- On an iPad Pro (iPadOS 16.1.1 - not sure how current that is offhand), the UI is extremely unintuitive and/or broken. Tapping the example landed me in an editor that then took far too long to figure out how to get out of.
- It remembers that the editor is up. Once up, getting out and back to the homepage is next to impossible until you figure out the UI (clearing cookies probably would have worked, but that’s not exactly convenient). Reloading just takes you back to the editor.
- The timeline and one other view (can’t remember which one offhand) just showed a black screen.
- One of the biggest draws for markdown for me is the fact that it, in general, reads like a formatted text file. The formatting “instructions” are almost transparent in that sense. Not completely, but almost. My initial view of the example timeline’s source did not feel that way.
(Ignore my extra caps; iOS is annoying like that.)
“Sections” in markdown would be written more naturally, and the end intuited based on the following content:
# Welcome
Blah blah blah
# foo
Blah blah blah
The extra wordy markup means little, and detracts from readability. Similar with groups. Date formats appear to get somewhat complicated as well. If that was resolved, I think it would be much better.
This is just a surface reaction to what I see; I didn’t do a horribly deep dive. I love the idea. It just needs some work if it’s going to be as smooth as markdown.
on iPad the UI is extremely unintuitive and/or broken
The benefit of the desktop is being able to hover over buttons, most have tooltips with descriptions. This is not an excuse necessarily but I would liken it to landing on github.dev or vscode.dev without having seen or used VS code before. I really hate walkthroughs with tooltips (both as a user and a developer) but maybe I'll have to do something like that. What I do like about the current UI is that, by keeping control elements on the side and tabs on the bottom, I can have a consistent experience across devices and screen sizes.
Drawing more attention to the fact that there is a tabbed interface might help, seems like that was an issue.
Re: markwhen's syntax - I'll tell you what I like about it first, and then get into some of your points. I like that it is quite progressive. You don't need a header to start, nor groups, nor ranges necessarily, and you shouldn't have to think much about date formatting.
```
1 Aug 2023: hi
```
is a valid markwhen document. If a list of dates like that is all you need, that's great. If you need ranges you can add ranges. Need groups, add groups. Need metadata, add a header. I like that it follows a new user's experience, you don't necessarily have to start with everything from the beginning.
On groups and sections, people wanted nesting, soooo the simple hashtag syntax wasn't going to work without an end hashtag or something. So it doesn't mean nothing, it means the end of the group or section. Idk, I'm open to suggestions about it. I personally don't use nested groups and sections that much but people wanted it. There has to be some endGroup or endSection syntax I think, even if it's not those specific words
Comments
Random feedback:
- On an iPad Pro (iPadOS 16.1.1 - not sure how current that is offhand), the UI is extremely unintuitive and/or broken. Tapping the example landed me in an editor that then took far too long to figure out how to get out of.
- It remembers that the editor is up. Once up, getting out and back to the homepage is next to impossible until you figure out the UI (clearing cookies probably would have worked, but that’s not exactly convenient). Reloading just takes you back to the editor.
- The timeline and one other view (can’t remember which one offhand) just showed a black screen.
- One of the biggest draws for markdown for me is the fact that it, in general, reads like a formatted text file. The formatting “instructions” are almost transparent in that sense. Not completely, but almost. My initial view of the example timeline’s source did not feel that way.
For example, sections:
(Ignore my extra caps; iOS is annoying like that.)“Sections” in markdown would be written more naturally, and the end intuited based on the following content:
The extra wordy markup means little, and detracts from readability. Similar with groups. Date formats appear to get somewhat complicated as well. If that was resolved, I think it would be much better.This is just a surface reaction to what I see; I didn’t do a horribly deep dive. I love the idea. It just needs some work if it’s going to be as smooth as markdown.
JMHO, and good luck in any event. =)
I agree with your point 3. This is more like a DSL for Gantt charts, a bit like what PlantUML is for s/w diagrams.
It's very useful for that, don't get me wrong. But associating it with Markdown is a stretch.
Thank you for the candid feedback.
The benefit of the desktop is being able to hover over buttons, most have tooltips with descriptions. This is not an excuse necessarily but I would liken it to landing on github.dev or vscode.dev without having seen or used VS code before. I really hate walkthroughs with tooltips (both as a user and a developer) but maybe I'll have to do something like that. What I do like about the current UI is that, by keeping control elements on the side and tabs on the bottom, I can have a consistent experience across devices and screen sizes.
Drawing more attention to the fact that there is a tabbed interface might help, seems like that was an issue.
Re: markwhen's syntax - I'll tell you what I like about it first, and then get into some of your points. I like that it is quite progressive. You don't need a header to start, nor groups, nor ranges necessarily, and you shouldn't have to think much about date formatting.
``` 1 Aug 2023: hi ``` is a valid markwhen document. If a list of dates like that is all you need, that's great. If you need ranges you can add ranges. Need groups, add groups. Need metadata, add a header. I like that it follows a new user's experience, you don't necessarily have to start with everything from the beginning.
On groups and sections, people wanted nesting, soooo the simple hashtag syntax wasn't going to work without an end hashtag or something. So it doesn't mean nothing, it means the end of the group or section. Idk, I'm open to suggestions about it. I personally don't use nested groups and sections that much but people wanted it. There has to be some endGroup or endSection syntax I think, even if it's not those specific words