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From a data management and flexibility standpoint, I see why block editors are becoming popular with some people. But as a user, it feels like a downgraded exp
by blunte 8y ago
From a data management and flexibility standpoint, I see why block editors are becoming popular with some people. But as a user, it feels like a downgraded experience.
When writing multi-paragraph prose, the first draft isn't always the final draft. Quite often there's some shuffling around of parts of the content. With blocks, the user can't highlight part of one paragraph and into part of the next one because of the artificial container boundary.
Perhaps with some well planned keyboard shortcuts and other UI improvements, the friction can be reduced. Maybe also it will require a change in the way some of us think about content (although I still object to the user needing to think of content in terms of its subtypes and storage structures).
- raffijacobs 8y agoI agree for most of it. I'm the current maintainer of https://github.com/madebymany/sir-trevor-js https://github.com/madebymany/sir-trevor-js which we started in 2012. At the time we had a fully block based approach and migrated to more of a document based approach when medium.com gained traction. Since then we've debated what's the best approach for cross block selection as now the expected behaviour is very much that of a text editor such as word rather than a block based editing tool which it started out as. A couple of years ago we embarked on a rewrite that saw us look for a solution to the problem that would solve this. Not just a block based selection, but a cursor based selection between blocks, but this never got to a level we were happy with. I think with the evolution of online editing over the years and editors such as notion.so the approach they've taken with the multiple contenteditable elements is a good first step. Over time we'll see how far they are able to take it. Adding features such as cross browser support, undo / redo and keyboard navigation.