Disaster struck yet again, StackEdit has lost all my Steemit files. I lost all the articles I've written in the last couple of months, and everything that I have currently been working on.
In the past I have advocated using StackEdit and have suggested that you should sign up to their service as it's very cheap and such a great editor.
However I discovered last week that if you clean your computer's web cache, all your files will evaporate into cyberspace.
I mistakenly thought that having an account would mean I could just sign in and take up where I left off, oh how wrong I was.
After trying the file recovery function to no avail, I contacted the dev and looked him up on Github.
That's when I discovered that Benoit Schweblin, otherwise known as benweet, has abandoned StackEdit and hasn't answered any issue requests in about a year but is still taking donations for his broken program.
Not cool . . .
So now it's time to find an alternative, the Steemit editor still leaves a lot to be desired, and I like to be able to add Markdown code easily as I'm writing.
Bearing this in mind I decided to try and find another Markdown WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor to take the place of StackEdit (SE).
I will report on how I'm finding the different editors, and will give them an overall rating based on how well they perform in the categories I deem important.
Draft Review
I like the Draft editor, so far I have used it to write one article, and am currently writing this one using it. There are things that I like about it, and whilst I can see myself using it further, I would like other features that were on StackEdit.
Reliability: - Importance Rating: 5
This is my number one priority now, the last thing I need is another editor like StackEdit with great features and zero reliability.
So far so good with Draft, it appears you can sign in and out of the program and still expect to find your files there.
Score: 5/5
Graphic User Interface (GUI): - Importance Rating: 4
For me the GUI on StackEdit was great, if it wasn't for the fact it was unsupported I might never have changed programs.
The main reason I liked the GUI was because you had the option to split the screen horizontally or vertically and see how your code was turning out in the live preview. window.
If Draft does have this mode it's hard to find, instead you can toggle back and forth from editor mode to preview by using CTRL R
This is a slight inconvenience, however I think it enhances the user experience so it loses points for not having a joint edit-preview mode.
Score: 3/5
Menu Style:
I have always preferred the toolbar style of menu, sitting at the top of the page ready for me to use instantly, which is one of the reasons I loved StackEdit.
Unfortunately Draft does not have a toolbar or a way to create one. The menu is accessed by moving your mouse over to the top right of the screen and clicking.
In my mind this makes use less instinctive and a little bit more clunky, so unfortunately Draft loses out on this feature as well.
Score: 2/5 - Importance Rating: 4
Menu Controls:
The one menu item that I miss is the heading button which gives the h1 and h2 options for large and medium title headings.
The new menu items are fairly useful Hemmingway Mode is a feature which allows you to write but not delete anything you've written.
Allowing you to do what Ernest Hemmingway once said; "Write drunk, edit sober"
The other menu item Draft has which StackEdit didn't is the footnote option, which allows you to leave numbered footnotes. I can see myself using this function in the not to distant future so plus points there.
A big plus, is I can now add images straight from my computer using Draft, something I couldn't do using SE, this feature alone has saved me a hell of a lot of time on each article, so it gets many cookie points for that one.
Score: 4/5
Overall Ease Of Use: - Importance Rating: 5
As far as I'm concerned, you should be able to use an editor without reading the instructions and Draft fulfils that criterion.
It's an easy program to use, with minimal fuss and it looks nice, no complaints there at all.
Score 5/5
Conclusion
All in all I give Draft a score of 3.5/5, whilst it is reliable and has a niceish interface. It still lacks on some important points for me, so for the time being I will keep using it, but I'm looking for an improvement and so I'll carry on my search.