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It is certainly true that Medium isn't for all use cases; and I don't think they have claimed otherwise. For more serious bloggers or writers, it is more of a m

by jeswin 12y ago

It is certainly true that Medium isn't for all use cases; and I don't think they have claimed otherwise. For more serious bloggers or writers, it is more of a marketing tool. And they place no value in comments, which looks more like a deliberate design decision. However, I like Medium because they have broken new ground in UI design (for writing especially). It was the app that convinced me that you don't really need boxed HTML form inputs anywhere; it is more natural to edit in place with "contenteditable". This holds true not just for "blog writing" on Medium, but for profile edits and everywhere else. (I am aware of other advantages of using forms, but still.) Now it might seem like just getting rid of textareas. But that's not it; this is a bigger shift in how we design editing.

schrijver 12y ago
That one can get away from the default browser style, and edit in the same style as the site itself, is nothing short of a revelation to me—back in 2004, when I encountered this pattern for the first time on the website of Mediamatic, a small Amsterdam based arts institution. Ever since I have been wondering why inline-editing is not seen more often. The separation between ‘front’ and ‘back-end’ seems unnecessary. ContentEditable came along to make things easier—yet it wasn’t really picked up. My hypothesis is that programmers are not really interested in innovating for WYSIWYG interfaces, our culture being steeped in reverence for Unix’ plain text. The age-old WYSIWYG editors like CKEditors are tolerated but not loved. On the other hand, I’ve seen lots of text-based editing solutions like Markdown-widgets and static-site generators. The tide does seem to be changing a bit, with such recent announcements as the Guardian’s Scribe project showing more interest in rich text editing. <plug> I wrote in more detail on this on my blog: http://i.liketightpants.net/and/hackers-culture-and-the-fear-of-wysiwyg http://i.liketightpants.net/and/hackers-culture-and-the-fear... </plug>
jscheel 12y ago
Using contenteditable was an important decision for us at populr.me. We've put a lot of work into making the pages you create look the same in the editor as they do when published. Definitely difficult at times, but it is totally worth it.

by jeswin 12y ago

schrijver 12y ago

That one can get away from the default browser style, and edit in the same style as the site itself, is nothing short of a revelation to me—back in 2004, when I encountered this pattern for the first time on the website of Mediamatic, a small Amsterdam based arts institution. Ever since I have been wondering why inline-editing is not seen more often. The separation between ‘front’ and ‘back-end’ seems unnecessary. ContentEditable came along to make things easier—yet it wasn’t really picked up. My hypothesis is that programmers are not really interested in innovating for WYSIWYG interfaces, our culture being steeped in reverence for Unix’ plain text. The age-old WYSIWYG editors like CKEditors are tolerated but not loved. On the other hand, I’ve seen lots of text-based editing solutions like Markdown-widgets and static-site generators. The tide does seem to be changing a bit, with such recent announcements as the Guardian’s Scribe project showing more interest in rich text editing. <plug> I wrote in more detail on this on my blog: http://i.liketightpants.net/and/hackers-culture-and-the-fear-of-wysiwyg http://i.liketightpants.net/and/hackers-culture-and-the-fear... </plug>

jscheel 12y ago

Using contenteditable was an important decision for us at populr.me. We've put a lot of work into making the pages you create look the same in the editor as they do when published. Definitely difficult at times, but it is totally worth it.