Introducing SteemWrite - Post Drafts

in introducemyself •  8 years ago  (edited)

Hello all, this is a project I @keverw have been working on. I've been working on this for about 2 months now, and I'm releasing it as an early preview/alpha to get feedback and see if people would be interested in an app like this before I continue development on it more.

This is a desktop app that lets you edit your posts, publish new posts. The app works currently, you can basically use it now to save drafts locally and publish them. It also syncs with the blockchain and downloads your existing posts. This app is based on Electron. It works on Mac and Windows. Linux should also work if compiled for it, but I haven't attempted to use this on Linux yet. This app is open source on Github https://github.com/keverw/SteemWrite

The scheduling system, handing deleted posts and deleting posts along with an update system isn't done at this point. I'd like to rewrite this to be more organized and use a framework such as React or Angular instead of using Jquery and manually doing everything UI wise. I feel like using such a framework I could do more with less code. That seems like the current trend with development nowadays, and I feel that'd be more productive once you master the different paradigms.

Things like spellcheck is a bit wonky too, you can know there's an error but no way to correct it. Also no ctrl-f. I think if I were to rewrite this I'd probably build my own custom editor around contenteditable that's lightweight and work on getting the right click correction menu working.

The editor shows posts you wrote already too:

Right now the editor is pretty useful to just write, save as drafts until ready to publish. Also you can use it to manage multiple accounts too.

Download

You can also preview your post within the app too.

There's also a full view editing which works on both platforms,

Right now there's no software updater for this, so follow @steemwrite for official updates

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This is fantastic - I definitely would love to chat with you a bit and see how I could help. I'm starting to poke through the code to learn how it all works, and if I can get it to compile.

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

Nice :) I'm a bit burnt out on it, but I think the code could be more organized. I'm wanting to learn Typescript and Angular 2 also at some point. I'm a bit slow at coding but still learning always things too. Self taught here :)

I'm self-taught as well, so I totally get it :)

No matter how the code ended up, it's a great start and proof of concept to show the utility. I've rambled on in chat a few times about how amazing it would be to have a desktop app that allowed content creators to post to the blockchain (like social media mangers use hootsuite).

First bit of feedback, the app doesn't accept a posting key it seems? Only a master password? Would be nice to be able to just enter my posting key into the app.

Yes, it is great to have Desktop app and eSteem desktop is near ready, but somehow backlogged due to other project updates. It is soon to be released. Would love to join forces on desktop app side of development if @keverw wishes. It is in Angular+Electron+Node. It will start with having all eSteem features which I think is nearly production ready app. From there Desktop app will need other changes to evolve into fully fledged desktop app. btw, I like drafting and versioning of the drafts. I have Save For Later on eSteem but revisioning it makes more sense if you are on desktop.

Yeah it currently only does password. Wasn't too sure on posting keys but probably the code could be adjustable for it somewhere.

Review eSteem mobile source code https://github.com/feruzm/esteem, you can see example of signing transaction with Posting and Active keys.

Brilliant! I'll try this out for sure!

You know what would be cool? Having a buffer type function in it to time post for maximum voting impact. Thats the one thing that would completely make me fall in love with your software :-)

Hell yeah we need this, and saved templates would be a nice bonus too :3

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

Thanks :) Curious, what do you mean by saved templates?

When i mean saved templates, i mean things like signatures or other assets that posters want to carry over quickly from one post to the next.

Does this program support full HTML? Does it support hybrid HTML formatting with markdown? I often use tags like <center>, <sup>, and occasionally the <div> tag for advanced formatting.

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

In the markdown, haven't attempted it but in theory it should work.

I just in:

<center>Hello World</center>

and went to preview and it shows. So looks like it works. I actually borrowed some code Steemit itself uses for post previews too :)

From screenshots I can say that it is wysiwyg html editor. So it should support most html tags. Although, @keverw should check if posts show up on Steemit as they are formatted on editor, because some html tags are stripped out of post body for security and XSS attacks reasons. Editor explore Part 1 and Part 2 talks about this a bit.

Great work and neat features. If you are Angular developer, join eSteem desktop development. Its not been announced yet due to other updates. But it is almost ready and it is combination of Angular+Electron. Just installed, it is neat and fast. Following, hope to see next versions and improvements ;)

Drafts are such a great and necessary tool. I will be waiting for them to be within the Steemit back end but so good to see others already on top of it.

Amazing work! Thank you for this!

Great job @keverw! Will check out some time as such functionality would be helpful to myself and others.
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Great Initiative!!. It will help in promoting steemit.

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Followed, Resteemed and Upvoted. Excellent post! Thanks!


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Exactly what I needed :-) Thank you.
Re-steemed :-)

Great job, thanks for your work !

Wow great work love the style and look of it. Maybe you can ask Dan to add it to steemit so we can all download form the site.

This kind of work shows the quality and value of the members of the Steemian Community
Thanks it will help a lot to have more time for "steeming"

Nice work! Thanks for sharing this.

Great!

This looks awesome, do keep it up makin it super easy to use !

You making things easy for us. thank you

Awesome working! Thanks a lot.

Interesting development though I'm already getting use to an Add-in using Google Docs.

I like it. Good job. Keep it up.

This is great! Would be awesome if you could schedule posts too :)

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

Let me know what you all think :)

Wonderful work @steemwrite. Is funny that I actually spoke about such an editor in my post My one month journey with Steemit been very busy to work on...it was actually planned for December holidays...Glad to see what you came up with...even way better than what I had in mind.

I come up with an idea for my blog but I noticed I spend a lot of time editing the blog. The most frustrating issue I have has been the “uploading of pictures”…sometimes I have more than 10 images, then uploading them on https://picload.org/ then get URL links...it takes time…even the site giving errors of abuse.

I went on to say:

YES “We need a thang” you know…that thang…with a WOW thing...
Well as a “programmer” I am to working on a solution.
It will so wonderful to just attached all the images from your PC then Steemit does all the uploading and getting the URL links for you.

Upvoted and resteemed.

this is a great idea to have. thank you for working on this

belo trabalho

Looks great!!

Resteemed!!

Steem on,
Mike

This looks really cool!

Interesting. I do all my Steemit from my desktop. It's a pretty basic platform. Looks like your app would expand the options for sure.

This is awesome going to try out now. My girlfriend is currently using a text document to draft her posts. I'm going to try it in windows and then try it with wine on Linux Mint 18. If you could create a deb file that would be awesome. Thanks though for you effort in making steemit a better place.

wow, this is cool hey

Wow, just perfect thank you!

very nice!

I like your application. Very useful tool to work doing post. I hope you refine many more and add more extras.
Bravo.

Interesting project. But is there any particular reason why users can't just copy-paste from a Word or related document? I've been doing that for months without any issues at all. All of the formatting is typed in the doc, then pasted when I'm ready to submit for posting. Pretty simple stuff.

I guess copying and pasting works too. Just figured somthing like this would be more steemlined lol. <-- see what I did there :)

Plus somthing for me to play with and learn with. Never really done a desktop app and have some future ideas that could use one. I'd do things a bit differently if I did it all over again, but an interesting project.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not knocking your efforts. I just don't understand why so many people are always asking for a program or app to write their posts. Pretty much everybody already has one. Maybe I'm missing something?

Exactly what was needed for steemit. I will be putting this to good use for sure. Thanks for developing it.... great job:).

  1. Also having the option to preview on a white background would be awesome.
  2. The ability to log into an account using the posting key. @steemwrite

Great idea I like the ideas your working on as well. A post scheduler would be awesome. But at least we can make drafts will test this code soon.

I tried to throw it through wine on linux mint but it seems to me these days wine is doing less and less of what i want it to do.

That's a bummer. I wonder if Wine can run full Chrome or Node.js. I know Electron is a combination of both.

You could build it for Linux though. https://github.com/keverw/SteemWrite

Install Node.js and NPM
npm install in the root of it
then run npm run distlin and it should split out a .deb and .rpm file

I'm gonna try that when I get home this app could be epic. I installed it on my girlfriends laptop for her to use but I don't feel inspired when using her laptop plus I keep a projects folder of pictures and videos I've taken and other stuff links and data I not down when I feel I might make post on it

can you provide a slight amount more of detail i tried like hell though to get it to work

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

Interesting. Basically you'd need NPM/Node.js installed. NPM and Node I believe needs to be set in the path on Linux. I haven't played with it too much on Linux.

But you want npm and node commands to work. I know on Windows and Mac the setup is pretty easy. Just a GUI and it does it. Linux is more commandline based.

It also uses SQLite so node-gyp it uses for that, which is part of node itself I believe. Never really called it directly before.

but for it to compile you should have:
python (v2.7 recommended - not 3)
make
GCC

because as it builds, it will also compile SQLite and include that as a native extension.

But then once you have it installed git checkout https://github.com/keverw/SteemWrite the product

then you should be able to run npm install the npm run distlin and then the Electron builder that got installed into the project should build the Linux version.

Hope's a little better. Wonder what part specifically you are being stuck on. I only really know how to do things on Mac and Windows but a very similar build process.

This is something that has been done before https://steemit.com/services/@leprechaun/steem-edit-w-h--questions

How the hell did I miss this? Great work!

Hi! does scheduling work yet ?

love it, keep the good work.

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