Simple Side Note v1.0.3: Export Now Opens on Mac, Linux, and Everywhere Else
Simple Side Note Gets a Smarter Export — Now in HTML
Cross-platform, image-ready, and open in any browser. Here's what changed and why it matters.
There's a small frustration that piles up quietly. You take careful notes while studying — paste in a sentence, annotate a word, even drop in an image of a grammar table you want to remember. Then you click Download, open the file on your Mac, and… nothing. A warning, a missing application, a broken rendering. Your notes look fine in the extension; they look broken on your disk.
That's the problem Simple Side Note v1.0.3 fixes. It's not a dramatic overhaul. It's a focused repair of something that should have worked from the start: getting your memos off the extension and onto your device in a form every operating system can actually open.
From .doc to .html — Why It Matters
The previous export format was .doc — Microsoft Word's legacy format. On Windows with Word installed, it opened fine. But on Mac, Linux, or any machine without the right application, it either failed silently or rendered as garbled text. Worse, if your memo included a captured image from the web, that image simply disappeared on export.
Version 1.0.3 replaces that with HTML export. An .html file opens in any browser — Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge — on any operating system, without installing anything. Your memo looks exactly as it did in the extension sidebar: fonts, spacing, colors, and images, all intact.
Exported as .doc. Required Microsoft Word on Mac. Images were dropped entirely. Failed silently on Linux.
Exported as .html. Opens in any browser on any OS. Images display correctly. No extra software required.
For English learners studying across devices — a Chromebook at school, a MacBook at home, a Linux desktop at a library — this difference is meaningful. Your study notes travel with you now.
What the Exported File Looks Like
The generated HTML isn't just a raw dump of content. v1.0.3 applies a clean stylesheet to the exported file: a modern system font stack (-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Roboto), responsive images that scale to fit any screen width, and a viewport meta tag so it renders properly on mobile too.
In practical terms: if you email the file to yourself and open it on your phone, it reads like a proper document, not a wall of unstyled text. The memo title becomes an <h1>; the body preserves your line breaks and formatting. It's a real file, not just a quick dump.
// v1.0.2 — legacy Word format, dropped images const blob = new Blob(['\uFEFF' + html], { type: 'application/msword' }); a.download = filename + '.doc'; // v1.0.3 — HTML with full image support const blob = new Blob([html], { type: 'text/html; charset=utf-8' }); a.download = filename + '.html';
The change is surgical — one line in the export function — but the downstream effect on compatibility is substantial.
Compatibility at a Glance
| Platform | v1.0.2 (.doc) | v1.0.3 (.html) |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | ✅ Worked | ✅ Works |
| Mac | ⚠️ Required Word | ✅ Any browser |
| Linux | ⚠️ Often failed | ✅ Any browser |
| Images in memos | ❌ Not supported | ✅ Fully supported |
New Links in the About Tab
The second change in v1.0.3 is smaller in scope but important for the extension's community dimension. The About tab now includes two additional links:
Chrome Web Store — a direct path to the extension's store listing, where you can leave a rating, write a review, or share it with someone who might find it useful. Honest reviews from real users are how free tools like this stay visible in search results.
GitHub — a link to the swyoonlabs source repositories. If you're curious about how the extension is built, want to report a specific bug, or have a feature idea that doesn't fit neatly into a review, GitHub is the right place for that conversation.
These join the existing Developer Blog and Privacy Policy links already in the About tab, making it a more complete starting point for anyone who wants to understand what Simple Side Note is and who built it.
A Note on the Philosophy Behind These Changes
Simple Side Note started with a specific promise: do for free what other tools charge for, and keep everything local — no accounts, no syncing to servers you don't control, no data leaving your browser. Every update since launch has tried to stay true to that.
The HTML export change follows the same logic. The .doc format was a shortcut that worked well enough on one platform and failed on others. HTML is an open standard that runs everywhere. Choosing it isn't a technical flex; it's just the right call for a tool that's supposed to get out of your way and let you study.
If you've been using Simple Side Note and the export was broken for you — thank you for your patience. It works now.
Explore the Extension
Simple Side Note is free, open-source, and keeps all your notes local in your browser. No account. No sync. Just a quiet notepad that stays open while you study.
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