My Quick Notepad began as a way to eliminate the need to copy and paste paragraph tags around everything I wrote when I was working with HTML or a custom markup language. I also wanted a large area on a webpage to write so that I could switch between tabs to copy and paste instead of switching between two different programs to copy and paste.
I already had the code to put paragraph tabs around text before I started, so I knew creating a web-based notepad would be quick. But, once started, I began to see some other ways that it could be helpful -- mainly making links easier to do -- but also making lists easier and putting in some codes for bolding, italics, etc.
For links, I found that in researching a subject, I often wrote out the link and name of the website like "Yahoo www.yahoo.com" or "Google - www.google.com" so I wanted a way to quickly convert that into an HTML link. Putting brackets around it and making an equals sign for separating label from link seemed the best way to make the link with the last amount of work.
For all of this, I followed ideas similar to wiki editors. An asterisk at the beginning of a line meant the beginning of a list, etc. The idea was to make things as simple as possible.
The notepad is meant as a quick way of popping something into an html page or a content management system. I hope some will find it useful.