In response to a request made to me, I was reviewing the Inleo.io publication editor, which led me to make a comparison between this tool and those offered by the 4 most popular applications for publishing content in Hive.
I consider that a fundamental task for the developers of these front ends, is that in all of them the content created in any of them looks perfectly well. And in most cases, it does, I only found a couple of things that are "broken" depending on the application you use.
Side location
The use of side alignment, which is used to create two columns or to place images within a block of text, which is characterized by the code:
<div class=pull-left>
Some content
</div>
<div class=pull-left>
Another content
</div>
Although it is a very useful resource, it is not available in Inleo at this time. In case you have used it in your code, that content will appear one below the other. I passed the recommendation on to the folks at , in the hopes that they will add that feature and it can be used there as well.
Hive.blog | Inleo.io |
|---|
Peakd.com | Inleo.io |
|---|
Spoilers
The spoiler tool has become a widely used resource, especially for bilingual content, as people place the second language within the spoiler area.
However, two ways are being used. In my opinion, the most effective is the one offered by Inleo, which is a Markdown standard:
<details><Summary>Summary title</summary>
Here goes the content
</details>
However, I have noticed that on Hive.blog and Peakd.com, some of the content that follows after the spoiler area is hidden as well. That is, they do not respect the closing tag.
On the other hand, there's the code used by Hive.blog and Peakd.com:
>![Summary title]
>
> And all the content preceded by the greater than sign
>
It works fine in those two applications, but does not work in Inleo.io.
It is worth mentioning that neither of the two alternatives works in Ecency.com.
These two features I think it would be important to unify them in all dapps.
Tables
Although tables work well in all apps, this is an aspect that would be worth addressing at the design level. Only Peakd's table looks elaborate and pretty.
Links
Internal links, i.e. to posts within Hive, have a different behavior in the different apps.
Ecency sets all links (hive.blog, inleo.io and ecency.com) to addresses within ecency.com.
Inleo does the same, with the difference that they replace the address with an insert of the post. This is very attractive when you are going to place a link to a post, but if the address goes as part of a text, the link disappears and places the insert at the end of the text block.
This can be good, but it can be annoying if you just want to leave the URL typed in. At least I didn't find a way to avoid the insert.
Video links
The opposite happens with video links. In the case of Inleo, if you insert the link, it only shows you the text. To include the video you must use the embed code. This happens with 3Speak, Youtube and Vimeo.
Meanwhile, the other applications insert it automatically when you type the address of the video. It also applies to the three video platforms I mentioned.
In case you just want to indicate the address of the video, I like Inleo's option better.
In Ecency there is a difference between the video previews, if you enter the link or the embed code. In the first case it shows you an image of the video, but the corresponding thumbnail is only shown if you embed.
Images
Inleo does not currently offer its own hosting for images, so it relies on the Imgur service. However, this is not a major drawback.
It is worth noting that Ecency has, in this sense, a wonderful resource, such as its image gallery. A space where all the images you have uploaded are displayed and allows you to easily reuse them.
Videos
Currently, the only application that allows you to upload videos is Ecency.com, which does it with the 3Speak platform.
Also with the videos they offer a gallery, where all the videos uploaded by you appear to https://3speak.tv/.
Polls
At the moment the only dapp that offers this service natively, is Inleo.io. However, I don't know how it works, nor how it behaves in the other apps.
I'm going to take the opportunity to test it here. So here I leave you this poll:
What is your favorite application to publish on Hive?
$LEOPOLL
Other aspects
Currently only Peakd.com and Hive.blog offer template storage, which for me is essential.
Storing drafts, which is also very important in the way I work, is offered by Peakd.com and Ecency.com.
Conclusion
Each of the dapps that I analyzed meet certain characteristics that make them more or less attractive to everyone. Some work better on mobile, others on desktop, there are some with more reach, as I have heard from my friends in Russia that they only manage to get into Hive with Ecency. I don't know if there are other cases.
But the point is that everyone is free to choose the dapp that they like the most and adapts to their needs. But one of the things I want to emphasize is the need for a common criterion so that all Hive publications look good in all of them.
Hopefully these tests I did, will serve to unify those criteria and for the developers to look for ways to further improve each of them.
Without a doubt, all the teams have done an incredible job, but there is still much more to do.
Via Giphy
Image by AcatXIo • So long, and thanks for all the likes! at Pixabay
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