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Sneak preview of new story writing form
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Protagonize is a creative writing community dedicated to writing various forms of collaborative, interactive fiction.
One author writes a story, poem, or other work, and others post branches or chapters to it in different directions. The result is an organic, evolving tale where everyone can participate.
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I'm going to be overhauling forms around the site one by one, and I've got a couple of mockups done of the new story writing form (the first form to be revamped) over on Flickr.
For all of you design hacks out there, I've tried to redesign the form with much-improved usability in mind. Things should be a lot clearer for new users starting to write on the site for the first time, and a lot less clunky for those of you who write regularly.
Feedback is (as usual) welcome, but I don't think I'll be making too many more changes to these - this is more to give you guys an idea of what's coming than anything. :)
Curious? Check out the two versions here:
The all-new writing form:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickb/4147508681/
The form with error states:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickb/4148267994/
Cheers,
-nick
Linear -> Standard is a subtle but good move.
"This story is contains mature content" made me giggle.
It looks purty!
Generally I quite like it. Certainly I think the wider (it is wider right?) Text entry is a good thing and the extra help and explanations are good.
Perhaps some of the copy needs some addressing though ;)
Nice work though. Looking forwards to seeing this in action. Is it going to be rolled out to us beta users first for some pre-live feedback or will everyone be getting this as soon as it's done?
:} Elorithryn
Loving every bit of it.
Is it my imagination or has it grown a lot longer that it normally is?
(;
:} Elorithryn
No buttons, and no way of looking at the picture properly :(
I'm sure it's fabulous, though =D
It looks great Nick! I was hoping to see an optional first-chapter-title / whole-story-title distinction... Maybe next time?
For those of you having problems seeing the full versions (I think you need to login to Flickr with a Yahoo! account to see the full views), here are a couple of static full-size links:
Writing form
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2587/4147508681_d6cbeebb92_o.jpg
Form w/error states
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2489/4148267994_83e082533a_o.jpg
As to specific questions:
@darkliquid Yup, it's wider (and that's on purpose.) I wanted to make it a little easier to write in, felt too tight before. Also, this allows me to add a couple of options to the editor toolbar that I had to remove previously.
@delorfinde Indenting isn't something you can do automatically with the text editor we use, unfortunately. There should be a toolbar button in the editor allowing you to indent stuff yourself, though. And the form isn't really any longer, just bigger text entry fields and it's a little less compact in order to help new users out a little more. The body text entry field is a bit larger, too.
@Rac7hel That's a bigger change than it looks like, but I'll see what I can do. Might take me a little longer than the first pass at the form to get a change like that made. :)
Cheers,
-nick
Man that's annoying. I have enough account for stuff I don't need any more!
@NickB Those static links take you to a login page, by the way.
I'm jsut going to say, since I know Nick I'm sure they are excellent, especially from what I can see of them. *grin*
:} Elorithryn
I'm liking those tags, Nick. =P
=]
I'm looking at the Error message one and I'm a little confused:
Under Story Type, where it has the litte check box it says "Allow posters in this story to write the next chapter's title" - but the box is not checked YET under Next Chapter it says "Since you've allowed other posters in this story to write their own chapter titles, you'll need to write the next chapter's title too."
1 - Will that error message only appear if the check box is checked?
2 - Would rewording "...other posters in this story to write their own chapter titles..." to "...other posters in this story to write the next chapter title..." make more sense? (it would to me)
:} Elori(e)thryn (do you know how hard it is to not call you Halfy, *grin*) {:
And I'll muck around with the "next chapter" wording a little as it still confuses me half the time. I really regret adding that option. :p
:} Elorithryn