April 26, 2008
Seeking feedback: design changes
Filed under: Feedback, ScribeFire -- Christopher Finke @ 12:54pmWe want ScribeFire to be the best blogging tool out there, and as part of that quest, we’re taking a look at possible updates to the design and layout of the editor.
Here’s our current design (click for full-size):
And here’s a proposed redesign (click for full-size):
What do you like about the new design? What don’t you like? Any other changes you would make?
April 26th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I’m very new to Scribefire, but I really like it so far. It definitely makes posting so much easier. The interface is great, but there are a couple of things I think would help the blogging experience. First of all, I’d love a way to log in each time with my password. As I share the machine with several members of my family I’d like to make Scribefire more secure. Also, I would find it helpful if previously used categories loaded automatically without having to click on old posts to bring them into the list. These are just a few thoughts…thanks again for a great product.
April 26th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Yip. I like the new design.
April 26th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Here is my feedback
)
- New design uses lot of screen real estate, especially vertical one. I think earlier one was more intuitive. (Vertical real estate is more important bcos i don’t want to hide my current viewing page an still continue editing.)
- I hope it remains using native theme so user experience remains consistent with his own theme.(Screenshot theme more looks like flock theme
- Moving preview/Edit/source tab to right is good.
- I think right sidebar should be resizable. Add/Remove/Reload/Edit buttons in blog tab can be consolidated as ‘Action…’drop down. Cos these are in frequent operations.
- Option tab is also wasting too much space.
- Black outline to whole splitscreen and scribefire logo near to closing button is really good.
- In nutshell, more usable space for editor, native theming, Keep Share/Aboout/write/Options as they are right now.
April 26th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
I concur very strongly with Jigar’s first, third, fourth, and fifth points. Also, I love the new change so that the page I am currently viewing automatically populates the link dialogue box. It would be even better, IMHO, if you added a button that bypassed the dialoge box altogether and automatically links whatever text you have selected to the current page view.
Whatever you do, though, please eliminate as much vertical waste as you can so that I can have the editor open on the bottom of the screen and still see the pages I am using.
By the way, I love love love the new tabs option. Oh, and thank you for getting rid of the incredibly annoying warning message.
Oh and while I am at it, sometimes when I try to delete a note I get an error message saying it can’t delete. Don’t know why that is happening.
Okay, I’m on a roll, may as well keep going: the youtube button is great, but I wish that I could do more than just search for videos. Sometimes I already know the video I want, but there is nowhere to put in the URL to bring it up.
Occasionally, when I come back to a post that I am working on, it has added line-breaks that I didn’t put in, so the text does not go all the way across the screen. I’m not sure where that comes from.
A button to strip formatting would be helpful. Most of the time, it is nice that ScribeFire keeps the formatting of what you copy, but sometimes I do not want to keep the original formatting.
I really like the new tab button. Great way to create a new post.
I maintain three separate blogs, and before discovering ScribeFire, I only had one and rarely posted because it was just too cumbersome. Now I have three and post regularly to all of them because it is so simple and intuitive (most of the time, anyway). ScribeFire is absolutely 100% the best add-on I have downloaded (and I have a lot of them). Keep up the great work and the energy in making it even better!
April 26th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
I don’t like the new design. It is not as user-friendly as the present above one. I like the Delete post, Edit blog, YouTube, Flickr etc. all the buttons as they are now. PLEASE don’t change.
April 26th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
I prefer the old one. It’s more friendly … and colourful!
April 26th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
The style is nice, the icons are lame. I like the colorful icon set. I could tell just from the colors what hte icon was rather than having to make sure it’s right. The new icons are kind of hard to tell becuase they’re all similar colors.
I also prefer the HTML, Preview, stuff on the left panel.
April 26th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
The style is nice, the icons are lame. I like the colorful icon set. I could tell just from the colors what hte icon was rather than having to make sure it’s right. The new icons are kind of hard to tell becuase they’re all similar colors.
I also prefer the HTML, Preview, stuff on the left panel. \
Finally, I made a request for a feature where you can add tags in the same window as the editor without having to switch to “categories”. New design wouldn’t allow that right now
.
April 26th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
I prefer the current design. It looks nicer and is more colorful. The 4 tabs at the far left are better there, out of the way, than up top wasting space, though since I open scribefire in its own tab now, instead of split screen, that is not so much of an issue for me.
I wish the right side were resizeable instead of only closed/open. When it is closed, it would be nice to add a tab to open it again over with the 4 tabs at the far left, or a button somewhere.
April 26th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I just clicked the upgrade thing a day or so ago and already you want to change it again?!
I am just trying to get used to the current one..sheeesh..
And btw.. the proposed one seems less attractive.. silly I know, but if I am going to spend time looking at it, it matters to me. Why so gray and flat ? Like someone else said, I like the old one , its more friendly and colorful. How about skins?? Then we could make it look however we like??
Please don’t lose any buttons.. I can barely make this thing work as it is.
Why does the next line crowd the previous line?? It’s ugly and hard to work with if your eyes aren’t young and strong!! Can’t you make it space better. I know it doesn’t look crowded once I post it, but I am writing in ScribeFire and its hard with it all smooshed up together like that! I hope there is someway you can please please fix that !
And how about how the word wrap doesn’t always work.??
Also why is it making me have to have the dang page sooo long now.
Others mentioned “vertical” real estate, but for me the “Horizontal” is just as important, I like to keep pages small so I can see other stuff on my desktop! If I wanted to have to have it full page i would choose that.. but I HATE that.
Also.. and this is really important to me..
Please can you make a way to change the posting security? You know.. “friends”, “Private”, “Public”???
I don’t always have time to go to the site and change it there.. and isn’t the whole thing about using ScribeFire supposed to be blogging without having to go to the site and etc?!?!
Thank you for making so I can open it in a tab or etc, so its bigger to see and stuff. It was always hard to use when it was scrunched up at the bottom of a page!
Do you think there will ever be a chance that ScribeFire could be a stand alone application… or like pull it out to stand alone???
I like to write my posts during lulls in conversation while visiting on PalTalk.. but PalTalk likes to mess with my browser if its open.. so.. would love to use ScribeFire, even when my browser isn’t open.
Ok.. enough of my 2cents worth.
Thank you for whats right with ScribeFire, and here’s to looking forward to it becoming better and better… I hope….lol
April 26th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Here are my suggestions.
* I don’t like the tabs at top instead of the side. The double sets of tabs I think will get confusing.
* Put blog configuration inside the settings area and allow a blog to be selected as default.
* Make a combo box next to Publish that lists the blogs. It will post to that blog.
* Rename button to Publish instead of Publish to…
* Get rid of the delete button. Add a right click menu under entries that allows you to delete that blog.
* Add an open/close image to the right side so you click that and it opens and closes the right side.
* Add an option to suggest adding categories if none have been selected when you click publish. This would be configurable in the settings page.
As an extra feature I would like to see some good integration features with Drupal. It would be awesome to be able to post content beyond blog entries without having to log in.
ScribeFire is Awesome and I’m glad to see development going so well.
April 27th, 2008 at 1:30 am
I think the greater usability is fantastic. Small details to iron out but a couple of days usage nakes most of it familiar. People ‘like what they know’ but change is good (for you)!
The slogan ‘Lots of bloggers swear by it’ makes me think of ‘lots of bloggers swear at it!’ but not because of functionallity, just because it’s there. I just imagine thousands of bloggers swearing at their computer screen as they correct their lovingly crafted typo’s, typos, tipoos oh sh**.
A couple times the clear content/close window functionality has tripped me up. There does seem to be situations when I don’t know what is going on and I lose work but I haven’t pinned it down. That’s not new to this version
Great work Chris
‘Enable the read/write web’
April 27th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Ive posted a video showing the issues with the latest version 2.0.2 its needs addressing
Personally i like the first design
But the problem is not with the design its with the fucntionality… see my video on that google support thing
Also guys could you get a email setup for letting us contact you as i dont like the whole google support thing.
I recommend you use the free http://www.maianscriptworld.co.uk/ its very easy to setup and use.. has ticket system..
April 27th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
I like the proposed new design! Looks nice with the rounded edges.The tabs thing everyone else is fussy about really doesn’t bother me… I guess I adapt quickly to visual changes. :_P
However what’d I would -really- like to see is you implementing something to pull local tags and categories from my Wordpress so that I don’t have to go back and manually edit every post to keep things organized. It’s the only thing that I find missing really.
Great work!
April 27th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
The new version of scribefire has lots of bugs.
The Modify Timestamp Feature does not work properly during editing of post although it workd fine for post publishing.
Also the enable pings has some kind of bug. Sometimes sometimes the tickmark is set but the options are not available.
Please fix the bugs as soon as possible and make this the best blog editor amongst all.
April 27th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
the new esign is great.
but, there is a bug in your last version, i cant delete the notes.
April 27th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Generally I would recommend a drastic design change towards less height!
Buttons and options should only show if user wants them to see.
Buttons and options should be aligned vertical and not horizontal.
Buttons and options should use space at the right side.
Examples
I.e. the four buttons at the left side can go into a new tab on the right side.
I.e. the tab line above the editor could auto-hide if only one tab is open.
I.e. the save, clear, delete and publish buttons would make a nice action menu above the blog list in the blogs tab.
I.e. the new editor tab button might make more sense in the entries tab.
OT but why not here (the best blogging tool): New editor features wanted!
Source code: Color mode for tags
Source code: Detection of tag pairs (highlight opening and ending tags, mark complete tag, delete complete tag)
Source code: Clean up tags (i.e. a p with additional style info should be reduced to a p-only tag)
Source code: Restructure HTML
Source code: Compress HTML
Source code: Join lines
Editor (general): Search and replace
Editor RTF: Outline mode (Fold paragraphs, images)
I am not fighting so much with the design but with missing editor features! Because of that I am still using a couple of different editors parallel to ScribeFire (PSPAd, KompoZer, Note Tab Light, JEdit, Komodo Edit and even OpenOffice as the big gun).
April 27th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
The old version seems like an old version of OS X, with the new version trying to reflect the newer versions of the OS. This may or may not be the case, but I like the aesthetic more with the new one. However, I don’t think that means you have to lose some color. But I’m all for the new tab look versus the blue “glass” look. If you only change that, it’ll be enough.
J
April 28th, 2008 at 9:20 am
On balance,I think I like the newer one, though I’d have to try it to say for sure. As for features, the following would be great:
- Timed publishing (ie, the option to post stories for scheduled times, rather than immediately)
- Collapsible side panel (where categories et all appear)
April 28th, 2008 at 9:26 am
ForDig: ScribeFire already has both of those. Timestamp editing is in the Options panel, and you can collapse the sidebar by dragging the splitter between it and the editor all the way to the right.
April 28th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
I can’t get notes to delete.
It would be beyond awesome if the add-on called “Signature” would work with scribe fire.
April 29th, 2008 at 9:04 am
It would be nice to use ScribeFire with “Blogsome”. Great little gift to blogging but for some reason I cannot use it with my main blog.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
I think that…
1.The tabs should be optional. As they are now they are mostly duplicating the functionality that is already there (we have all the notes in the list to the right, why do we need tabs?). They just take a lot of vertical space, and when browsing through notes, I now need to use two clicks (open the new one, and close the old one). I would like to say that you should provide an option to turn tab functionality off, but given that I don’t believe that the tabs are very useful, I think you should just simply remove them instead of wasting engineering hours to take care of different issues that might come up with hiding options.
2.I can’t figure out why does browsing through notes doesn’t behave normally? by normally I mean:
What is with the option to save or not save automatically. Can’t you simply track if the document is changed from its opening?
-if the note has changes, THEN give message to the user asking him if he wants to save the changes (including new notes)
-if there is NO changes, then don’t give any message when user tries to open another note.
It is how every application works in this world besides ScribeFire
Anyway, thanks for the tool that you are providing, it’s been very helpful. It being free and all it is great, but without those two things, as it is now, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
I am not sure if it is just me, but whenever I post from Scribefire it always adds to the beginning of the post and to the end of the post. I don’t like this. I want to be able to control the post format.
I almost always have to go back and format the posts to remove excess space.
However please note I love ScribeFire.
April 29th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
I second comments #3 and #4 – especially the vertical space point. Keep the write/share/etc buttons on the left, please
April 30th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Hmmm,
Scribefire used to work fine.
The 2.0.2 version does not.
When I do a ‘publish as edit’, my post is not visible anymore in my wordpress blog.
It is still present, but invisible.
May 1st, 2008 at 2:29 pm
I’ve been using scribefire for a while, and I like it, but I’m having usability issues with version 2.02, if the next update solves these, it’d be great! My current issues:
The text box doesn’t automatically size for the screen size being used, when I’m home, I use a desktop or a 15″ widescreen laptop, when I’m traveling, I use a 12″ laptop for portability, but scribefire’s text box doesn’t allow me to effectively use it with the options frame to the right open.
The older versions didn’t have this issue, and honestly, since I’ve been doing most of my blogging through scribefire, I’ve been blogging less since the update.
I agree with all the comments about reducing, not increasing, the vertical space owned by scribefire, as it is, on my small screen, I have to drag the top divider down ’till the publish button row almost disappears!
May 1st, 2008 at 5:27 pm
I got my fix for the bug (not being able to delete notes). You can find the fix here:
http://code.google.com/p/scribefire/issues/detail?id=215
May 1st, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Wow, your addon is vastly improved! Nice job. I’ve had it installed for what seems like years, and just never got around to deleting it. I was finally bored and launched it. Love the half-window approach–it lets me see my results on the page so I can easily make corrections. And the ability to just browse for photos and have them upload is genius. Scribefire is now something I will use. But the one thing I miss from Ecto is the multi-color coding. Also, the ability to add snippets of oft-used code would be nice (hell, maybe it’s in there somewhere…). The interface does need some simplifying, though. The tabs help, but they’re a little blind and/or vague. It’s definitely a trial-and-error kind of interface, but overall, a really useful add-on.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Get the “Save as Note” and “Clear Content” buttons away from each other!
I can’t tell you how many times I have scooted the cursor over to the “Save as Note” button and missed, thus permanently erasing a long blog comment or entry that I cannot easily reproduce. At least put an “Are You Sure?” dropdown or some such, and not have the action take place immediately and irretrievably.
As it is, I’m going back to Word or Pages to write blog content, as no decent word processor will delete everything I just wrote without asking.
As far as the look and feel of your software, I could frankly care less about screen real estate and eye candy, so long as it doesn’t waste my time.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Any chance of a version that will work with Opera please?
May 13th, 2008 at 10:48 am
I love ScribeFire. I love that the changes have come so fast and furious over the last few months, since I started using it. This is the program or FireFox feature that made me switch over from Internet Express permanently.
I’ll post feature/function notes and suggestions in this message, but I have other notes for bigger view of adapting ScribeFire, or at least a request for the code, so I can steal it, add the other grandiose ideas, go back in time to about 2000 and develop “the killer browser ap” that “changes the way everybody works on web-connected computer,” etc.
I’ve used ScribeFire for the intended blog posting. Love it. I mainly use it for manual note taking and web scraping. (This is why I made the switch from IE, I use NetSnippets fro simplest, least memory-hogging WYSIWYG/ rich data drag N drop saving/sorting)
Feature adjustment request for Notes display of entry titles:
1. default setting to automatically alpha-numeric sort.
or
2. offer this ability in an Option or Preference menu.
Love the Search feature in Notes section as I am entering and editng dozens of notes, which only rotate off my Acrive list every 4 weeks or so.
Request
for Search and Replace,
or at least text search like FireFox standard search, as requested by Markus Merz 4-27-08, “Editor (general): Search and replace.”
Request Regarding tabs on left, vertical edge
by Halo Zero on 4-26-08 “I also prefer the HTML, Preview, stuff on the left panel.”
and Daniel on 4-29-08, “I second comments #3 and #4 – especially the vertical space point. Keep the write/share/etc buttons on the left, please.”
suggestion 1 on tab position & visibility:
If not too memory intensive, could all tabs offer options to “hide” like Windows main toolbar(?) option. Toolbar appears and remains while being moused-over, then dealys for few seconds to slide out of sight – preserving maximum visual work area.
suggestion 2 on tab position & visibility:
Permit fun/customize mode to allow ScribeFire user to drag N drop tab-sets (or other buttons? sets? where desired, like simple(?) javascript options – only if not memory intensive (system now is fine for me if it keeps FF browser small and fast in size).
Finally, did Google staff swipe this suggestion and implement it on Blogge from ScribeFire feedback by ForDig on 4-28-08? “Timed publishing (ie, the option to post stories for scheduled times, rather than immediately)” Or was it just “in the air” at same time? Great feature.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I’ve submitted a few specific feature notes and suggestions for ScribeFire in its current form. This post is to request feedback, links to specific code source, projects, coders, to help fulfill my FireFox browser enhancement that would make it my streamlined work-ap.
My capabilities
I’m a lowly cut and paste user of javascript, and also would-be PHP snippet paster.
I’ve had to avoid Blogs since they introduced the requirement for so much code use – MySQL, and anything not simple-non-geek-WYSIWYG, like I can handle.
After 10 years of searching I’ve found flat file web tools including database tools (why weren’t these around earlier to make Blogging usable for me? boo hoo – why didn’t “blogging” just become a “seamless” optional format of site-making?)
My browser function desires
ScribeFire seems to add the functions to the browser that I was always resorting to multiple aps for while using MS IE – instead of locked-in-to-IE use of MHT to save web image+text+links+layout I found I had to use WordPad as the smallest memory/processor burden tool, which could approximate a simple tool for Drag N Drop saving of web info.NetSnippets eventually won me over, over a couple other external-to-browser aps for simplest, small, organized file tool for saving web stuff.
So, now, ScribeFire appears to permit quick, manual data-aggregating/data editing for fast posting to web – reducing a LOT of time in the “interactive web” use/work/play. (Yeah!)
If ScribeFire included a few more functions (all of which exist in other javascript project code, as well as PHP scripts) but no single, unified UI, I’ll be happy, good-to-go, and can quit bugging smart programmers like you folks. (hint
)
Is the XPI stuff for FireFox and ScribeFire like javascript and XML?
Sure, even Windows offers task scheduling, but another tied-to-MS, external-to-browser tool. Javascript permits this, but it has yet to be used in aps as often as it would be useful. My main use would be for calendar event posting. I run up against most of the input/scheduling windows needing to at least appear as-if they are the final display/calendar/hourly schedule. This WYSIWYG UI design does not appear in a unified fashion in Google Calendar or Outlook, as far as I’ve seen. When I’ve found the function, the rest of the calendar display functions do not permit easy layout changes.
The other main area would be to include just enough javascript data processing features for scraped/saved web data, and not too much “overhead” pre-loaded code to weigh down the memory usage of FireFox or ScribeFire. Maybe all I’m asking for is like the existing “table tools” that FF permits with RtClick Menu use on selected browser data, but usable in seamless way with ScribeFire saved stuff. The idea is to make sorting, resorting, and saving pre-sorted versions of scraped data (maybe with varying source layouts and underlying code) to be saved. I haven’t been able to get the FireFox tool to show the menu option on all pages or data I select on. (probably not ScribeFire issue, but rather FF issue, or my code-selecting-ignorance).
If these features were included, my need for “database back end site”, including “blogs” wold be obviated. I’d have Flat file database system with flexible scheduling (automated) site/blog updating (automated interaction with web visitors. Maybe there are some fancy reporting requirements ro complex sorting and sifting of data that MySQL databases can perform, but I’ve never had to consider them, not have I been able to imagine what they could be that could not be done with javascript sorting abilities.
Despite my abbreviated notes above, what I’m suggesting would result in a browser-ap that would include most of the functinality of MS Ofiice or OpenOffice, but with the scheduling and data sorting controls, one also has a web-ap developing environment (without even having to load the nice, but big memory requiring HTMLkit, or other javascript development environments – keeping the new, improved FireFox with ScribeFire all under 20Mb (or hopefully under 10Mb).
I have not installed it to test, but it appears to be along the lines of what Mitch Kapor is trying to achieve with the Chandler project – but it is already 30Mb to download, for yet-another-separate-from-browser(FireFox) program. A fairly small memory burden to have to pay for a program to do what you want, but when I’ve been able to cobble together my site, and maintain daily updates with so little coding overhead (though way too much manual operation), it seems I’m only a few hundred K of javascript away and a few educated-knowledgeable-programmer’s years worth of smarts from a tiny, powerful, broadly usable web-interacting browser.
Maybe PiggyBank, or iMacros or the associated web-scraping FireFox add-ons are all I need, with some better javascript skills. Or maybe. . .the GoogleBrowser will be released with all these features, as “seemed” to happen with the prior post to ScribeFire for “post scheduling capablity”.
thanks anybody,
Greg
greg@deafaccessfilms.com
May 17th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
A couple of things
1) would be nice if it auto selected tags based on words in the title [oh baby!]
2) would be nice if it could close automatically after you post something. I always close it after a post, and I bet most others do, too.
Design is good.
May 24th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Vote +1 for the ‘Auto-Close’ feature.
And another vote for an ‘Auto-OK’ feature if publishing was successful.
Adding a ‘automatic page reload’ vote.
Plus a vote for a ’save as backup file’ on the computer
OK, I stop here.
May 25th, 2008 at 6:04 am
I’ve already posted on the google codes page in an own issue – maybe anyone has already mentioned it, too:
What I would find highly useful is the possibility to insert/upload more than just one picture at a time, ideally dragging and dropping them from any explorer window. Inserting by dragging is actually possible, but the image path seems to be wrong since uploading fails (better: runs eternally).
It would be great to simply mark 10 images in a folder, drag and drop them into scribefire and upload them in some kind of batch mode.
I’m convinced that other users would benefit from it, too. For instance when blogging while in holidays or on travel, having a travel diary. Uploading every image one by one would be quite annoying, right?
Please let me know whether this will become possible!
Thank you
Alexander
May 25th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Any chance of adding functionality for b2Evolution blogs??
http://www.b2evolution.net
May 25th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Daethian: ScribeFire should work with b2Evolution out of the box. Just enter your blog URL in the Account Wizard, and it should detect that it uses the MetaWeblog API.
May 26th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Christopher – I did a review of ScribeFire, Flock Blog Editor and LiveWriter today and with a few additional features I will be using ScribeFire all the time. My concerns are basically image resizing related issues and the possibility of incorporating Google gears to use offline when web isn’t available. please see link http://hshawjr007.blogspot.com/2008/05/blogwriter-review-2-scribefire_26.html.
if that can be done, I can get rid of LiveWriter because I really like ScribeFire