AAAAACI6FQ. Scroll to the bottom of the page for these examples.
The main technical difficulty here was in trying to get all the CSS styles to be as accurate as possible, and the browser extension solves many of these, including proxying requests whenever necessary to bypass some restrictions. The browser extension doesn't request any permissions, and won't inject any content scripts on your page, so as someone who cares about security, is what I wouldn't mind installing personally.
One cool thing I've discovered after building it is that it's super useful for web developers to modify the DOM of pages and redo mockups and then use Context to re-share them with others for them to also modify: e.g. https://ctxt.io/2/AAAA0KGcFA
Everything is free for now (don't worry about the $ signs), mainly interested in feedback. Thanks in advance!