GRAV Experience

Apart from the thread that exposes Sample Web Sites I want to open another one dedicated to GRAV experiences, the GRAV project deserves it.

A short summary: GRAV is already great for people with some basic knowledge on how to integrate websites and with some basic programming skills and there are only a few things missing to make GRAV a first choice for novice webmasters as well, e.g. people who want to set-up and run their own websites with nearly 0 knowledge at all.

I dealed with CMS for years, decades. I've worked with large scale enterprise solutions like Vignette, OpenCMS as well as with Drupal, Wordpress and Joomla. With all these systems I always felt that there's to much imposition, a sensation I never had with GRAV. I admit that this is a "vague" statement and probably GRAV benefits from being fresh and clean with no historical ties and burdens, but GRAV allowed me to work with a strong focus on my clients and their purposes and, important, with the feeling that I could even do big stuff with GRAV as well, that the skeleton is robust and fine.

I discovered GR AV at the end of November, 2016 when I was searching the web for flat cms'es, when two artists and friends asked for an easy while convincing solution to publish and maintain websites without "overkills". Getting familiar with the GRAV universe I soon found that there are still some minor "lagoons" that needed attention, e.g. an editor in conditions, but all this was relatively easy to integrate. 70% of the stuff I needed was ready for enhancement out of the box, through blueprints, available plugins and the already impressive set of themes existing. The greatest challenge (lagoon) was to provide a "What you see is what you mean"-editor (WYSIWYM), I decided to implement StackEdit and not a 100% Wysiwyg solution. StackEdit seems to me like offering the best out of both worlds: Markup and WYSIWYG. Once I had this solution operative I was ready to offer access to the artists. (One conclusion for me, GRAV should provide a convincing solution for editing out of the box and not as part of an expensive Admin Pro plugin. Admin Pro may include an even better editor but edition is crucial and the current solution is not promotable.)

This said: I invite everybody to help GRAV as a backer (https://opencollective.com/grav#support)

Regards.
u

Thanks for the feedback! It's the second time today I read about StackEdit (first time: https://github.com/getgrav/grav/issues/1297#issuecomment-279543052) - I start to question if I don't understand the difference between that, and the Grav editor.

Screen Shot 2017-02-14 at 13

vs

Screen Shot 2017-02-14 at 13

Apart from some visual styling, what is the difference, the 50/50 inline preview? Or do I miss something?

@flaviocopes
Stackedit is visually a lot more attractive and it includes a live preview, kind of a mix between WYSIWYG and WYSIWYM. Moreover StackEdit styles a lot in the left-hand, the editor pane so even with the editor pane expanded, the sensation is more WYSIWYG than with the current codemirror editor. In my suggestions for the Google Summer of Code I point out another big feature of StackEdit: It allows offline editing and local copies combined with service providers for publishing and I suggested to add GRAV instances as a publishing target. As I'm working with StackEdit in my instances: it feels a lot better than the current editor. :-)

One of the biggest problems I see with the current Codemirror implementation: it does not highlight selections correctly out of the box while in editor mode. At least this has to be addressed.

Here's the link to StackEdit for people who don't know about StackEdit. The editor problem of GRAV is one of the mayor issues identified by the community. StackEdit is only one option and the awaited Admin Pro plugin will include a substitution for the current codemirror implementation. My point is that GRAV should include a decent editor in the basic version as well. (Addressing the highlight issue for selection may be an acceptable solution) Right now the editor is for savvys only and it's hard to offer the editor as an editing interface to customers.

(I now realized you posted the issue comment)

What you mean with

it does not highlight selections correctly out of the box while in editor mode

?

Can you make a screenshot, as I cannot see an major difference between Grav and StackEdit, except for some UI difference, and the fact it has a side-by-side preview.

And by the way, I would like to see a side-by-side preview option, useful in fullscreen mode (that's where the editor can be compared to the StackEdit editor experience

I opened an issue and I can attach screenshots. For me highlighting does not work. There's simply no difference between selected and unselected text, in all browers, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, so screenshot do not show any difference and this happens in all my instances.

Screen Shot 2017-02-14 at 17 Screen Shot 2017-02-14 at 17

First screenshot with selected text (cursor not visible), second screenshot no selection, cursor visible, that's the only difference.

Screen Shot 2017-02-14 at 17

Here's my StackEdit implementation. Works great and includes fullscreen support.

This is what I would expect. The following screenshot shows how in preview highlighting works:

Screen Shot 2017-02-14 at 18

@flaviocopes.
You're right, highlighting works but not for all display profiles. It works in a standard RGB profile but not in color profile I use on my displays. The contrast and colors used to highlight are not fail-safe.