RE: ENGRAVE - My first post using Engrave, first impression.
Thank you for a great feedback. I really appreciate it!
Communities
Engrave is a platform for single bloggers but we're working on a version for multiple users which will be more like a CMS rather that blogging platform. As you already know, it works in a different way but we will post more details later. Right now, we're focused on a single author version.
Currently, to see post preview you have to toggle the button that allows you to see the your markdown and post side-by-side.
Ultimately, it will be possible to preview article directly on a blog (with a currently configured theme). It's already possible on "Engrave for Teams" and you are in a small group of people who can already test it :)
Unlike Steemit markdown, Engrave's draft doesn't save drafts for a long time, and if you refresh your page in the midst of composing the post make sure you "Save Draft" button.
Well, drafts are more like "working copies" of your articles, prepared for future use. We've implemented autosaving that you won't lost your work after incidentally closing your browser but if I remember correctly it's enabled only for "new post" form. I will try to gather more feedback about this mechanism and change it if necessary.
Image drag and drop doesn't work with the current markdown. So my solution was to drag and drop into Steemit markdown and the copy the code into the one on Engrave.
I personally feel that this is one of the biggest disadvantages of Engrave right now. There is no mechanism to upload images directly to your blog. It's high on our TODO list and needs to be fixed quickly.
You can't bring your old posts to be seen through Engrave. So your only options is to just start posting new content to populate your Engrave site. Or re-post some of your old stuff if you want it to appear on the website you're designing (which you might see me do in the near future).
There are a few technical reasons why it works in that way. Steemit allows you to post article with syntax not compatible with the markdown standard. And it work for them because they're interpreting it in very own way. But to enable themes mechanism it's necessary to follow that standard.
We will probably introduce the mechanism that will allow bloggers to import previous posts. I will write more specific post if necessary :)
Thank you, I'm hope you will stay with us and you will give us even more constructive feedback :)
Thank you so much for the thorough response @nicniezgrublem!
I'm definitely someone who finds your project very exciting, and i expect a lot more people to be using it soon. Just thinking about all artists that can showcase all their art in this format is already a giving me a vision of the potential the Engrave has.
Regarding the communities, I think my understanding of it is still not fully formed as i haven't had the chance to play with all the settings yet. But just based on the sample site that you showed me, this idea of multy-user access is really what will make all the difference.
Of course this was my first time experiencing how engrave works and i hope i gave it a fair "first impression" review. I will definitely continue using it, I have still a lot more to explore! As a designer, I think that Engrave is one of the most visually pleasing presentation of steem content that I've seen.
So once again, congrats on the awesome initiative!