pull down to refresh

Yes, we're working on a new editor.
2468 sats \ 21 comments \ @sox 10h meta
Hi guys, I'm sox! ^^ It's been a month, but I finally figured out how to connect to the internet again.

The value of your words

One of the core concepts of Stacker News is that it gives you a platform to write content so good that people will pay bitcoins for it.
And I'm personally amazed by the fact that, as of now, more than 1,250,000 of your creations have been posted right from your keyboard onto Stacker News. That's a lot!
Now let's dive deeper on content creation.

A new editor.

We want to help you push your creativity and writing skills even further, and we're going to give you the best tools to do so.
design absolutely not final, subject to change *rich as in rich mode, lol
This new editor is packed with features, but I'm going to show you just a few, for now.

Resize your images, and add a caption too.

You’re writing a really good post about a cat. It’s time to add a picture of said cat, but just as you’re about to see your preview, the image suddenly appears and takes up all the space.
We're going to save you from this madness, by giving you the ability to resize your images and videos. And while we were at it, media will support little captions.
design absolutely not final, subject to change in a next update, media will be draggable, but we'll talk more about how it'll work later
Select, paste, done. You just inserted a new link. You want to be more careful with it? The link editor can help you.
design absolutely not final, subject to change - ok sox we get it

Even more tools

And not to mention alignmentsnew!, indentation, clickable checklists, cool unannounced stuff that's too cool to talk about now, and much more!
design absolutely not final, subject to change - stop it

But wait, what about Markdown?

Extended, switchable markdown mode The new editor™ is split in markdown mode and rich mode, it supports lossless transformations of rich nodes into markdown and viceversa.
This required an extension of the markdown we're going to support, adding support for selected HTML equivalents. Also requires careful precision in transformations, which has to be nailed perfectly if we really want to make it truly lossless.
Highlighted Markdown The markdown in the video was a bit colorful, wasn't it?
Markdown Mode, and every code block, are powered in real time by Shiki, a lightweight syntax highlighter. It gives clarity to the content you want to write in Markdown: so long unstyled and messy markers stealing the scene from your text!

What's next and when.

This has been a sneak peek into what's next for the writing experience on Stacker News. But the editor, a really central part of SN, has to be at least somewhat good enough for everyday use before we can let you get your hands on it.
Hopefully this is going to happen in a couple of weeks. The backstage work is nearly complete, now it's down to polishing, styling and QA.

You

While this early preview just shows what the editor is already capable of, your feedback will be essential throughout the whole pre-release period to create an editor that fits like a glove on your hand. The design and features are going to evolve and change a lot in these next weeks, so stay tuned for more updates.
I was so excited that I just couldn't hide it from you anymore!
  • sox
write
preview
related posts
125 sats \ 1 reply \ @BlokchainB 8h
Will all this work on Mobile?
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @sox OP 1h
Of course! Desktop and mobile are tested in parallel.
Mobile is going to need bigger buttons and clickable surfaces, but this won't ship until the experience is comfortable on both ends.
reply
100 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei 2h
Way to spice up my SN life! Thanks, mate
reply
49 sats \ 2 replies \ @sox OP 1h
@guerratotal and @supratic #692783 is still something I want to implement.
This post focuses on the early capabilities of the new editor, but not so much about UX. That's going to be featured in a later post.
reply
100 sats \ 1 reply \ @supratic 1h
NFW, That's great! This will enable a creativity exploit on SN.
Still, would be nice to have:
  • the editor menu following the user when scrolling
  • keyboard shortcut for switching between editor and preview
  • documented keyboard short codes (or leave it as easter eggs)
reply
33 sats \ 0 replies \ @sox OP 55m
Well, thank you!
  • the editor menu following the user when scrolling
    • in progress
  • keyboard shortcut for switching between editor and preview
export const EDITOR_SHORTCUTS = [
  {
    action: 'toggleMode',
    combo: 'mod+shift+m',
    handler: ({ editor }) => {
      editor.dispatchCommand(SN_TOGGLE_MODE_COMMAND)
    }
  },
  • documented keyboard short codes
    • there's gonna be an overwhelming modal for this, because every action has a shortcut, but I didn't do it yet because the idea already overwhelmed me lol
reply
100 sats \ 5 replies \ @SimpleStacker 9h
Are we gonna get spoiler tags too?
reply
0 sats \ 4 replies \ @sox OP 9h
✍️ spoiler tags
Yes! But I was really conflicted on how to proceed with their presentation. Should they be traditional spoilers like
orrrr hidden text that replaces the spoiler summary on click?
reply
100 sats \ 3 replies \ @SimpleStacker 9h
for in-line I prefer the hidden text that reveals on click
for paragraph I like expandable
Sorry, more work for you! HAHA
reply
0 sats \ 1 reply \ @sox OP 9h
I didn't talk about it in this post, but there are also going to be new Math nodes powered by KaTeX instead of MathJax.
It's lightning fast and undoubtedly better. It produces HTML suitable for more than just math. I'm not sure it'll be ready for the first version, but this also means Equation Editor
reply
100 sats \ 0 replies \ @south_korea_ln 8h
\mathcal{H}\mathbb{U}\mathcal{R}\mathbb{R}\mathcal{A}\mathbb{Y}
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @sox OP 9h
no worries, the relationship between rich and markdown mode has already reached 5k lines lmao.
I like the double approach!
reply
69 sats \ 1 reply \ @magnolia_mayhem 6h
Aww man. I was expecting a vscode competitor.
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @sox OP 1h
Hey we're not a random AI company on X
reply
150 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby 8h
Getting tingles in my fingers here...
reply
100 sats \ 1 reply \ @jbschirtzinger 8h
On the face of it, these seem like good improvements. Is there anything for those who are making directories of posts? Maybe something like an auto-table or something?
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @sox OP 1h
The new editor supports tables right out of the box, but I wanted to give them some advanced features and they're somewhat ugly for now. We’ll feature them in a future post!
reply
100 sats \ 0 replies \ @StillStackinAfterAllTheseYears 9h
Holy crap! I cannot wait.
reply
100 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 9h
Exciting news!
reply
100 sats \ 0 replies \ @billytheked 9h
Exciting news
reply
100 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 9h
WoW nice options
reply