Thanks John. Authorea founder here. First off, I have tried writelatex for the first time just a couple of weeks ago and it really works great to create beautiful documents. Great work.
Yes, we (and most scholars in general) are very used to editing a source (Latex mostly) and compiling it to something else (a PDF output, or similar). We are trying to streamline that process using the web as the canvas, and render directly to HTML5. In a way you are right, it feels like you are editing directly the HTML output. Which is fine! Our hope is that researchers, especially the ones who already work and write on the web will quickly get used to such a workflow.
Yes, we (and most scholars in general) are very used to editing a source (Latex mostly) and compiling it to something else (a PDF output, or similar). We are trying to streamline that process using the web as the canvas, and render directly to HTML5. In a way you are right, it feels like you are editing directly the HTML output. Which is fine! Our hope is that researchers, especially the ones who already work and write on the web will quickly get used to such a workflow.