Hi!

I was pondering about the last post I wrote, and had the stark realization, that what if the current steem Web frontends were to topple too. What would we be left with?

We would need a standalone Steem app.

After making some quick searches, I found out that there already is a desktop build for eSteem, called eSteem Surfer. So I downloaded it and am testing it out as I write this post.

The looks

On the surface, the app is pretty calm and straight-forward looking. I like that.

^{The (night-mode) profile view.}

(I set the view into night-mode, as I feel like it is better for my eyes.)

The interesting part of the app is it shows my top posts. I haven't seen that functionality in the other Steem frontends. I like it very much.

Apart from the profile view, eSteem provides with functionality to add bookmarks and favorites, editing drafts, schedule posts and a gallery view for photos and graphics uploaded using the app. (Note: The uploaded photos will be saved on the esteem servers so I don't think that's the best way to do this. Maybe use IPFS instead, and I hope there will one day be a fork that does this directly.)

Other than that, I think eSteem does have quite a good functionality. You can even access your Steem wallet with it, but having logged in with my posting key, I can't access the transfer options. (Similar thing applies to the memo key.)

It might be better if the application also had its own keychain functionality to enable this instead of having to use the master key for all operations. Added security would always be a good idea.

Writing the post.

While writing, I was a bit taken back by the sluggishness of the actual text on the screen while I was writing. It, that especially when starting up the program, there seems to be a definitely noticeable lag between a keypress and the letter appearing on the screen in the input box. However the longer I've been writing, the lag has almost disappeared. That's just weird.

^{Keeping drafts}

The draft keeping is an excellent function that I haven't really used before, but I'm glad there is one, if I ever happen to screw up the post I'm writing.

Conclusion

I really like where this app is heading, and I think I might be incorporating it into my workflow too.

There is one thing I would like to have on this application though, is the possibility to create custom footers that I could choose from when writing a post. This is a functionality I have missed on each and all frontends to the Steem blockchain.

When I was doing my #onephotoeveryday project, I always needed to build and tweak a footer in an external text editor, and the tweaking really became a chore, as towards to the end of my project, it was starting to take more and more of my time each time I would make a post, and when writing the last posts my time was divided 50%/50% between the post and tweaking the footer.

Also, since I have seen the posts written with eSteem, I am fully expecting to see a "fancy" footer created by the eSteem app itself, that advertises the app. I don't think that it is a good thing though, especially if I can't disable or edit that footer. (As far I checked, there wasn't a setting to do either.) Scrap that, I see that there wasn't an ad in the post! Which is a good thing!

So, how would I score this application?

I'll say it is already quite good! If it had the possibility to create custom footers and use different passwords, it would be excellent! :)

Ok, see you guys in the next post!