Scrible

Modern research platform for school and work

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Copy cat

Once we added the ability to send one shared web page e-mail to multiple people, we realized it would make sense to include yourself on that conversation. So we’ve added an option to the Share Window to send yourself a copy of the Share Email as well. This way, if anyone does a Reply All to the  Share Email, you’ll get included in the action as well.

 

All you have to do is check the box that reads “Send a copy to myself” and you’ll be included in the recipients of the Share Email. This way, you can continue the discussion about the web page beyond the initial Share Message you provided.

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Sharing via group emails

Credit: RRZE via Wikimedia Commons

We recently changed the way email sharing works based on our own internal experience using scrible for article sharing.  We got frustrated that we couldn’t have group email threads based on articles we were sharing with each other.  The way things were working, if you shared an article with multiple people, each recipient would receive their own Share Email.  Then, if one of the recipients wanted to reply to that email and include all of the other recipients, they’d have to somehow magically know who those recipients were and manually add those people to his (or her) reply.  Ugh.  We didn’t like that. After grumbling about it to each other for a while, we remembered that we write the code and fixed it!  Now, all of the email addresses you enter into the Recipients field in the Share Window will all be sent one group email so that every person will see all of the other folks included in the Share Email.  So now, to carry on a group email conversation about the article, all you have to do is hit “Reply All” and everyone’s in the loop!  Much better!

We’re always looking for ways to improve sharing.  If you have suggestions on how to make scrible more collaborative, please let us know through our feedback page.

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Cc for Cc-onversation Cc-larity

Imagine that you get the following Share Email from your friend Robert:

“This article relates to our conversation last night.  Please see my green notes for my thoughts on the matter.”

You have no idea what Robert’s talking about.  You didn’t even talk to him last night.  You look at the “To” field of the email and see that your mutual friend Loic is on the email as well.  Was Robert directing this annotated article to Loic or you??

Turns out that Robert’s message was directed at Loic, but he also included you in on the shared page because he thought you’d be interested as well.

In the world of email, the “Cc” (Carbon copy) field is used to avoid this confusion because the primary recipient of a message appears in the “To” field and secondary recipients appear in the Cc field.  So, everyone receiving the email knows who the email was directed at and who’s just along for the ride.

In the same spirit of clarity, we just added a Cc option for pages shared via email using scrible.  This is useful in case you want to Cc a separate set of people on the Share Email than the ones you’re primarily directing the page to (i.e. the folks entered in the Recipients field in Share Window).  Here’s how to use this new feature…  Clicking the “Add Cc” link in the Share Window will pop open the CC field like so:

Fill it in just like the Recipients field and you’re ready to go. Now, everyone will receive one Share Email, with separate recipients shown in the “To” and “Cc” fields of the Share Email.  Everyone will know who you’re primarily talking to and who’s was just included to keep ’em in the loop.

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Turbo Button

Now were iz dat turbo button?

Ok… Who remembers the Turbo Button on the old computers that would magically change the speed of your computer on the fly?  It was great.  You’d notice your computer was running really slowly and you’re sure it should be faster… and wha-laa you’d discover that somehow the turbo button had gotten turned off.  Change it back and you got an instant speed boost.

We’d been noticing lately that our site wasn’t performing the way we felt it should.  While investigating this, we reviewed the settings on our database and found a few configuration values which defaulted to something more appropriate for computers of the x486 era (the ones that had turbo buttons).  After adjusting these to values appropriate for a modern server, we’ve seen around a 5x increase in site performance.  Always nice to get a speed boost for free.

We’re always keeping our eyes out for more ways to improve your experience.  Please let us know if you have any suggestions!

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Stickier sticky notes

We had some reports that our sticky notes were out of control. That they were wandering off wherever they wanted to be, hanging out with the wrong crowd, and generally being a nuisance to society. Well we had a long, stern talk with them and they should be straightening up and flying right. Now when you place it a note, it takes notice. It will remember where you put it, and it will try its darnedest to get back to where it was when you reload that page. And if it can’t, it’ll politely excuse itself to the margin of the page. How’s that for a paragon of proper page placement?

Hopefully this update makes notes behave closer to what you would expect from their physical analogs. Let us know what you think, love or hate it, so we can keep improving scrible and making it better than ever!

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