WordPress's Gutenberg vs. Micro.blog manton.org
@manton I understand where you are coming from. Still, micro.blog could benefit from small tweaks like saving drafts automatically on posts and replies, queueing posts up, exposing markdown using a small breadcrumb nav. Again, not everything has to be revealed to the user, perhaps it's a setting thing for power users.
Still, micro.blog's simplicity needs to be balanced with some power user needs. Or quickly, you hit a wall. And I don't know if client apps can solve all of these problems when the browser and mobile apps are just as important to first-time users. It's a tricky situation.
@nerveband Agreed, there are a lot of areas we can continue to expand and refine. Thanks for the feedback!
@nerveband I actually think some of the things MB has done as ‘simple’ have made things more complicated (at least that was the case on my learning curve). I agree with your points and that improvements in UX design could make more power available in the apps without complicating the UI. But I think it is hard for one person to handle both the backend and a large part of the app dev work. So cheers to @Manton for the ongoing changes.
@manton I think if they add post templates to Gutenberg it could possibly deliver on fairly simple posting as well as more powerful flexibility. I could imagine a Independent Publisher theme that would provide a quick/simple blog post template as well as longer form post templates with photos or etc. That being said for my needs the only time I use the WP app for composition is to create a long-form post that doesn’t go to my timeline (because I will manually post a synopsis with link). Many different personas out there for blogging - it’s good WP can provide more ‘power’ for those who need it and still work well with MB.
@manton Or: Just use a plugin that restores the classic editor, and carry on. Probably all technical users of WP will, so they can compose in Markdown.
@manton I’ve mentioned them before. But one was the UI for posting - as a non-markdown user I was stymied by how to style and post links (what goes in the brackets, what goes in parens) and how to control what happens for titles/longer posts, how to control photo aspect ratio, etc. It was all trial and error for me and, at the time, a bit obfuscated by running into some bugs (e.g. back when a vertical bar screwed up markdown processing, now resolved).
@ronguest Thanks, good point. I've been thinking lately about how best to revisit Markdown so that it is more approachable.
@manton Random thought I had: I don't write in the editor so I don't really care what WP does with their UI. Yes it's because I've been online too long and learned (the hard way) to NEVER compose in the editor, I suppose. Maybe it's less of a concern now?
@Verso At least in the classic WP editor, it autosaves as draft every N seconds and you can hit cmd-s (!) to save now. So unless I'm writing something very long and complex, it's safe enough. Any other text form, I write in BBEdit!
@mdhughes It used to be way less reliable to compose there so I quit doing it ages ago. I imagine it's improved, but why bother when I have MarsEdit? (:
@manton I like the way the Amino app composes a link. Whenever the user pastes an url into the textbox, it prompts the user to enter a title, and combines it with the url into a linked text element.
@Verso this makes em realize how long it's been since i've used a blog's actual interface to write anything.
p.s. i miss ya and am sorry i've been so abnsent from Core Audio! Any chance I'll see you Saturday?
@Verso Good point, when I was using WordPress for my blog I didn't type directly in the editor very often either. I assume most people do, so I'm curious how everyone will react to Gutenberg.
@manton Definitely a line of demarcation for people on the web, are you inherently suspicious of the online editor or not? (:
@renevanbelzen Thanks, I'll have to check that out. When sharing a link to Micro.blog on iOS, we do automatically create the Markdown, but not for pasting links.
