I decided to create another post on Leofinance Alpha, to get used to the interface.
At the same time, by looking more often at it, I can discover things that I love, that can be improved or that outright bother me.
The first thing I miss and the reason why I don't try to write all my posts using the alpha interface is the lacking auto-drafts (or even manual draft saving). I suppose they will be included at some point.
For now, I have to be super careful to save my work every once in a while in a temporary file.
Here are some issues I just discovered:
1. if I click on the "Post" link at the bottom-right as the post is right now, without tags or title,
this is what happens:
By the looks of the URL, this should be a page with my blog posts, which I assume is not released yet. But there is an additional issue. I shouldn't be able to go through that page until I had a fully "publishable" post, with all its characteristics, title and tags included.
2. If I click on any of the menus at the left, the text of the post is lost.
Even with draft saving, this can be something undesirable. The chances of this happening with the menu on the left instead of at the top are higher, in my opinion, but the reasons for choosing this layout make sense for mobile.
I think a popup to warn that the post text will be lost if you move to another page would help. It would be crucial if drafts are not introduced.
3. Confusing to have two active links saying "Post" on the same page.
Users can become confused by having two links ("buttons") saying "Post" on the same page, one on the left menu and the other on the right menu, both active.
The solution is to either rename one (for example rename the right one as "Publish") or a more elegant one, in my opinion, would be to disable the link on the left menu bar, while a post is written.
4. Independent Scrolling of Typing and Preview Areas
Looks like these two areas are now independently scrolling. Normally, I believe that's a good thing because apparently, it was quite difficult to keep them synchronized (on the main website).
Better no auto-scrolling than one out-of-sync.
There is one caveat though. Would it still be possible to auto-scroll as we start typing to the point of text insertion/edit/deletion?
5. Saving Most Used Tags Between Posts
This is something we are used to on the main interface which I don't see on the alpha version, and I miss it. Maybe it is, and it needs more than one post to activate, and I only posted once on the alpha interface.
For example, since I write a lot about splinterlands, I add that tag to many of my posts. And it's easier to click on it on a list than to write it every time. Plus, typos are avoided.
Feedback on Threads
I only want to say one thing about threads here.
I remember the initial ideas Khal presented on how filtering content based on certain accounts would look like.
And the first ideas they toyed with (publicly) were to use the accounts we follow on Hive as a filter for the content we see on Threads.
That idea would have been easier to implement because the blockchain already had a mechanism to handle followers, but had obvious drawbacks.
That's because the reason why one would follow someone on Hive is in many cases different than the reason for following someone on Threads.
That's why the way filtering by account will work on Threads specifically, without relying on who the account follows on the blockchain, is a much better solution for the user experience, in my opinion, even though we haven't seen this feature rolled out yet.