Vision
The website TypeLit, which I used for a couple of weeks, required a paid subscription to add custom books. I upgraded, but soon realized the website was missing many features such as accent configuration, book page screenshots, gamification, and more.
When on a train, after finishing a page, TypeLit couldn’t save my progress due to unstable internet connection, and there was no local backup. Instead of rewriting the page again, I decided to build my own application for it - Rewrite.
Technologies
- Svelte and SvelteKit
- daisyUI with TailwindCSS
- Appwrite Databases
- Appwrite Functions using Node.JS
- Auth UI
- Google Cloud APIs
- EPUB.to APIs
Screens
A simple homepage invites visitors to sign in before using the platform. To allow quick-play, users are welcome to create anonymous (guest) accounts with 1 click.
Authentication flows powered by Auth UI, supporting many different authentication methods such as magic URL, phone OTP, email & password, OAuth, and more.
Logged-in users can visit a library containing books. They can pick from many pre-uploaded books, or upload their own .epub or .pdf books.
Once a user picks a book, they can select which page they want to rewrite. The table smartly filters out already finished pages, and sorts the rest in ascending order.
Rewriting a page of a book is the main view of this application. The user is given input and book’s text. The goal is to rewrite the page without making mistakes - mistakes must be corrected.
If books include illustrations, users can also toggle page-view and see the book’s original page design.
Completing a page grants users experience points, and invites them to continue to the next book’s page.
Current level progress and experience remaining can also be found in a level modal.
Alongside leveling up the account, users can also maintain their streaks, and see how long they can go without missing a day of rewriting a page.
You may have noticed golden words in the page; those were words needed to finish a quest. Doing quests grants coins that can be used for cool abilities.
Users can also look at their profile statistics and complete set of achievements.
Retrospective
The project gave me the confidence to develop further apps with daisyUI to support dark theme and theming out of the box. I also experienced the implementation of many gamification features, which can serve as a stepping stone to making a proper gamified self-improvement platform in the future.
While working on this project wasn’t much of a learning experience, it became an amazing free alternative to its paid competitors, providing all the features that they do. Since I used it myself, I was able to improve and maintain it for over a year.
One of the most interesting problems I faced was creating a self-explanatory interface while books were being processed, so users wouldn’t be left hanging, not knowing what to do next.
Future plans
Since the app serves exact purpose it was meant to, I don’t plan to update it in near future. With that said, following are some features what I can see as an improvement:
- Dependency-free e-book parser
- Streak calendar
- Rewards for levels
- Sharable public profile
- 0 Trust server validation
- Community events and goals