I love the way that as I am typing this question, I am seeing what I am typing appear below, and it makes errors much easier to spot. Can anyone enlighten me to the science or technique behind this - i'm thinking of using it as a better way to confirm email entry on a web form...
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It works because it forces you to review your post. Now, other than seeing how the markup looks rendered, you could just look at your text in the input field, right? But having it in a separate area makes a users mind make an extra note as its viewed as a separate entity. Since the mind see's its own words in another context (more of that of a post) we can review it with an almost new mind. For example, I am sure you have experienced this. You stay up late writing a paper, finish and save then go to sleep. Then before you hand it in you review your fine work. All of a sudden you catch major mistakes you somehow missed when you were writing it. The same thing might happen when you return to a design or some other work. Our mind needs the separation to view it as new, when its viewed as new we can better review it. |
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One big benefit of the preview view is that it lets you instantly see how your markup changes things. Humans tend to associate temporal locality with causation and by having a constantly updating preview area, you shrink the gap between action and result to almost nothing. |
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Using Javascript, you can write a small script that listens to the "onkeyup" event that happens everytime you type a letter, and copy whatever you typed into a preview area in your HTML. That's basically what's happening here, although it's slightly more complicated because it also transforms the markdown and HTML you write in the textarea into actual HTML. |
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