Learning Medium’s Editor

First draft, just for testing purposes.

Writing this note feels really strange. This is nothing like “fill out a form with fields and CKEditor text box” you may know from Your favourite CMS. This feels like writing on plain piece of paper, with tools appearing magically only when you need them.

What about adding some video to show You this? Let’s take a try. I’ll open up SOM (really great screen-saving software) and record this process. 3..2…1… go!. First let’s add link to SOM. Done. Then add a image. Oops. First I’ve added background image.

Yeah, that’s better ☺. And I’ve found “section” feature when searching for “add image” link. Really neat, but how to delete it and make image inline with text? Ok, I got it, have to delete section divider.

Can I upload a video? Nope, only link to Youtube or similar site… not really a problem novadays, but I’ll upload it later, connected to another network.

Can i get rid of those smileys? Seems not so easy ☹. I’t minor issue but I could use some preferences like “turn text into smileys on/off”… Maybe it is possible? Nope, I’ve just checked in user settings. Without saving anything — Medium saves this draft several times per minute, so I can close browser and get back to writing without thinking about saving my work. I can even preview and revert to earlier version, great!

Well. In a 5–10 minutes I’ve learned this new UI and it looks really easy for non-technical people, that could fear using things like CKEditor or similar tools. I am about to try the co-authoring and paragraph-note features in a different post and then write about it on our blog.elimu.pl because Medium deserves a note for its innovative and incredible easy UX, right?

Or maybe You can think up or show me better User Interface for writing stuff?