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Discussion on: Future dev.to product concept: "Preview" button in index view

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mortoray profile image
edA‑qa mort‑ora‑y

I think this is a good idea.

Would it reveal the first paragraph or the post description and/or both?

What about a media post (just youtube or podcast embedded, for example)?

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Probably just the first paragraph for reading. People have very different ideas of how to use the description field. A bit like how comments can lie but the code can't, being jumped right into the post body might be the best approach.

Embeds would probably show up, but we probably would not want an image to show up if it was purely for decoration, like this:

dev.to/kentcdodds/but-really-what-...

This isn't so much a native pattern on dev.to but shows up when people crosspost from Medium. I'm sure we could figure out how to display that right.

Might make sense to make all media need to be expanded, like:

Content content content

[YouTube embed - Click to expand]

Content content content

We actually should be using this pattern in more areas, as some embeds show up inconsistently on the notifications page. We could remedy this, but it is sort of whac-a-mole. If we only had one template be responsible for the various embeds things could be simplified.

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mortoray profile image
edA‑qa mort‑ora‑y

Is the "description" field used, other than on Twitter posts? I'm always confused myself as what to write there, usually choosing some odd cross between the title and first sentence.

I don't think it's bad that people should be expected to have the first paragraphc function as an abstract/preview. That's fairly common across the web, and many services rely on it.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

It's used in these boxes

Either way, the proposed feature would show enough of the article preview that if it didn't give an idea of what the post was all about, the author is being waayyyyy too clever.

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alvarocavalcanti profile image
Alvaro Cavalcanti

I'm always for iterative evolution. Text only at first (if the content is embed-only, tell the reader that) and add more stuff in the coming iterations.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Good thoughts