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Instant Comment Preview and Contingency Design
09 Jun 2004 by Matthew Linderman
I’m digging the way sites like shauninman.com and andybudd.com are now offering instant previews for comments. As you type you can see, right underneath the text area, exactly how your message will appear. Sweet. Came across Andy’s while reading his nice review of “Defensive Design for the Web.”
You’d be forgiven for imagining that a book about error messages and 404 pages would be dull. Well, in this case you’d be wrong. While contingency design isn’t the sexiest of subjects, this book does an excellent job of bringing a rather prosaic subject to life.
At another blog, D. Keith Robinson also gives the book a plug and then goes on to rant about an attempted online purchase and how frustrating it is when site builders forget to design defensively.
The last time I clicked their back button, again after a vague error. I lost everything and had to start over yet againonly to get another vague error. Thats when I just gave up. I mean Id entered my credit card info and everything else three damn times! Did they not want my money? You should have heard the F-bombs I was dropping. Everyone in my office did.
10 comments so far (Post a Comment)
10 Jun 2004 | Mike P. said...
"While contingency design isn’t the sexiest of subjects"
Thats just plain wrong ;-]
10 Jun 2004 | Matt said...
This is available as a simple mod for WordPress blogs. I believe that was adapted from an MT hack.
10 Jun 2004 | Matt said...
Speaking of contingency, on your comment preview page (which doesn't match the rest of the site):
MT::App::Comments=HASH(0x806470c) Use of uninitialized value at /var/www/37signals/cgi-bin/lib/MT/Template/Context.pm line 1187.
10 Jun 2004 | Mike Rundle said...
Just to drop props where props be due, Jon Hicks was the first to do the live comment preview. No rhyme intended.
10 Jun 2004 | starvingartist said...
While a live preview is extremely helpful, it can also give users a false sense of security.
The problem with javascript instant previews is, "what you see isn't necessarily what you'll get". The textarea will automatically convert any HTML entered by the user into the live preview. "Disruptive" tags like IMG, or often forgotten "good" tags like CODE may be filtered/sanitized by MovableType. At its current state, the client-side script doesn't know what the server-side script will filter.
Previewing using MT might take a few more steps for the user, but at least your users' markup will be reflected accurately.
10 Jun 2004 | Silus Grok said...
One problem with interstitial previews is that they often convert entities in the text box to their visual representations, which often leaves me confused as to how the end product will act.
As for "disruptive" tags... well, I would prefer folks not using _any_ code in comments (except for emboldening or italicizing text, or inserting a hyperlink). I imagine others share my sentiments, so I'd submit that a live preview would meet our needs wonderfully.
10 Jun 2004 | One of several Steves said...
Very interesting idea and execution. I thought it would be distracting, watching type appear in two spaces at the same time, but the execution was handled well. That's probably the biggest challenge of this sort of approach, actually - keeping sufficient visual distance between the text entry and text preview, but still having them be close enough to each other to see the cause-and-effect relationship.
And it's easier to use than remembering to hit the "preview" button instead of just hitting "post."
10 Jun 2004 | Shaun Inman said...
The preview on my site has become very misleading since adding support for Daring Fireball's Markdown. As starvingartist mentioned it will preview HTML that the comment system automatically strips out. But that could easily be corrected with a relatively simple regular expression.
I haven't figured out how to address that Markdown problem though so I have yet to do anything. Tsk, tsk.
11 Jun 2004 | dusoft said...
I would be mad if I entered data three times and it didn't work. You are right, go to competition.
13 Jun 2004 | Vaughn said...
Any chance SvN will be getting one? :)
