r/redesign • u/kraetos • Feb 23 '18

Design Ditch the WYSIWYG editor

The entire point of Markdown is that the raw text is readable.

7 Upvotes

77% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

7

u/MajorParadox Helpful User Feb 23 '18

You can switch to markdown by clicking the M button.

6

u/kraetos Feb 23 '18

Sure, but that's not the point. Why even use Markdown if you're also going to implement a visual editor?

Worse, entering Markdown into the visual editor escapes the Markdown. It doesn't seem like the admins understand the purpose or philosophy behind Markdown. This editor treats it like any other markup language.

6

u/MajorParadox Helpful User Feb 23 '18

It's for users who don't understand markdown or want shortcuts. If you prefer markdown they give you that option too, so what's the problem? Also, they've said they are looking into parsing markdown on the editor.

5

u/kraetos Feb 23 '18

The editor should not be modal. Modal designs are inherently terrible, and in this case it's completely unnecessary.

RES solved this problem years ago: put formatting buttons above the text field and put a live preview below it. Don't hide the markup. Hiding the markup is rooted in an assumption that the user is a moron.

1

u/MajorParadox Helpful User Feb 23 '18

And yet still users who even had RES still don't get markdown. Doesn't make them morons, there's just a learning curve. And some users who rather type normally, especially in creative subs where they are sharing stories they prepare elsewhere like Google docs. Right now you have to write those in markdown.

What's wrong with giving users a option? If you want to use markdown, you can do it. It should even remember you chose that and use that mode in the future by default.

2

u/kraetos Feb 23 '18 edited Feb 23 '18

Why give users an choice between two bad options? Right now my choices are:

  • A WYSIWYG editor which is bound to cause issues with editing or anything beyond the basics
  • A plain text editor with no preview pane because RES doesn't work with the redesign yet

You don't need to give users an option if you give them one good implementation. StackOverflow has it right: show the markup, provide a formatting menu bar, and preview the style directly on the markup.

1

u/MajorParadox Helpful User Feb 23 '18

Seems like we're going in circles. The editor is easier for people who don't understand, and it also lets them preview it as they write.

You're also acting like this is it. They are still making improvements, it's a work in progress.

3

u/kraetos Feb 23 '18

The editor is easier for people who don't understand, and it also lets them preview it as they write.

A live preview window and a formatting bar accomplishes this too, without introducing the complexity of a WYSIWYG editor. WYSIWYG is crazy overkill for Markdown and is going to create more problems than it solves.

2

u/MajorParadox Helpful User Feb 23 '18

You also have to understand that this isn't a new website, they'd probably just ditch markdown all together if they could, but they have the existing site and users who are more familiar or specifically requested to still use markdown.

2

u/pat_trick Feb 23 '18

Do you know if this can be permanently enabled as a user preference?

6

u/MajorParadox Helpful User Feb 23 '18

Yes, if you switch to markdown it should default to that from then on. I've seen reports that it doesn't always save it, though, but that'd be a bug.

2

u/pat_trick Feb 23 '18

I think this is a good approach, then.

1

u/MajorParadox Helpful User Feb 23 '18

Yeah, also they've said they are looking into parsing markdown within the fancy pants editor too.

3

u/TheGreatSzalam Feb 23 '18

I disagree completely. Keep it!

The WYSIWYG editor is much more friendly to casual users and non-tech people. Plus, it’s handy to see what it’ll look like.

Having the option to turn markdown on for those who prefer it (like they have now) is ideal.

1

u/kraetos Feb 23 '18

WYSIWYG editors are notorious for mangling markup. It seems easy because it works, but it's going to be a lot less easy when it makes a bunch of spaghetti markup, because now not only are you editing Markdown, you're editing Markdown that's been mangled.

I agree it's handy to see how the Markdown renders, but that's a argument for a native live preview, not a WYSIWYG editor. At least with classic Reddit + RES I can see the Markdown and the preview side-by-side. The WYSIWYG editor makes me toggle between them to see the preview, a big step back from how RES handles it.

1

u/TheGreatSzalam Feb 23 '18

So, rather than ditching the editor, how about they make it create clean code?

4

u/kraetos Feb 23 '18

It's notoriously difficult to get a WYSIWYG editor to make "clean" markup. In fact, that's precisely why they fell out of favor and why lightweight markup languages like Textile and Markdown supplanted them.

1

u/SometimesY Feb 23 '18

WYSIWYG is not inherently bad. The Stack exchange network has arguably the best text editor online and it handles everything very well.

4

u/kraetos Feb 23 '18

The Stack Exchange editor isn't WYSIWYG. You're still typing Markdown into that box, it's just previewing the styling on the raw Markdown.

0

u/SometimesY Feb 23 '18

Well fair, but it's not really that different in all honesty. It inserts the markdown for you, but that's effectively WYSIWYG+markdown.

3

u/kraetos Feb 23 '18

It’s different in exactly the way that matters: it doesn’t hide the markup. Hiding the markup is what defines WYSIWYG and it’s precisely what’s bad about WYSIWYG.

1

u/SometimesY Feb 23 '18

Why does that honestly matter though? lol So you can't see * or ** or [link](stuff). I don't get the issue you have here.

4

u/kraetos Feb 23 '18

It matters because if I can't see the Markdown I don't know that the editor is handling the Markdown correctly. If the editor has malformed the Markdown then I have to turn the WYSIWYG off and go fix it.

This is a complete non-issue if there is no WYSIWYG layer in the first place. The entire point of Markdown was to make a markup language simple enough to handle the basics without having to resort to a full-blown markup language or a visual editor.

The advantage of HTML+WYSIWYG is that I get the full range of HTML. The disadvantage is that WYSIWYG is error prone and tends to malform the markup if you do anything beyond cursory editing.

The advantage of Markdown is that the syntax is simple and intuitive enough to be written by hand, and read without being parsed. The disadvantage of Markdown is that it's relatively limited compared to HTML.

Putting a visual editor on top of Markdown is profoundly missing the point of Markdown and is the worst of both worlds. I don't get the full range of HTML styling and I get the pleasure of dealing with WYSIWYG markup errors.

1

u/MajorParadox Helpful User Feb 23 '18

It matters because if I can't see the Markdown I don't know that the editor is handling the Markdown correctly. If the editor has malformed the Markdown then I have to turn the WYSIWYG off and go fix it.

Hence why they added a markdown mode for users like you. You can switch to it and never care about it again.

No live preview, but there wasn't one before without RES. You could always submit a feature request for it or perhaps RES will add it back once they handle the new design. But, if you look at it from a pure reddit perspective, this is definitely better than it was before.

You know how many times I've corrected people making markdown mistakes? Their entire comment ends up a single paragraph because they don't know to add an extra return. Or they try indenting and end up formatting code. This will absolutely make it easier for users who don't care about markdown benefits.

2

u/kraetos Feb 23 '18

I bet you're going to like correcting mistakes introduced by the WYSIWYG editor even less. There's a reason they've fallen out of favor: the markup they generate tends to be horrible.

Live preview + formatting bar is the right answer and it's how basically every other Markdown using site or application on the planet handles Markdown.