Springnote Release Notes- July 12, 2007 - "Design Reorganization"

Hey everyone, this is the Springnote team. This week is our seventh release. =)

We're sure that many users that logged into Springnote after Monday evening were probably surprised with the new design. In our last release we told everyone that we have started working on redesigning Springnote's UI. We have finally finished designing our new UI on July 9. We'll start today's release by reminiscing on the preparation and precedures that went on during the two months of designing the new UI. Let's first look at where the designing of the new UI took place. =)

△ July 8, Sunday evening - day before the release of our new UI. Looking at each and every element of the new UI.

△ May 9, Monday - To the last moment before releasing the new UI, the Springnote team continues to worry on how to create a more easier and intuitive UI.

△ May 9 , Monday evening - even right before the releasee, doing a last check for bugs.

△ May 9 , Monday evening - looking over the source code to check for any problems.

△ May 9 , Monday evening - fixing each and every bug discovered.

After the opening of Springnote's alpha version, we've received a tremendous amount of opinions along with our usability test that was held during the last week of April which became the basis in our design of our new UI. During the second week of May, as mentioned in our 5/16/2007 release, we have cleaned up Springnote by removing elements in Springnote that was giving it problems.

Now,  we'll go over the changes in the new UI in detail.

• Elimination of browser scrollbars. We have now created scrollbars within Springnote.
  Resolved various problems that occurred frequently in the editor. The reason we choose to have internal scrollbars is to have users be able to always have the left plane (page navigation panel) and right plane (bookmark panel) visible.
• We choose to eliminate the 'go to' button because of the confusion caused by it being shown with the 'search' button together. Therefore, we have just left the 'search' button.
• We have now separated the area where page navigation location, link, attach, and the editing toolbar was originally. While editing, you will only see the editing toolbar.
• You can now see information on connected pages and sub-pages.
• We have improved on indicating Public/Private settings through an icon along with the ability to toggle between each setting.
• We have improved on the way you can now set your page to public or share your page with others by making it more convenient.
• We have improved the toolbar by exposing more often used features/functions.
• More information on attached files is now provided along with an easier way to insert file attachments on your page.
• We have made vast improvements on our 'Compare Revisions' feature by making it more intuitive through a classification system. You can now accurately see the differences between revisions.
• You can now change the sizes of the left and right panels.
• You can now increase the size of the bookmark panel, where it originally on displayed 2 characters.

Although our main goal in our new UI was to reorganizing features that was once a very complicated UI, we are also in preparation for a skins/themes feature that many have been waiting for.

We will now go over each and every new improvement and change in our new UI.

Springnote UI Ver.2 / Modifications

The bookmark panel (right side panel) is now always visible even when moving vertically long pages where scrolling is required.

We have received many suggestions on the fact that the bookmark panel would disappear when scrolling vertically using the browser's scrollbars. We have made improvements by adding scrollbars within Springnote, eliminating the need for browser scrollbars. With this improvement, while scrolling down you can still see and use the global navigation bar, toolbar, and bookmark panel.

△ No matter how much you scroll down, you can still use the bookmark panel.

Page links, page history, and file attachment information are now always visible no matter where you have scrolled.

We have also fixed many bugs that existed in our editor through this addition of internal scrollbars. The bug where the caret would hide under the toolbar has also been fixed.

The Size of the Right and Left Side Panels Are Now Adjustable

We have received a lot of suggestions and requests on enabling adjustable side panels from our users. While redesigning the UI, we've decided add this feature to enable adjustable side panels. Requests on enabling the adjustment on the bookmark panel size has also been implimented in this update.

△ You can now adjust the size of the page navigation panel on the left along with the size of the bookmark panel on the right. 

△ When clicking a tab from the page navigation panel on the left, the tab will expand.

More than one tab can be expanded at a time. You can also collapse all tabs and just leave one tab expanded! 

△ You can now navigate to root pages through our global navigation bar located on the top.

Page Public/Private Settings Indication Page Icon.

This is a feature that has been requested by Tooduls, Nammoo, zyint, hyeonseok, and Jesse among many other Springnote users. Page icons now show public/private status along with an indication showing whether or not the page is shared. 

△ You can now easily tell if a page is public/private or shared through our new page icons. 

△ 전체 페이지 관리하기 역시 개선된 아이콘으로 공개/비공개 여부를 바로 확인할 수 있습니다.

Improvement on Page Navigation Hierarchy/Tree Performance 

We've received many reports on sub-pages not being correctly displayed in our [All Pages] tab from the Page Navigation Panel. We have also received requests on sub-pages being automatically displayed in the Page Navigation Panel. We have vastly improved viewing the [All Pages] tab during the redesign of our UI.

△ Sub-pages from the current page you are viewing is now automatically displayed. 

△ Moving pages into other pages to create sub-pages is a lot more easier now with easier indication on where pages are dragged into.

A More Easy and Simple Way to Set Pages to Public/Private and Send Invitations to Share Pages

While setting pages to public/private was once extremely complicated, we have improved the way you can set page permission settings by making it more simpler. Fix solve this problem, the Springnote team put a lot of thought and effort into making this process easier and simpler. =)

△ By looking at the top right portion on the editing space, you can now see the current status of your page in detail - how many people have writing access, how many have reading. and whether the page is private/public through detailed wording that is displayed..

△ When clicking the permission status, you will see a dialog box that displays who is able to write/read along with a field 

where you can add collaborators by inputting their OpenID. Once you have inputted an OpenID in the field, an invitation will be

sent to the corresponding person via e-mail. By clicking 'Anyone can read', the page will be set to public.

If this is not checked, the page will be only accessible by the page owner along with anyone else who has been set.

Toolbar Help

We have now added tooltips to toolbar items that include a small description of what each toolbar item does. 

△ By hovering your mouse over toolbar items, a tooltip will appear that has a short description on what the toolbar item does. 

Renaming Pages

△ We've found out that many people did not know and could not find a way to change the name of a page. 

Now, next to each page title you will see a small button that says [Rename]. Clicking this will enable you to rename your page.

View Page Revision History in More Detail.

Page revision history has now been refined by giving more details on how a page has been modified. A page's history now shows sharing information, page title renaming, file attachment information, along with invitation information in a list so that the owner can see what types of changes have been specifically made to a page. Along with adding this feature to personal notes, while preparing for our release of Team Springnote, we will also add this feature.

△ 이제 스프링노트의 히스토리보기 코너에서, 페이지의 변동사항을 모두 살펴볼 수 있습니다.

△ 첨부파일 등록에 관한 히스토리만 따로 살펴볼 수 있습니다.

누가 언제 어떤 첨부파일을 올리고 삭제했는지를 살펴볼 수 있습니다.

△ You can now see information on collaborators, public/private settings, sharing, and restriction information by viewing a page's history. 

To ensure that our users can conveniently use Springnote, we have been working on each and every part of Springnote along with looking into and studying every feature. Through this redesign, we hope our Springnote users can now use Springnote more easily and comfortably. So, how do you like Springnote's new design? Please leave your opinions in our Springnote forum.

Changes made in the last two weeks! (2007/07/12)

• [New Feature] New keyboard shortcut to toggle between viewing modes (Suggested by : humnaleague, Votes: 9)

•  

  • By pressing Ctrl+Alt+M, you can toggle between viewing modes - full screen, hide side panels, and normal view.

  • For Mac users, press Ctrl+Command+M

  • Thanks to humnaleague, forever, and Squid for this suggestion.

   

• [New Feature] Calculator ( Suggested by : Dark Magumsung, Votes : 9 )

  • With Springnote, you don't have to separately open your PC calculator to make calculations. All you have to do is type an equation using our provided logic for it to be automatically calculated.
  • To enable this, input @c:10+20  and then press Ctrl+Space for this to be automatically calculated. (suggested by : hey)
  • By inputting @c=:10+20 followed by pressing Ctrl+Space, you will receive the following format 10+20 = 30, showing the equation along with the answer.
  • You can also use division and multiplication in your equations @c:50*20+10/2 
  • We want to thank Dark Magumsung and hey for their suggestions along with codelub and shinoops. We also thank all those who voted for this feature.

As mentioned in our previous release, we are working hard for a late August release for stability improvement and a redesign of our home page along with the release of Team Springnote. With this update we are implimenting many suggestions and ideas that our users have provided. For example, a post it feature suggested by neomano and a To-Do check box feature suggested by Moori among many other features. Some suggestions and ideas that have been decided to impliment that have not been added yet will be implimented in our release of Team Springnote. To impliment and add suggestions and ideas from our users that have been deferred for the past 3 months, we will put our 2 week interval feature voting process until the end of August. You can look for previous feature suggestions as they become official features in our future release notes. We promise to start the process of implicating ideas and suggestions proposed by users during our official opening. =)

We thank everyone for all your support! We are very happy and excited on this upcoming release of Springnote's new design that have been working on for a while. Even after the release of our new UI, we plan to continue to gradually improve Springnote. If you have any problems or inconveniences with our new UI or have suggestions on improvements on certain areas, please use our Springnote forum and let us know. =)

We ask for everyone's support in introducing our newly designed Springnote to your friends and family along with your feedback. We will continue to work hard to create a better Springnote for everyone!

Thanks to everyone!

- Springnote team -