Hi Steemians,
I'm a software developer and in learning some new tools, I kept thinking to myself there are many things in the web writer at steemit that I'd like to improve on. So, I figured I'd write my own and share it with the community!
Steem Writer is my solution, and its online and available for anyone to use.
https://steemwriter.learnthis.ca
Overview and Features
Here are a few of the features I've built in, which I wanted to address and make something better than the "submit a story" option at steemit today.
- Simple Help and Guided Tour
- No Logins needed at this time
- Multiple Drafts
- Autosave detection
- Live Preview
- Snippets
- Profile Links
Multiple Drafts and Stories
- Most importantly, I wanted the ability to create and switch between many different drafts
- Each draft has its title, story and tags that can easily be saved, so you can switch between them and come back at any time.
- With multiple stories, its eaiser to copy and paste between them for any content or elements in your posts that you repeat.
Live Preview
- The editor has a side by side editor and preview, so its much easier to see the layout of your story, while you are typing it, which I find a lot easier than having to scroll up and down.
- The preview supports all markdown just like steemit, so you can type and see the preview live
- Works on a wider screen layout, so the preview can be scrolled independantly
- Images in the preview will auto scale to the width if you use a smaller screen or shrink down your window.
Snippets
- Similar to to any story, but intended for copy and pasting into your posts, snippets let you store things like your signature, previous post links or other elements in markdown format that you want to have easily available and quick to copy and paste into your posts.
Profile Links
- Enter your Steemit ID, and all the profile links link directly to your profile pages at Steemit, Steemd, Steemdb and Steemwhales for quick convenient linking.
Great man! Pls submit to http://steemtools.com (link to submit in bottom menu) !!
Oh ya, I meant to check out how to do that, THANKS, I will for sure!
Great work, I'll save it and give it a try when I write my next post.
Thanks senanigator, please let me know any feedback, I plan to keep improving this and have some other tools in development as well, that I think EVERY one will be able to use.
Wow! This is a really cool app that should be in https://SteemTools.com for sure. Thanks
Thanks luzcypher, I've submitted it now to the steemtools site, so it should get listed there!
I have to try this
Thanks spbesner, I hope you do, and let me know if any suggestions to improve it or little bugs found, i want to ensure its as useful as possible.
bookmarked
We miss you, by the way :)Looks nice. I'll try composing tomorrow's #chessmatch post on it.
Hey Mattclarke, thanks for the comment. This explains why I haven't been involved in your cool chess match lately, I'm been busy programming!!! I do like your chess match idea though, you got me playing chess online a bit for practise just against bots, but its been a long time since I played much, so certainly no match yet for you. :) Keep it going!
I'm on the ropes, just waiting for the end now.
Some good news though, the pot has grown, and the top 3 have all agreed to split the winnings, broken down by total upvotes, so you can expect a few dollars in your wallet in the next week or so.
Well that is cool, I'll have to get in and do some voting still for the final moves.
I've just joined steemit and look forward to using this. The auto save feature will be so helpful to me.
That's awesome, thanks and welcome vir! I hope you enjoy it, please let me know if any ideas to improve it.
Excellent work!
The chain tips its hat to you!
Hello! voted and followed
Appreciate you identifying a need and bringing the solution to Steemit.Thank you for posting @unipsycho. This tool sounds great and an apt name.
Thank you for your support.
Thanks bluejay, great to hear such feedback and that there is so much interest already in steemwriter. I have another great automation tool in the works next, I think there is a lot of cool ways to improve and add to the awesome steemit community.
It is very useful, thank you.
Thanks darthnava, I hope you can use it and I'll keep on improving it for sure.
Looks quite interesting! Will test it out when I write a post. :)
Thanks firepower, I hope you will. It doesn't POST directly for you yet, but you just copy and paste it to steemit for that. I plan to add that feature soon once the new @busy.org SteemConnect is ready for login synchronization. Even without that, I use it now for all my writing, its much easier and nice to have multiple drafts and the preview side by side.
I know that it doesn't post. Personally, I'm comfortable writing posts with markdown to format them as I write but this is good for new users and i'll probably let a few people know about this if/when they ask me for an easier way to format posts when drafting it. :) Good luck with further development! :)
Thanks firepower. I'll probably add posting in the future, but wanted something to start that is simple, but a more powerful side by side preview and multiple drafts, that's what it is good at right now!
I just joined Steemit today and I'll be using it for my posts. It was fun talking about this and testing it out a bit before you released it. It's looking good. It should save people lots of time!
Thanks dennis1, welcome to steemit! I'm glad I was able to get you into steemit and yes, thanks for the brainstorming for steemwriter, and ideas when I was starting it, and for helping to test it out. I hope it serves your future steeming well!!!
looks good :)
Thanks kingscrown, I hope you can use it and I plan to keep improving it!
cool, there is https://steempower.org/editor as well, provided by @charlieshrem
Thanks good-karma, I had never found this one actually, as I did do some searching for better writers, but I guess its all in how one searches!!! I'll definitely check this one out further and chat with @charlieshrem and try his tool as well. I'm really focused to make mine simple and FAST to use, so I hope people see that in the design and layout of steemwriter.
I like that yours seems to support most or all of the hybrid HTML (including div tags) with markdown that Steemit supports. This means it's even more Steemit-feature-complete than stackedit.io which I use the most. steempower.org doesn't support any HTML.
The automatic saving and retrieval of an in-progress post is great and that's a large reason why I use stackedit.io. I just tried to create a new post and the old one wasn't automatically saved for retrieval. stackedit.io does this which is a nice way of not having to worry if anything I put there is saved.
If I could change just one thing, I would not keep showing the tutorial box every time I visit.
Thanks for the comments pfunk. I'll see what I can do about those things. Glad to hear you like it so far! The autosave should warn you if you switch drafts and have any edits. I'll probably add a config option where you can tell it to always autosave on edits, so it doesn't always ask you.
I still want to add an option to detect Images and links like steemit edit does so you can just paste one link and voila, it will markdown it properly.
As for the help, you can open that anytime, just click help and then the link for "Using Steemwriter". This way you can reopen the tips.
I mean it keeps coming back :P I don't want to see it again. I'm using Firefox latest version if it's a browser-specific bug.
OK gotcha. Ya it might be browser specific, I'll look into that to fix it. Thanks for clarifying
Yes, I was going to tell you about that too....about the tutorial boxes. Let me know if that gets fixed. Oh and you made Curie.. good for you!
Thanks @countrygirl and @pfunk for reporting the issues with the guide. Found the problem and another related one where it was duplicating the first post. Got it fixed up, so when you access it again, you should be all fixed up. Otherwise, just create a new post and save it, then the guide goes away as well. ENJOY!
Finally. I've been waiting for months for something like this.
Thanks talanhorne, that's great to hear, not waiting for months :(, but the interest in steemwriter!! :)
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Really cool! Nice job 👍 ✨
Thanks personz, glad you like it. I'll have a new version ready in another day or two as well, with a bunch more nice features, so keep an eye out for that real soon!
Will do :D