More Files Please

File over app File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve and read. Use tools that give you this freedom. File over app is an appeal to tool makers: accept that all software is ephemeral, and give people ownership over their data. In th... See more

File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve and read. Use tools that give you this freedom.

Take the humble “document” as an example. For decades, document editing programs like word processors effectively emulated a printed sheet of paper, onto which the user typed with an emulated typewriter. Other software tools like spreadsheets did better, managing to escape complete skeuomorphism in favor of an infinite canvas. Notion is another goo... See more

At some point I realised I could solve these problems by turning folders into mini-websites. I could create an HTML file in the top-level folder, which could be an index – a list of all the files, displayed with all the custom metadata and tags I wanted.

This allowed me to radically simplify the folder structure, and stop chasing the perfect hierarc... See more

File over app

File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve and read. Use tools that give you this freedom.

We often think making things for the web is a process of simplifying—the hub, the dashboard, the control panel are all dreams of technology that coalesces, but things have a tendency to diverge into a multiplicity of options. We pile on more tools and technology, each one increasingly nuanced and minor in its critical differences. Clearly, converge... See more