One Month In Thoughts
in progress
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Michael S
After a month of using the app I thought I'd share what's working and not working for me as someone coming from Bear and Google Docs
What's working:
- I love the AI panel being side by side with my document. It's makes it simpler than having a second AI app open. I can go fullscreen and tune everything else out while I work. And the fact that it can read what I've typed in my doc without having to copy/paste is a HUGE time saver.
- The responsiveness to Feedback here is amazing. Sometimes I'll have conversations with a team member in real time vs having to wait days or weeks like some other apps I've used.
- The AI is getting pretty great, and while there are clear limitations, the team seems eager to keep expanding the project.
What's not working (imo):
- Currently, for me, LEX isn't a writing app with an AI component. It's an AI app with a lackluster writing component to it. Coming from Google Docs, the brutal truth is the app isn't cutting it. I'm spending more time trying to get the formatting correct than I am actually writing. I think it would behoove the team to take the Google Docs approach with "less is more" and build out once the core features are bug free. The fact that we can't even use some of the punctuation the AI uses is a little frustrating, and basic universal features like the tab button not working is a big problem.
I know "Markdown" is the trendy thing, but most people don't need it, and I think LEX is losing out on a HUGE group of people that would jump at the chance to have a writing app with a cheaper buy in rate than the standard ChapGPT subscription. But in it's current state as a writing app, I can't recommend it to people without the huge caveat that they won't be able to use it as their default writing app yet. In 2024, having the ability to use MD is pretty common now, allowing people that don't need it to simply not use it or even be aware of it.
- I don't need a title for a letter to someone. To give the doc a label is to give it a title. I can't delete the title without losing the label. It's a really big problem for about 90% of the stuff I write, and with having that many documents, trying to find a doc without a title will be a nightmare.
- Copy/pasting: There's really no consistency with this that I can find so far. It works great with Bear, which I use as my default MD editor, but it works terribly with Google Docs. It kind of works with Final Draft, but not with Highlander 2. It also doesn't always work from the AI to the document in LEX itself. So i end up spending half my time just trying to format the doc to look like the AI version.
- Backup: This is huge because I don't like trusting an online company to keep my work safe, especially after the disastrous Google Docs fiasco that happened recently. Giving us the ability to have a "backup" button would be huge. It could zip everything we have so we could keep an archive of everything offline. It's why I keep copy/pasting everything to Bear at the moment.
Everything else is small and not worth mentioning at the rate the team is pushing out updates. It's clear after re-reading this that my main issue is with the current focus of the AI instead of the writing app. Either way, it's nice having a reduced price version of various AI models to choose from and I'm looking forward to watching this project mature <thumbs up>
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ASHOKAN I
Love, love, lovve LEXXXXXXX......
Nikclas N
I couldn't agree more.
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Federico E
I just have to chime in and say how much Michael’s thoughts eerily resemble my own. I’ve mentioned formatting issues before in my own feedback to Lex, and that alone has driven me to look for alternatives even if the AI features built into Lex are so powerful. The folks at work never got around to using Lex (in spite of buying a subscription when they saw the features and the price) because of the limited formatting features. It took too long to get a document publication-ready after export. I’ve loved to see the Lex team responding so marvelously to your feedback, Michael! I’d love to keep using Lex as my main writing app, and this thread goes a long way in that direction.
Fred Rivett
in progress
Fred Rivett
Hey Michael, just to say the tab functionality just went live! Hopefully it works how you want, if not let me know.
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Michael S
Fred Rivett OMG I love it! I can't believe how happy it makes me to be abl to press that button again, haha.
Fred Rivett
Glad we could bring some joy here Michael! Anything else be sure to let us know.
Fred Rivett
Another update Michael S, we actually have #4 already I just forgot about it! It's the "Export all" option at the bottom of the docs list, downloads a zip of all files in .md
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Michael S
Fred Rivett Nice! Yeah, that font doesn't have enough contrast, can't believe I never noticed that, haha. Thanks!!!
Fred Rivett
Michael Haha yeah we need to rework the document list UI as it’s pretty basic, will try to make this clearer (even I forgot we had it!)
Fred Rivett
under review
Hey Michael, really appreciate the detailed feedback, super helpful!
The good stuff is nice to hear, but the frustrating bits are the most useful for sure.
Apologies for the slow reply, I wanted to give a proper point by point response here, hence the delay.
- Totally agree there's a fair amount of "table stakes" we've not gotten to yet. It's a tricky balance between adding new features that we hope will unlock jumps in productivity, and working on the smaller details.
As a detail oriented person it bugs me too, but once we've shipped the big feature we've been working on later this year / early next we'll have more headspace to polish the essentials.
Great point on the tab feature, being honest it's not one I use myself but GDocs supports it and there's no reason why we can't. I've just raised a PR to add that in, so thank you for the nudge! Should go live tomorrow.
Regarding markdown are you suggesting it's not a good feature to include, or more that the lack of the formatting menu showing by default will put non-markdown users off? (There's a setting in the View Settings tab of the Settings panel on the right to make it show permanently, maybe we should show that as an option as part of onboarding).
- We've discussed removing this and definitely plan to, so it'll be gone soon. You can now rename docs in the doc list, and we'll be adding that into the individual doc view too.
- Copy/pasting is another one that we are aware needs work but haven't got to yet. We'll definitely improve this once the new feature is out.
- Batch download is a very fair request, have made a ticket to discuss with the team to see how easily we can add that.
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Michael S
Fred Rivett Hey Fred. Thanks for the reply and I'm looking forward to all the planned updates.
With regard to your MD question: I don't think you should get rid of it. I think it's a super important tool to have for writers who want to benefit from having the AI in the app and be able to interact in real time with what's being written. I just think pitching LEX as a MD editor can be limiting because people that don't need it might look else where for a writing app. Are you familiar with the ProNotes app for Mac? It turns Apple Notes into a MD writing app and adds a few more options like better backlinks. it's a perfect example of taking an app almost everyone uses daily and adds MD for those that need/want it to make it their daily driver instead of needing to go elsewhere. I'm thinking absolutely keep the MD options, but make the core product a simple writing app comparable to Google Docs. Google Docs is essentially a MD editor but almost know knows that unless they know about MD because Google is having people use format bar to achieve the same outcome as MD.
So let people use the format bar or let people who know what they're doing use MD if they need/want to.
Not sure if I made that any clearer, haha.
Fred Rivett
Michael S Gotcha, so basically don't force people to do the markdown stuff, make it a lot easier to use the UI to format text.
I think that makes sense, maybe the idea of giving the option to show or hide the formatting menu in onboarding would help go some way towards this. If a user opted to show the formatting menu all the time, do you think that would solve most of the problem in your eyes? Intrigued what else might be missing if not!
Appreciate the thoughts!
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Michael S
Fred Rivett Exactly. Keep the menu bar where it is because people who don't know anything about MD are technically using it by using that menu bar. And if they want to write something for a blog, and start using MD inline the learning curve is that much smaller since they're already unknowingly using MD. The reason I stopped using Bear as my main writer and only used it for MD was because they decided to get rid of the menu bar and I had to manually click the edit dropdown to see how to do certain things. Their reply to the community was "you should remember how to do those things" and I was like "peace out". Everyone writes differently and keeping that menu bar reaches the most amount of people. And since you're using rich format so we see the
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instead of the bold (won't show the asterisks no many how much variation I try, haha) then we're getting the best of both worlds. The joke at the beginning of Google Docs was that it was too simple and people wanted more control like in Word. But then people embraced the simplicity and more and more people who rarely wrote gravitated to Google Docs and started writing more because of that simplicity. Since AI is Lex's killer feature, keep the writing part simple and elevate the AI side and bring in that sweet sweet marketshare, haha.
Fred Rivett
Yeah makes sense, will ponder, thanks Michael!