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Really impressed with the update, and really excited about the new Koenig composer. Having built a CMS at my news startup (edsurge) I know firsthand the pain th

by npunt 9y ago

Really impressed with the update, and really excited about the new Koenig composer. Having built a CMS at my news startup (edsurge) I know firsthand the pain that comes from composers that use html as the document storage model, rather than a more flexible (and recompilable) intermediate format like json. I've long liked the Ghost approach, but some of the execution (composer, themes, and lack of self-updating) has been seriously wanting. Looks like 1.0 fixes these points. My big gripe with 1.0 is the default Casper 2.0 theme. They've decided to include one of the most persistent anti-patterns on blogs of adding a fixed header sharing bar [1]. Mobile devices already have both sharing and scrollbar functionality, making the header both redundant and actually worse UX, since it takes away valuable reading space. It's totally for the benefit of the blogger and chasing a trend at the expense of the reading experience for the user, all to get a few extra shares. This has been covered before [2]. My view is defaults like these are so important in encouraging best practices and setting expectations. Although its only on this one theme (and can be disabled easily if you dig around and customize), I imagine other themes will dutifully copy the pattern, assuming its how the Ghost experience should be. From the outset, Ghost was about 'just a blogging platform', free of the cruft of Wordpress - a minimal expression of what blogging should be. This sharing bar is not that. Still, kudos to the Ghost team for shipping 1.0. So many good changes. [1] https://twitter.com/nickpunt/status/890641710488756224 https://twitter.com/nickpunt/status/890641710488756224 [2] https://daringfireball.net/2017/06/medium_dickbars https://daringfireball.net/2017/06/medium_dickbars

pascalandy 9y ago
There is no need to cry about this. Casper has been migrated to Ghost 1.0 as well. You basically have two option now: https://github.com/TryGhost/Casper/commits/master https://github.com/TryGhost/Casper/commits/master Have fun :-p
- npunt 9y ago
  Were I to push a change to Casper, my sense is it would be rejected, as John O'Nolan (the Ghost maintainer) responded to the tweet I linked with: > "It’s really not an anti-pattern. And it can be disabled with literally 1 line of code" Since we disagree about whether these bars are good or bad UX, I believe that'd be a non-starter. And although it can be disabled, it adds unnecessary friction -- defaults should encapsulate best practices. As Ghost is a blogging engine that should appeal strongly to less technical users (by being simpler and better UX than wordpress), having to manually download, edit, and reupload a theme seems to not be in alignment with one of the key value propositions of the product. I doubt most users even change the default theme, and that's okay - frankly, that's a sign that the product is really good. Since you're new here (or at least your account is new), HN is a community where we regularly discuss things like the scourge of downloading 5MBs of javascript in order to view a single news article, the importance of sane defaults, or other specific issues related to design and tech. It seems pedantic but its a place where people care about such things, and we don't typically tell people they're crybabies when bringing them up.

by npunt 9y ago

pascalandy 9y ago

There is no need to cry about this. Casper has been migrated to Ghost 1.0 as well. You basically have two option now: https://github.com/TryGhost/Casper/commits/master https://github.com/TryGhost/Casper/commits/master Have fun :-p

npunt 9y ago
Were I to push a change to Casper, my sense is it would be rejected, as John O'Nolan (the Ghost maintainer) responded to the tweet I linked with: > "It’s really not an anti-pattern. And it can be disabled with literally 1 line of code" Since we disagree about whether these bars are good or bad UX, I believe that'd be a non-starter. And although it can be disabled, it adds unnecessary friction -- defaults should encapsulate best practices. As Ghost is a blogging engine that should appeal strongly to less technical users (by being simpler and better UX than wordpress), having to manually download, edit, and reupload a theme seems to not be in alignment with one of the key value propositions of the product. I doubt most users even change the default theme, and that's okay - frankly, that's a sign that the product is really good. Since you're new here (or at least your account is new), HN is a community where we regularly discuss things like the scourge of downloading 5MBs of javascript in order to view a single news article, the importance of sane defaults, or other specific issues related to design and tech. It seems pedantic but its a place where people care about such things, and we don't typically tell people they're crybabies when bringing them up.