Thanks for trying Engrave and for useful feedback. I have a few additional questions and answers :)
this editor is a mess and definitely doesn't work for the post-PC era
What is your smartphone model? I tried it on different Android phones with Chrome browser and it's working like a charm.
While this is merely a first post, the selection of category based on a pre-existing list of categories - not integrated in any onboarding flow - is confusing to an experienced user, go figure what lesser experienced users may think of it.
That's a very good point. Never thought about it in that way. Surely need to be fixed. Thanks!
Add to that the inability to upload images at first sight, complete without integration of for example imgur API
Drag and drop image upload will be introduced shortly :) Just give us some time :)
lack of any mention of Markdown features.
That's right, there should any info about it.
there's a lot of work ahead yet.
Yeah, we are definitely aware of it :) But don't worry, we would love to introduce more and more features and fixes. But it takes time so everyone needs to be patient :) We're going to do our best!
It’s a great start. Looking round I’m not sure it can be called a MVP (Google Analytics integration definitely isn’t MVP level, neither are browser notifications IMHO) but I think the design needs to be challenged.
The right sidebar does include all content required, but that actually belongs in an onboarding tour. At that moment it can totally be ditched. A collapsible left sidebar would also be an improvement. WordPress pre-Gutenberg didn’t get much right when it comes to providing an enjoyable writing experience but it did get that collapsible navigation right. Yay, I guess.
I wrote the post on an iPad Pro (2016 model), using Brave. An additional reflection for editors: when the editor makes use of buttons, the button bar should become sticky upon scroll. What’s the use of writing 800 words and needing to scroll up to find the preview button? At which point there is no indication that the preview requires inline scrolling. Yes, I’m nitpicking now. But I was slightly disappointed given the usual clean design of your projects, with ample white space. :D
Edit: Don’t sweat the features, sweat the UX. Users, and even more so a rather inexperienced crowd as Steem’s, will always want at the very least the kitchen sink and two microwaves as well thrown in. Most features will distract. Be lean, validate what you develop rather than developing for the sake of.
Thank you for really useful feedback.
That's the main reason we actually published our work already - to get some information from real users. We do have a blogging background personally but everyone is using it in a different way. And we want to develop things that are useful for other bloggers.
I will investigate it.
Good point, I will change that.
From my experience there’s a massive risk in this:
While feedback is important and valuable, in my experience the roadmap is best validated by offering the users the option to select what they want. Otherwise you may end up with the usual Uservoice/Get Satisfaction “peer pressure” case where the top 5 features are totally not part of the spirit of the app you’re building. At which point you may give the impression that you don’t care about the users, yet it’s rather one of design experience and knowing what works. I’m pretty sure the open sourced Write.as software (Write Freely) didn’t hit the top of hacker news because of user feedback but rather because of continued vision of the team. ;)
Even Iconfactory shut down their Twitterrific public uservoice because of the peer pressure it creates on the team.
As for the iPad thing... yes, normally modern tablets are fully fledged screens and there should be no mobile resolution pushed to them. But in 3 columns mode it doesn’t work, not at modern font-sizes.
Don't get my previous comment wrong. We won't do everything people say and don't abandon everything which people don't like. It's not our first project and we think we know how to balance user feedback along with our vision :) We will do our best to achieve our goals but with respect to users real needs.
In that case it is great to know that there is a problem with UX flow from your point of view. There is a lot of things we could not get because it's our design and we thougth it's ok. And we're only humans and we do mistakes :)
And small things like collapsable sidebar and sticky buttons may do UX much better but we need to get that kind of feedback from bloggers :)