Introducing accounts! An account allows you to keep track of documents you’ve recently worked on. I’ll be adding more features in the near future which don’t work without an account.
I’ve also made a few changes to the website’s style.
A few changes I’ve made over the last few weeks.
You’ll notice a new “History” button on the top menu bar. This will allow you to see all previous versions of your documents, and restore an older version if you want.
Prior to this feature, if you accidentally wiped out your document text it was gone for good. This is no longer a problem.
Older documents won’t have any history yet, because it hasn’t been tracked until now.
I just released a couple changes to collabedit.
1. User List – See a list of everyone who is currently viewing the document
2. Improved latency – The code no longer polls every 2 seconds to check for document changes. Instead it uses comet so it’s updated instantly.
I also fixed an issue with opera, improved the error dialog and made some changes to the underlying code.
Collabedit now has sidebar chat! There are still has a few minor quirks with it. I ran into some trouble with EditArea (the javascript text editor I’m using) because it requires browser focus in order to update the text. I’ve got my eye on Codemirror and some other alternatives though.
I’ve switched to using Tornado as the underlying web server. Tornado will enable me to use comet (aka “long polling”, “server-push”, “http-streaming”, “bosh”) technology. I haven’t taken full advantage of that yet, but I will. Tornado also has a built in templating system, authentication, database helpers and a few other nice features.
When etherpad launched in November 2008, I took notice. It was very similar to collabedit, a website that I had launched in March 2008. I quickly became a fan of etherpad and have used it for awhile now, preferring it over collabedit for most tasks. I stopped working on collabedit and moved on to other things.
When I learned that google had acquired etherpad earlier this week I had mixed feelings. I’m going to miss the service it provided, but I see an opportunity for collabedit to fill the void left by etherpad. I have been looking for another side project, but hadn’t considered revisiting collabedit until now.
I recognize that collabedit lacks many of the features that make a collaborative editor like this useful. I intend to spend time over the next several months adding these features. I would appreciate any feedback from etherpad users about what features would be the most useful. For this purpose I have created a new feedback forum at http://collabedit.uservoice.com.
Congratulations to the etherpad team, you deserve all the success you’ve seen. Best of luck with Google Wave!
I’ve deployed a new theme, the old one was kinda ugly. The new theme is based on the “Multiflex-3″ template written by Wolfgang. You can get more information at his website here.
I’ve also updated the version of Edit Area that I’m using. As a result several browser specific bugs have been fixed, Chrome now works. Thanks to Christophe for maintaining his great project here.
I’ve added the ability to download the contents of your document as a text file.
(this post was moved from the old blog on 1/11/2010)
I was able to resolve some issues with the Safari (beta 3) and Opera web browsers. They should work a little better now. Firefox and IE are still the preferred browsers, but Opera and Safari are at least mostly working now. You may have to clear your browser’s cache to see the changes.
(this post was moved from the old blog on 1/11/2010)
Introducing collabedit:
(this post was moved from the old blog on 1/11/2010)