Bootstrapping the Medium
This Medium article is aiming to constructively criticize and therefore to improve the Medium. Some issues might be changed. Others will touch fundamental principles, and therefore they are impossible to change without building a Medium 2.0.
Furthermore it is my first article, and it will teach me how to use the Medium.
Medium
… rings a bell, of course. Marshal McLuhan’s “The medium is the message”. I might write another article to explain my understanding of his famous phrase. By reading this yet unwritten article, I might understand whether the web is cool or hot. The Medium is definitely cool – like in cool jazz – because it requires involvement, lean forward, to understand, to read, to participate, to contribute to the Medium.
The decision to take “Medium” as a name for this platform is a bold move. At least it acknowledges the impact of the medium on any creative process, and of this new web-based reading and writing platform in specific. On the other hand I do not like it for the same reason: there are so many more media on the web and elsewhere, and the Medium is just one of them.
Writing
Writing Usability
Pros
- easy, simple, minimal, just the essentials. Keep it that way, and do not listen to all of my issues below.
- It is possible to copy&paste paragraphs and keep the notes on the side bar. Well done!
- adding images is simple and straight forward
Cons
- The single most severe challenge on starting to write a new article is the mandatory step to select a collection for the new text. I dunno yet. I dunno care. I do want to go straight to the editor not to forget the wonderful first sentence of my essay. Nothing is offered that looks right or like a temporary place holder. /fixed
• no lists
- no obvious list feature
- a lot of space between list items
- no strike-through
- I guess I just lost a note on my article. I’ve updated the list structure below at Reading Usability, to realize that a note has vanished. This should not happen. I wonder where the notes are anchored to update my mental model of Medium to avoid this mistake.
- After pressing the button [Publish changes] the entire page is selected for no obvious reason. /Mac-FF /fixed
- A “>” turns into a “>” in the preview of the article.
- Paste is broken in Medium, i.e. the clipboard’s content is inserted always at the top of the article. /Mac-FF /fixed
Publishing
Draft vs Published (1)
At this point I wonder if I can still edit a published article. I would be surprised if not. Let me try…
Yes, possible. :) Dear reader, welcome to my first article on Medium!
Tomorrow I will see if the Medium makes a distinction between the publishing date and the last modification date. It might not be a big deal for typical* articles – for some other texts this matters.
[* The Medium has a profound impact on the articles that are written on and for the Medium. Each design decision influences the direction of what is being published. This is as true for the Medium as for any other medium.
Just take the typical length of articles as an example.The characteristics of Medium seem to demand certain sizes; in fact Medium defines typical by all its features and interactive behavior.]
Draft vs Published (2)
By accident I’ve published an article way too early. There is no way to unpublish! The only way is to copy the content, delete the article, create a new draft article, paste the content, and save the draft.
Crossposting to Collections
How do I add an article to a collection that I have never used before? For instance, I have created a new post for “Look What I Made” and want to add it to Digital Art as well. However, “Digital Art“ is not offered in the list of collections, and I cannot enter or search for it.
Answer: You fist have to publish a post to the target collection. Then it is offered to you for cross-publishing your other posts.
RSS
The feed at https://medium.com/feed/@mprove works fine. It includes the header image and the first paragraph.
Without really noticing I have created a new blog; a blog as part of Medium’s universe.
- I have to double check if the image is still included. On a recent article it was not.
Reading
Reading Usability
Pros
• legible font
• good length of lines with roughly 80 characters
Cons
- no scrolling with space bar under Firefox
- no scrolling on iPad if a comment is open - example - it always scrolls back to the commented paragraph.
- Back function in browser always goes to the top of the previous page – the scrolling position is not preserved. [Update: it just worked as expected under Mac/Firefox between two Medium pages. It does not work with external links.| Update 2: I came from https://medium.com/design-ux/latest , moved to and read https://medium.com/design-ux/b6e380e7be03 , clicked Back in FF and ended up at the top of https://medium.com/design-ux/latest ]
- the only way to keep an article (in the context of Medium) is to recommend it. Then is shows up on your profile page. Or maybe I should create a collection for just my favorites? /New Feature - meanwhile this is called a Reading List
- no search, but in google you can search for anything with “anything site:medium.com”
- After some tome it becomes difficult to recognize read vs. new articles. There are no cues or other indicators for articles:visited.
– to be continued –
