
Show HN: Vim Valley, interactive Vim course - ryanmim
https://vimvalley.com
======
midgetjones
This is really cool, nice work!

A couple of minor criticisms (as an intermediate Vim user): \- I felt like it
was too easy to just stare at the key instruction on the top left and just
ignore how you're navigating the block of text itself. As you are letting
people know what commands are being introduced in the next lesson, maybe they
should only be shown if the student wants a hint? \- It seems like the only
way to go to the next lesson on completion (without using the mouse) is to tab
once then hit enter. Maybe that could be a keyboard command as well? `n`
maybe?

~~~
ryanmim
Thanks! The hints can be toggled on or off with F3 (the feature is introduced
later but the toggle works from the very first exercise).

I defaulted to showing them so that completely new Vim users don't get stuck
or lost during the lessons, but maybe you're right and I should default them
to off after the first couple of intro lessons.

~~~
midgetjones
Serves me right for skimming the instructions :)

------
brudgers
Looking briefly, I'd suggest prioritizing useful information to the top of the
page. For example on 'Bread and Butter' the useful stuff, the key bindings,
are at the bottom and the top of the page is a wall of text that probably
would usefully fill space in a live classroom or video context, but adds a lot
of noise in a text based context.

To put it another way, the user is a reader and hunting useful information
requires parsing through the text. The more there is that isn't useful the
more work the reader has to do and the more likely misunderstandings are.

It might also be useful to have the key bindings available as an interactive
element in the interface. Even considering how that would effect the bread and
butter page might be a useful exercise regarding how information might be
organized.

Good luck.

