Tag: editor

Categories
Blogs and blogging People Publishing

On Manton Reece’s thoughts about WordPress, and the new Editor (formerly known as Gutenberg)

I just read Manton Reece’s thoughts about the new WordPress Editor (formerly known as Gutenberg), and I don’t really agree:

As I test Gutenberg, I keep coming back to one question: is it good for blogging? The goal with Micro.blog is to make blogging easier so that more people will have their own site instead of delegating their web identity to a social network. Gutenberg is more flexible than today’s WordPress, but it’s also more complex for someone who just wants to type in a few sentences and hit publish.

The new editor is available to both WordPress.com and self-hosted sites ahead of the WordPress 5.0 release. I’ve been using it on this site for a couple weeks, and in a couple test sites so I can anticipate or troubleshoot issues that our users may encounter.

I think there’s some merit in Reece’s perception of Gutenberg. I also think I fall more into the category of bloggers who like to open a simple editor and start typing into a text box.

A lot of WordPress users don’t want this simpler experience. I come across many people who want a very visual editor where you can create pretty dynamic layouts on the fly.

The new editor may be more for those people, but it can work pretty well for someone who wants to open a blank editor window and start typing, too.

Put another way, as WordPress matures I think it moves further away from the ideal blogging interface for someone who wants to write every day. Even as we add features to Micro.blog — domain names, themes, full-length posts, photos, podcasting — the core platform will always be rooted in the simple idea of a text box and a timeline.

Granted I’m a little biased because I work for Automattic, and I believe in what we’re doing. At the same time, I was a blogger long before I joined this company, and WordPress has been synonymous with “blogging” for me for almost 14 years.

I’m still deciding whether the new WordPress Editor is going to be the default on my personal site. It’s still early days for Gutenberg, and I think it has an exciting future.

That said, I like my simpler text windows, Markdown, and monospace fonts when I write (thank goodness for MarsEdit). Not everyone does, and WordPress is still flexible enough to accommodate almost all of us.

(Now, if I could just configure this blog to play nicely with all its IndieWeb cousins again, that would be great.)

Categories
Applications Mindsets

VS Code has a little too much of the old Microsoft

Update (2018-09-18): I had this wrong. I was able to disable the Live Share and Azure extensions in VS Code. I just wasn’t paying close enough attention to the error messages I highlighted below.

You can disable the both the Azure and Live Share extensions by first disabling their dependencies. In the case of Live Share, I first had to disable the Live Share Audio extension. In the case of the Azure extension, I had to disable the Azure Functions extension first.

I like VS Code. That, in itself, still surprises me a little given which company created it. I still remember the Old Days when Microsoft took every opportunity to coerce users to use its solutions, often using pretty aggressive tactics.

Many have said that we’re dealing with a new Microsoft, friend to the FOSS community, trusted custodian of critical platforms like GitHub. That may well be true. At the same time, I still see a little of the old Microsoft seeping through now and then.

I opened VS Code today, to take a look at some code I’ve been meaning to continue working on. I noticed that Live Share updated when I open the app, and then seemed to start running for some reason.

I don’t use Live Share (although the functionality is interesting).

Rather than have extensions running that I don’t use, I thought I’d disable Live Share, along with the Azure extensions that seem to be installed and activated by default. That didn’t quite work out for me.

Can't uninstall or deactivate Live Share
Can’t uninstall or deactivate Live Share
I can't uninstall or deactivate VS Code's Azure extensions either.
I can’t uninstall or deactivate VS Code’s Azure extensions either.

As good as VS Code is, I don’t like being required to keep Microsoft’s extensions installed when I don’t make use of them. I’d expect that from an application that doesn’t hold itself out as “extensible and customizable”.

This just taints the progress the company has made, to a degree. It also leaves me wondering what else is running in VS Code when I use it, that I didn’t enable?

Categories
Blogs and blogging

Easier mobile blogging with the WordPress Aztec editor

Israeli Paper exhibit at the Eretz Israel Museum
We decided to spend the day in Tel Aviv and went to the Eretz Israel Museum. So much to see, not nearly enough time to see it all.

Automattic recently released a beta version if its new editor for mobile WordPress apps.

Now that so many of us carry around tiny pocket-size computers, more and more of our Internet time happens on phones and tablets — not just browsing, but creating. You’ve been asking for a better publishing experience in the WordPress app to make mobile publishing smoother. Today we’re introducing a new editor for iOS and Android, codenamed “Aztec.” It’s speedy and reliable, works with posts and pages, and is ready for beta testing!

Given how much time we spend using our mobile devices, a great mobile blogging experience is increasingly valuable.

I still need to play around with this a bit more but I’m pretty excited to see what I can do with the mobile app.

Read more: “A Brand New Editor for the WordPress Mobile Apps”

About the featured image: If you are curious, this was part of a very cool display at the Eretz Israel Museum called “On the Edge: Israeli Paper” that features some of the incredible things artists have done with paper. The exhibit runs until the end of October 2017.