Anyone who's been following me for a while knows how much I love Busy.org. Well there's a new front-end on the block, and it blows Busy out of the water.

Introducing Steempeak

Thanks to @shadowspub Witness Show on SteemRamble, I was given a link to Steempeak. This is a new social media front end for Steemit, and I have to tell you: I am beyond impressed

There are a number of condensers for Steemit, some which are purpose specific. Busy is (was) my first pick for a social media front-end, whereas DLive would be my go-to for videos and live streams. All the social-media-geared front-ends have the same sort of functionality as Steemit; you can view posts, follow users, reply to comments, and upvote/downvote content. Busy is by far the most differentiated in terms of style and presentation, but at its core, it functions very much the same way as Steemit does.

This is no different with Steempeak. However, two things really seal the deal for Steempeak for me: user interface and site features.

User Interface

First and foremost, the user interface at Steempeak is lightweight. It's not cluttered, large, or cumbersome. Everything is sleek while still being accessible and easy-to-use. Login is conducted through SteemConnect, making it exceptionally easy to log in and switch accounts. Looking at my profile page, everything is instantly recognizable.

You'll also notice that everything is set up as tiles, the same way you'd expect to see on Instagram. This is an awesome interface feature that they've implemented. For me, I like having the scroll in my feed because it's what I'm used to from Busy. However, for people that follow, say, a bunch of photographers, viewing posts and resteems in a tile grid format will be much more useful. Being able to switch back and forth between these views is a great feature to tailor the user experience to each individual user.

Speaking of tailoring the user experience, they have a checkbox visible on your profile page that allows you to hide resteems. I've seen plugins like this for Chrome before, and I made extensive use of them. That said, it is such a pleasure to have that feature built in to the site. When I'm scrolling my blog, I'm less concerned about what I've resteemed than I am with my own posts. When I resteem a post, it's after reading and commenting on the post, so reminding me that I've resteemed a post isn't particularly valuable or useful. On Steemit, it can be a way to keep track of posts you like, but you don't need to do that using Steempeak. Of course people have different preferences, so if you like tracking all your resteems, you can view them all the way you normally would.

Site Features

I've already talked about a few of the site features that I really like, but boy are there a lot more to discuss. I'll start with the Dashboard page in your user profile.

This is really where Steempeak pulls ahead of the crowd. You have a suite of tools to track everything from your posting and commenting over time, to your rewards, to your account growth, all in easy-to-understand panels that expand on click. On the left-hand side, there are more tools for you to customize your account. All of your bookmarked posts are kept under the Bookmark tab. Same goes for Drafts.

What really tickles my pickle, though, is the Templates tab. Steempeak allows you to format templates for you to save so that you can create uniform posts. As a member of the @noblewitness team, I cannot begin to tell you how useful this feature is going to be. Now I can set up standardized witness updates, which frees up time for me to focus on the content, rather than ensuring I have the formatting right.

As I mentioned indirectly, Steempeak has a bookmarking feature. You can now favorite posts and archive them for later viewing, or just keeping track of posts where you want to see responses coming up. You can accomplish this using resteems, but it's vastly more convenient to have a bookmark feature that doesn't clutter up your feed. For me, this is going to be a great place to keep track of witness-related posts, such as upgrading my server and keeping track of my favorite witness tools.

The text editor is very easy to use and includes tools that streamline the formatting of posts. Rather than remembering markdown, you can simply click on the respective buttons to get what you want on the page. The preview pane is off to the right side, rather than immediately underneath like it is on Steemit and Busy, which makes track your changes and edits a breeze. It's not visible in the image, but at the bottom of the post editor are the standard options for payout and, more importantly, a button that allows you to schedule posts. That's right; directly from the editor, you can set your dates for when you want your posts to go live.

Under the Tools tab in your profile, you have access to two things. First, it has a market ticker that allows you to track the price of Steem and SBD, as well as both to Bitcoin. Second, and more importantly, is a tool that allows you to figure out what your Guaranteed Steemit Minimum Income should be. @jarvie has a post that goes into depth about what GSMI is, but basically it's a way to temper expectations. It reviews your average list of voters on posts, what those votes look like in terms of weight, and then projects roughly what you can expect to be making from your work based on how many posts a month you're making. This is a really cool feature which I think addresses a big issue for a lot of new users: aligning your expectations with the reality of posting to the blockchain.

Their search function is miles ahead of anything else I've seen. Steemit's default search engine uses a straightforward Google plugin. While it functions, it isn't at all helpful. Busy's search function is better, but it only displays user accounts based on the search criteria. Steempeak not only searches user accounts and ranks them by relevance to your search terms, but it also returns page results. While the search function doesn't yet have filtering tools to help you narrow down your search more, or sort by age, votes, comments, or other criteria, it's already far and away the best search tool for the chain I've seen on a front-end.

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All in all, this is an exceptional take on presenting the blockchain in social media format. From now on, I'm using Steempeak for everything I do.

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If you want to vote for me as a witness, cast your vote here! Scroll down until you see the name "noblewitness"!

Like what you read? Follow me, @anarcho-andrei! You can also find me on PALnet, Steem Romania, and the Fiction Workshop on the Writer's Block.

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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://www.libertynineline.com/2018/09/16/steempeak-my-new-favorite-condenser/

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