I want to use 37 Signals Backpack, BUT...

September 5, 2007 5:34 PM

I would like to use 37 Signals Backpack, but I absolutely HATE the textile markup language. What is the advantage of that over just WYSIWYG HTML? Using textile, it feels like back to the hand-coding days. And I know, people say you get used to it, but I don't. I hate it. Is there something similar to Backpack that does NOT use textile? Thanks, MeFites!
posted by Gerard Sorme to computers & internet (8 comments total)

* A lot easier for the programmer, especially if someone already wrote a textile parser. WYSIWYG HTML interfaces are hard to get right.
* Lightweight markup languages like textile are "cooler" in Web 2.0, and 37signals is very 2.0.
* Textile allows users to customize their text without making it ugly, thus preserving the aesthetic of the website.
posted by smackfu at 5:59 PM on September 5, 2007

What is the advantage of that over just WYSIWYG HTML?
It's not an excuse, but the advantage to it is that it's much easier to secure the site from HTML attacks when you disallow HTML. Supposedly it makes things easier for users too, but I don't know who the mythical user that get their head around Textile/Markdown but not get HTML is.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote fucking Markdown, and he still gets it wrong on his own site.

There's a few sites that doing backpacky things, but it's by far the prettiest. It depends what bit you need most.
posted by bonaldi at 6:01 PM on September 5, 2007

"I don't know who the mythical user that get their head around Textile/Markdown but not get HTML"

Virtually everyone, especially for simple cases. Many people use textile-style mark-up *already* without even knowing it... so if you are only allowing a few basic tags, it's a little more intuitive and less intimidating.

Now, if you're doing complex stuff, you're right, HTML isn't much harder (although I much prefer Markdown to raw HTML).
posted by toomuchpete at 7:34 PM on September 5, 2007

I like textile because I can enter basic formatting and markup quirky and easily and without having to take my hands of the keyboard.
posted by Good Brain at 7:35 PM on September 5, 2007

Remember, in my original post, I asked what was better about Textile over WYSIWYG HTML. I'm not trying to compare HTML hand-coding versus Textile Markup. With WYSIWYG there's no need to know a single thing about HTML. To me, having to use all the markup codes in Backpack lost my interest in using the site. But, it's extremely nice and I'm still looking for something similar that uses WYSIWYG.
posted by Gerard Sorme at 7:51 PM on September 5, 2007

"What is the advantage of that over just WYSIWYG HTML?"

I find that textile/markdown/mediawiki/etc. are optimized for writing: Once you've learned the format, it's easy to just write, without interrupting yourself to grab the mouse and click on buttons or dialog boxes. You can see things like link URLs as you write, which you can't in a WYSIWYG editor.
posted by mbrubeck at 8:47 PM on September 5, 2007

If you are handy with Javascript, you might be able to make a greasemonkey script with the textile editor helper. Then again, it would be easier to just learn textile. I've made many a Textpattern site, and in the process, a 72-year old priest and about 12 newspaper staffers learned textile. They seem fine with it. If you're doing complicated things, it's less predictable than HTML, but really, give it a fair shot.
posted by tmcw at 9:14 PM on September 5, 2007

I answered your question, though perhaps I could have been more clear in the ordering of my answer. With textile I can enter formatting easily without removing my hands from the keyboard and without the tedious verbosity of writing properly formed HTML tags.
posted by Good Brain at 9:22 PM on September 6, 2007