Making markdown opt-in rather than default
Benjamin Knight
Public
Seen by 48
I've seen some cases where markdown has badly messed up the formatting of the discussion context panel, particularly when people cut and paste text in from other places.
I think markdown is awesomely useful when people know how to use it, but that's a small minority of our users. Would be super keen to switch it to opt-in. I'm suggesting this as a short-term quick fix - ideally it would be awesome to have a basic formatting GUI like Gmail, so ability to format text isn't limited to the tech-literate.
Thoughts?
Scott Lemmon Mon 19 Nov 2012 1:00AM
This all sounds good and reasonable. Jon makes a really good point out the user-base being quite a bit broader than just the tech literate. One thing is, could there be a way that we could have markdown be default for those of us that use it a lot?
Is the thought that this "Enable Markdown" checkbox would reset back to unchecked every time you post, or that it would keep it's state between posts and sessions?
I definitely vote for the latter, unless there is a good reason that it should reset back to unchecked.
Jon Lemmon Mon 19 Nov 2012 1:28AM
Yeah nah, it would remember what your preference was. Probably a boolean like user.prefers_markdown.
Each comment will then also need a comment.use_markdown boolean (same goes for discussion description).
@Rich - yeah I think not using the phrase markdown in the text might be better: "Enable improved comment formatting".
Jon Lemmon Mon 19 Nov 2012 2:16AM
Made a trello card here: https://trello.com/c/ryW0DsJ9
Richard D. Bartlett Tue 4 Dec 2012 7:40PM
Here's a quick mockup of what this might look like.
Matthew Bartlett Tue 4 Dec 2012 8:33PM
@richardd.bartlett — that link gives me a 404 (though it worked 10 mins ago). My comment on the mockup:
Too annoying to be presented with that option every single time one makes a comment.
I think it should be in loomio.org/settings/ — technically advanced users will look at their settings page.
Richard D. Bartlett Tue 4 Dec 2012 8:34PM
Sorry here is the link
Matthew Bartlett Tue 4 Dec 2012 8:45PM
@richardd.bartlett — 'Sorry. You're not authorized to view this page. Try logging in below or clearing your cookies.' How does one get a login?
Richard D. Bartlett Tue 4 Dec 2012 8:56PM
Soz still learning balsamiq permissions. I think it is public now. Not the best ux :(
Aaron Thornton Wed 5 Dec 2012 8:31AM
@richardd.bartlett I like your idea of presenting it like the privacy icon where you can set it in the settings page but you can also toggle it on/off by clicking the icon.
Richard D. Bartlett · Fri 16 Nov 2012 4:41AM
Maybe you're right.
Like a checkbox labeled "Enable markdown" with a tooltip that says "Loomio uses Github flavoured Markdown to add formatting to your comments and proposals. Here's a quick introduction to writing Markdown."