Hacker News Reader

Comment by extension | Hacker News Reader

I love this! Tons of places to dump text on the web but I've never seen one that gives you a clean page. Suggestions:

- Set a cookie and let the poster edit/delete the page after it's published. They will make typos, mess up the formatting, post while drunk, etc.

- Markdown formatting. You need at least bold and italics. You could even have a small toolbar. I don't think the editor needs to be super minimal, just the viewer.

- Make sure the branding and links at the bottom are visually distinct from anything the user could enter. Maybe give it a grey background or invert it or something. Fixed positioning is also an option, but might be too annoying.

- Remove the Feedback tab from the viewer.. really spoils the aesthetic.

View on HN

I'm not sure if I would agree with Markdown, depending on your audience. I'm of the opinion that trying to teach the concept of markup to ordinary people is always going to alienate some non-technical users.

I'd just suggest adding buttons for bold, italic & link. That way you can still keep it simple. I'm all for having a ruthless approach to unnecessary features.

On the other hand, when faced with a blank text box, some more technical users will type in Markdown out of habit. Adding basic Markdown support while also having a couple buttons for bold/italics/link is an easy way to support both audiences.

I used to be on that side, but with Reddit's success and their use of Markdown I've decided that it is OK for even the non-technical audience. (Though there still should be the little "formatting help" button like they have nearby)

Reddit provides enough value for its users for them to invest the effort to learn some Markdown. This is due to Reddit's content and community being the main sources of value for the user, not it's text-formatting features. I couldn't say the same for this app. If they can't pick it up in two seconds, I think most won't bother.

Thanks a lot for the suggestions. Agree on the first point.

Markdown formatting I actually did implement, but commented out for the first "release". It will be a somewhat restricted markdown, along the line of reddit.

I am not sure what you mean about the branding. If you could elaborate, I would be greatful.

The feedback button should go, I agree. Thanks again! I decided to follow the "let users tell you what they want" strategy, so it is great to get feedback.

In case it might be of use, GitHub has come up with a somewhat-restricted version of Markdown: http://github.github.com/github-flavored-markdown/

Thanks! It is useful. I am surprised that there are not more of these restricted markdown projects. It's a common need.

Aside: A long while back I wrote a tiny greasemonkey script to remove those annoying feedback tabs. (Here: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/76116 )

I forgot that they even existed until you just mentioned it. Maybe other people would want to use it?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com