4 months ago I could barely code. Today I'm launching my first product.
So for the past year or so I've been reading the interviews and monthly updates here on IH. Prior to reading IH I subscribed to the prevailing notion that good startups are founded by teams rather than individuals. As a self-taught javascript developer without a supporting team, it was inspiring to read stories of successful developers who managed to build companies on their own.
Towards the beginning of every month I would constantly refresh my email client waiting for the monthly blog post with Courtland's updated revenue numbers. Being able to follow the journey of a startup like IH from inception to acquisition made building a startup seem like a much more feasible and realistic goal.
A few months ago I decided to finally dive in and start working on a product of my own. I had been using various browser extensions for years to manage my saved tabs, but I felt that there was so much room for improvement. Rather than wait for someone else to build the solution to my problems, I decided to solve my own problem, and the result is a Chrome extension called Freezetab.
Feel free to ask any questions about the extension or the development process in general.
Thanks,
Keith Brooks
Can you write a post about your coding journey ?
I'm definitely planning on doing this. Quite a few people have expressed an interest in my coding journey, so I would love to share my full story with other indie hackers out there. I don't have a set date for when this article will be released, but you can follow me on medium and/or twitter for updates (same username: ksbrooksjr). If I'm lucky, maybe it'll get featured here on IH. :)
Very cool, congratulations!! How did you learn Javascript?
Thanks :)
I learned the basics of Javascript from Codecademy. The cool thing about Codecademy is that the lessons are fully interactive. What I love about coding is the immediate feedback — you type something into the interpreter and the interpreter returns a result instantaneously. Text based tutorials don't do this aspect of coding justice, so I highly recommend starting with a web based tutorial that includes an interactive JS playground.
After I learned the basic syntax, I jumped right into developing Freezetab. Most Javascript developers utilize the same simple constructs over and over again (arrays, objects, loops, control flow, etc.), so as long as you understand the fundamentals you can start building your own project.
I honestly wish I had started working on this earlier. Prior to working on Freezetab I casually browsed HN and r/programming and absorbed a lot of information about different frameworks and tech stacks, but there's no substitute for actually building something. There are certain aspects of development that you only encounter when managing a large project.
this is great advice, been through all of those: codeacademy (going through again now actually) freecodecamp and so on... Time to get building I guess
Awesome!! I will definitely check this out too!!
Hey Keith,
thank you for freezetab.
Having time as the default property for organization is really useful compared to chromes bookmarks.
Freezetab looks great! I am a long time user of OneTab, which offers similar (but more basic) features - I'll definitely try freezetab, since it seems to offer better UX and options for sharing that OneTab does not have. Congrats!
Hey hey Keith congrats on the launch and wow the traction it's gaining on Product Hunt! Just upvoted it. Love the story behind it as well. That it was to scratch your own problem and you learned the basics before diving right in!
Thanks for the upvote Michael. I was surprised by the reception on ProductHunt. Yesterday it had 8 upvotes, then I woke up today and it was the #1 product of the day!
Nice! Well it looks like others had the problem as well. Love the part where you said, I didn't want to wait until someone else made it. Great job!
Just had a play around with it. Dig it a lot! Well done with making a solid product.
love this and great to hear about Codecademy.
Congrats, Keith! And great job learning to code and just jumping in. It can seem daunting at times, but it's a great feeling to build something that others want/need. :-)
Really Nice Keith, as a new programmer how much development time did freeztab take, for your first release
Congrats on the launch! What are the effects on browser memory? I'm guessing you're stashing everything in localstorage? Have you thought about maintaining all of this data server side and just sending down // storing high-level metadata?
Thanks Ryan!
Yup, all of the data is stored via Chrome's local storage API.
Memory usage has been low to moderate for me (varying anywhere from ~150 to ~300 mb of ram usage), and I have over 1700 tabs saved at the moment.
You can always open Chrome's task manager to assess Freezetab's impact on system ram. Right now Freezetab is using 247mb of ram on my system. In comparison IndieHackers is using 337mb, Reddit is using 344mb, and the Browser process itself is using 423 mb. Freezetab only consumes memory when the popup is open.
I have considered building a server side implementation (which would enable syncing), but I thought that might be overkill for a minimum viable product. I'll probably end up wiring up an express backend at some point though.
Oh that's good to know - doesn't seem excessive at all. Ya, I probably wouldn't worry about building out a backend yet if that's the case. Only if people start complaining, but it doesn't sound like that will happen soon.
Congrats again on the launch! It's an awesome story and I'm sure inspiring for many 👍
Congrants on your launch, it looks really good!
Also, thanks for sharing your story, I'm currently learning Javascript/HTML/CSS myself and thisis really inspiring to see :)
Good luck on PH and keep up the good work!
Thanks Carmen, I'm glad you found my story helpful. If even one person was inspired to start building something, then I'll count this launch as a success 🙌.
Congrats! This is a really cool idea, my bookmarks get cluttered and are hard to manage. This tool will probably help me find things a lot easier. Also I leave a ton of tabs open and don't always feel like going back to check if anything is important so I leave them up oftentimes (admittedly sometimes for a week or longer). Being able to freeze multiple tabs at once could be really useful for this. Any plans on monetization at all?
Thanks, I hope Freezetab simplifies your workflow! If Freezetab gains enough traction then I definitely plan on monetizing it. I thought monetization would be a little bit premature for a minimum viable product, but I would love to explore that option in the future.