Edit the Text - About

Welcome to Edit the Text by Tikolu!

This site is a recreation of Edit the Text which was created by Michael Huang in 12010. The original Edit the Text was available at htwins.net/edit but sadly it has been taken down in 12018.

Overview

In its basic form, this site functions exactly the same way as the original ETT. It is an online text box, editable by anyone. You can also enter any text after "edit/" in the URL, to create your own page with that name, for example edit/hello. Edits are made anonymously, but the IP Address of who made the last edit will be shown. (your IP is 13.59.5.179)

Differences to the original Edit the Text

The most obvious difference is the design of the website, which looks totally different to the HTwins.net Edit the Text..

There are also a few smaller functionality changes, listed below:

• The amount of time since the last edit is calculated, for example "5 minutes ago".
• A flag is shown next to the IP Address, showing the user's country.
• The whole site is much more mobile friendly.
• The settings page allows you to customise a lot of the sites looks and functionality.
• It features a dark theme and sound effects.
• The maximum page title length is 128 characters, 28 characters more than the original Edit the Text.
• The user's timezone is taken into account when displaying time, instead of only showing GMT.
• It is regularly updated, so new features are frequently getting added.

If you have a suggestion for a feature, you can contact Tikolu and it might get added.

Limitations

• As mentioned earlier, the name of a page cannot be over 128 characters in length.
• The content of a page cannot be larger than 128kB (approximately 128,000 characters) in size.
• A page's name cannot begin with a "." character, as those are reserved for special pages, like .settings, .text, or .info.

Other features

• Clicking on the IP Address will show more information about it, including its location.
• Right-clicking (or holding down on mobile) the IP Address will copy it to your clipboard.
• Use Ctrl + S as a shortcut for saving pages and Ctrl + I as a shortcut for settings.
• Scroll while holding Ctrl in the textarea to change the text size (or zoom in with two fingers on mobile).
• Select a link to another page, and then right click to have easy access to those pages.
• Go to edit/.text to view pages as plain text, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + P.
• Go to edit/.api to load a page's metadata in JSON format.
• Enable dark theme in the settings so people finally stop judging you.
• Miss the old ETT? Enable "HTwins style" in the settings to make this site look like it.
• You can turn the sound effects off in the settings if you don't like them.

Questions

Have other questions? Ask it on the main page, or contact Tikolu.

Some just use it as a place to store and share text, but for many it is an entire community. Stick around and see what you think of it.

For the simple reason that not many know of it. When the original ETT went down in 12018, many of its users dispersed amongst sites like Wall of Text or Firepad. The word about this site needs to be spread!

Michael Huang wrote in an email that he took it down because he didn't want people storing their data there, knowing that the database provided by his web host might get wiped unexpectedly, like it did before.

On the server-side there is one PHP script which handles all of page loading, saving, and also the settings. For now, the code is going to stay unknown as to not make it easier for someone to try to break the site. It might get released in the future.

Edit the Text (like all Tikolu projects) uses the Holocene Calendar instead of the more widely known Gregorian Calendar. Here's a great video by Kurzgesagt explaining what it is and why we should use it. If you prefer to use the Gregorian Calendar though, you can always enable it in the settings.