Creating a bigger testing area for snippet development

Feature Ideas
1

I am doing some complicated snippet development, with lots of trial and error. There is the "try me" box, but it is small and I often gets load of output that I need to look at.

It is possible in Chrome to get a throwaway notepad by putting data:text/html, <html contenteditable> in the OmniBox (the URL bar). Completely ephemeral; reload and everything is gone -- ideal for testing snippets.

However, TB does not seem to function inside such a tab. (a) why and (b) can this be remedied and (c) how, please?

2

Found a workaround by creating an extremely minimal HTML file with a full-size textarea. For the benefit of others: put the HTML below in a file and toggle the extension access for TB (in Chrome extension settings) to allow to work on file URLs:

<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
	<style>
		html, body {
			margin: 0;
			padding: 0;
			border: 0;
		}
		* {
			box-sizing: border-box;
		}

		textarea {
			width: 100%;
			height: 100vh;
			display: block;
		}
	</style>
</head>
<body>
	<textarea placeholder="trigger your snippets here!"></textarea>
</body>
</html>

Save it in a file like my_big_testing_textarea.html and open that in a seperate tab. If you want to reset, just reload the page.

2 Likes
3

As an afterthought: it would not be difficult for TB to host more or less this page (and put whatever else in there that you like, like a standard forum footer, links to docs, whatever) from a small-ish button in the Dashboard labeled something like "big testing area". Throw in a JS-powered reset button so it stays local to a user instead of hitting your server when local cache expires.

4

Thanks for the ideas @Peter_Smulders ! What do you think of this idea: on the dashboard homepage (https://dashboard.blaze.today/), in the textbox below the heading "Welcome to Text Blaze", we can add a maximize button to the textbox which would open it in full screen. We could add a query parameter/hash to the URL so that it opens by default in the maximized state.

Does that help in your use case?

5

Yes, this would help in my use case. Specifically, I would open that landing page (maximised or not) in another tab or window and repeatedly test my snippets under development. While you're at it, throw in a reset button. I know I can just hit reload, but not all users are necessarily that aware. And we're talking single digits kBytes, but a soft reset through JS is still cheaper on the servers than a page refresh.

6

Sure, thanks, I have moved your suggestion to Feature Ideas category.