My HN November app: Quick Brown Frog

27 points

16 years ago

I'm getting close to launching my November project:

Quick Brown Frog (http://www.quickbrownfrog.com) is an online typing tutor that runs right in your browser- nothing to download or install, no Flash or other plugins required. Feel free to create yourself an account using this link:

   http://www.quickbrownfrog.com/#!createAccount:HN

I'm still working on the lesson content, but most of the moving parts are in place. It's built using GWT and Google App Engine. Despite the recent spate of GAE-related postings here, I've been able to make App Engine work fairly well for my needs and team size (i.e. me). Right now my only remaining pain point is the lack of SSL for non-appspot.com domains. Ugh.

Quick Brown Frog was very much influenced by patio11- consumer-oriented, and born of personal experience. A year ago, I decided to learn to type properly, and tried to download software from the major vendor of typing software. It turned out to be a weird PC/Mac hybrid package, and I had to go hunting for a dated uncompression tool just to open the .sit file.

When I finally got it uncompressed, I found it was years out of date and would not run on my Mac. I ended up having to order a CDROM version from them in order to get the latest software that would run on my system. (Why offer the dated download at all?!)

Thus was my inspiration to create a totally browser-based typing tutor. I'm blogging about the development process at http://quickbrownfrog.wordpress.com.

Feedback greatly appreciated.

33 comments