Rolling out the new web-based Micro.blog editor now… Let us know if you have any feedback or run into bugs. There was a brief issue with the reply text box not loading, now fixed. (Caching the wrong minimized JS, argh!)

@manton Is the editor itself going to be open-sourced on eg. Github?

@manton Something happens when using double-underscore for bold; the cursor does lag when moving along the second underscore, and then the next word is sort-of trapped as italic no matter what.

At a quick glance it seems to be snappier, which is great. :)

@manton It looks pretty nice! Thanks for these changes. I noticed a problem earlier today when publishing this post. There's a URL pointing to Wikipedia that breaks the parser because it contains a closing parenthesis (from the URL) followed by a closing parenthesis (from the Markdown syntax). Other than that, it looks great!

@oelna Yes, I'm hoping to open source the whole platform. The editor could be managed separately, not sure. It's in its own JS file without any dependencies.

@SimonWoods Thanks! I always use double-asterisks for bold, so need to improve it for underscores.

@manton js caching is the worst.

@otaviocc Thanks, I'll work on fixing that. Parenthesis and underscores inside URLs have always caused some trouble.

@lexfri This was my own fault, because in dev testing it doesn't use the minimized version. Just reinforces my feeling to avoid any post-processing of JS.

@manton the reply box looks good. Like that, the formatting buttons become active only after you select text. Nice affordance thought. I also wrote a micro post. As someone who is now relying mostly on the web app, I appreciate this effort.

@manton Looks good. An option to disable the character counter would be good.

@moonmehta It hides automatically when you type a title. Do you find you’re often typing longer posts with no title, so don’t care about the warning?

@pratik 👍

@manton noticed that when copying from my Markdown editor into the web app editor a TON of new lines were added.

I didn't have this problem earlier this week using the same workflow.

@jdm Thanks for letting us know. What Markdown editor were you copying from?

@manton I did look for a hint as to what was supported — it looks like the link to Gruber's guide is no longer there — but couldn't find anything.

@SimonWoods the Markdown is powered by goldmark inside of Hugo​ although it's possible not all of these syntax elements are supported by the text boxes, all of the available Markdown for blogs and replies will be found there.

@manton I was copying from Ghostwriter.

@jdm I hope it doesn't matter, but specifically using Ghostwriter on a KDE desktop. The computer I do a lot of posting from is an chromebook with Q4OS. When I'm at my desktop I use Typora but I haven't posted anything from the desktop in awhile.

@manton Yes. In my case, the warning only pushes me mentally to shorten text rather than write what I just want to.

@manton it doesn't save automatically, does it?

@jtr It doesn’t, but I’m going to add that.

@manton

With the recent changes to the editor, I have noticed that while English input functions correctly, Japanese input does not work as expected. When I attempt to input Japanese text, it behaves strangely, as shown in the video.

On Mac computers, there is a system feature called “Input Method,” which allows users to type in languages other than English, such as Japanese. When typing in Japanese, the user starts by typing phonetic sounds using the standard English alphabet (e.g., typing “konnichiwa” to represent the Japanese word for “hello”). The Input Method then converts these phonetic representations into the appropriate Japanese characters, such as kanji or hiragana, based on the context. This process is different from English input, where characters are directly entered without conversion.

This issue primarily occurs on Mac devices, but since Windows also uses a similar system for Japanese text input, it is possible that the same problem could occur on Windows devices as well. I would recommend checking whether this issue also affects Windows users.​

@yostos That’s very helpful, thanks. I’m looking into it.

@manton I also notice that when macOS tries to predict what I'm typing, the prediction appears at the beginning of the text area. For replies, for instance, the prediction appears before the @-user I'm replying to. E.g.

​

@otaviocc also, text substitution configured on macOS seems to have a fight with the new text editor of Micro.blog... where writing the first few letters of the text substitution will be immediately replaced ... hard to explain for me in English. @manton

@manton 👍

@manton Thanks! It would be great if you could fix this issue quickly since I can’t use Japanese in the current editor. If it’s going to take some time, it’d be awesome if you could consider bringing back the option to use the old editor.

@manton when I just tried to edit a post using the new editor, the resulting text direction goes backwards, eg to the left of the cursor. So writing something like “photo” inside of existing text actually produces “otohp.”

@manton Are you going to announce product updates in the product itself?

Was somewhat annoying to discover an unusable interface that I could opt out of using when I came to compose posts today.

https://help.micro.blog/t/weird-new-post-editor/3051

@dajb Sorry, I meant to post to @news and will do that shortly. I'll check your feedback too, thanks. I tested it a lot but there are still a couple things I missed.

@manton @news Thanks, I got a bit xkcd broke-my-workflow ranty

@manton I'd still love an option to always show the title field, for what it's worth. Maybe if you're in podcasting "mode" it's always visible? Just funny that I always have to upload the audio for the title field to show up.

@lex Good feedback, thanks. Makes sense. We have an option in the iOS and Mac app, but not on the web yet. I'll add it under the "..." menu later.

@rscottjones @manton Yes, I also got right-to-left entry of text when trying to insert a word in a draft.

@manton put something on the help pages FYI help.micro.blog/t/weird-n... cc @thoughtshrapnel

@otaviocc @numericcitizen I'm having trouble getting macOS to ever predict anything, so I can't reproduce this. Any example substitutions not working for y'all that I could test?

@manton Is there a post on the Help Forum we should post bugs to or replying to this thread is better? I have a very weird one to report.

@manton @lex Similarly, I would love an option always to show the categories and the cross-posting fields. I agree that they shouldn't be turned on by default to avoid clutter and complexity, but some users who use them regularly should have that option.

@pratik For something weird that sounds better for the help center.

@manton Separate post for each bug or is there one post you want everyone to chime in to keep things organized? Whatever you feel best.

@pratik No preference. Keeping things organized is a losing battle. 🤪

@manton @numericcitizen I got Safari recommendations a couple of times while composing this reply. I also got recommendations in this very same reply when typing "a coup..." and it suggested "couple of".

@manton If I type "appl", I get transposed into the apple logo but it goes so fast that the editor turn it immediatly... a small delay would fix this.

@manton The editor resizes when I paste some html, which is good, but as soon as the image I'm posting loads, it is too large and a scrollbar appears. So I'm scrolling back and forth in a window 1/4 the height of my large monitor, with no drag handle to resize. I would very much appreciate some manual control and/or setting to get a much larger area.

@cliffordbeshers I’m going to update this to resize to the full height for larger windows.

@manton There was another issue. I'm using the special comment <!--more--> to control where posts are truncated, following the instructions in "Truncated posts on your microblog," but since switching to the New Editor, it seems that this special comment is being ignored, and I'm no longer able to control the truncation properly.

@manton Thank you for the quick correction! ​I tried it, but unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have improved. Please refer to the following video.

​app.screencast.com/iB9AzrMN8...​

@manton got an issue when posting links with an underscore in (e.g., to Wikipedia articles). In editor view it treats it like markdown italics and looks a mess. All fine once posted, just looks confusing in the editor.

@manton An Lo!, this morning it appeared. Quick work. I still have an itch for a manual resize handle, but this fix does really get the job done. Thank you.

@manton Another small issue: with spell-check turned on in Chrome, the little red squigglies under unknown words flash after every keystroke.

@samradford Working on a fix for that. Thanks!

@manton I checked it again. It seems to behave differently than before, but I confirmed that it works as expected for long posts or posts with titles. Thank you so much!