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December 7, 2021 By scrible

Scrible Gets a New Look and Layout

We’ve given the Scrible Library a makeover and made other improvements throughout the system!

Updated Design

In addition to an overall move to a brighter, white interface, we’ve made dozens of smaller changes to buttons, fields, messages, windows, tooltips, icons and layout for design consistency to give the Scrible Library a more modern look and feel. We’ve also made numerous improvements to give the Scrible Toolbar and accompanying On-Page Sidebars more breathing room (e.g. more padding/spacing in dropdown menus) and make them easier on the eye (e.g. larger color swatches and text size in dropdown menus).

Consolidated Library Sidebars

We now have a single sidebar area on the left of the Library to display each of the available sidebars (Libraries, Tags and Annotation Key) one at a time since there’s no great need to have two of them open simultaneously. This simplifies the interface and eliminates the previously possible busy layout in which you could have the Libraries Sidebar open on the left and the Tags Sidebar or Annotation Key Sidebar open to its right. Now, each of those is only viewable one at a time. All sidebars can be collapsed when not needed to give you more screen space to view the contents of your Library.

**New Add from Sources Sidebar and Button**

Under the Bibliography Tab and Outline Tab, there used to be a Sources Sidebar on the right that would display your sources and allow you to add citations to your bibliography and annotations (e.g. highlighted evidence) to your outline, respectively. That sidebar now appears on the left as the new Add from Sources Sidebar. It still works the same way. It’s just folded into the new consolidated sidebars area on the left. When you’re in the Bibliography Tab or Outline Tab, you can open/close this Sidebar using its own tab. When its closed, you can also open it by clicking the new Add from Sources Button.

**Outline Editor with *Add from Sources Sidebar* open**

Source Description Back in the Library

We’ve brought the Source Description back to the Library so you can see a brief helpful blurb about each source there. These descriptions have always been available, but were not displayed alongside each source in the Library.

Remember that you can enter/edit the description for a source in 2 places – in your Library and in the Information Sidebar on a source (e.g. webpage or PDF). In your Library, click the Information Icon at far right of the source entry to display the Information Window, where you can enter/edit the description. When viewing a source, click the Information Sidebar Tab on the right to view the Information Sidebar, where you can also change the description field.

You can enter your own description for webpages and PDFs. We automatically provide one for books. When there’s no description, we show a preview of the first annotation (if there is one) in place of the description.

**A description for each source is now visible in the Library**.

Flipped Citation Editor Layout

The Citation Editor layout has also been updated. The autogenerated citation is now found at the bottom and the the constituent fields that make up the citation are at the top. This is intended to draw your attention to those fields so that you’re more likely to check them and see if they require your attention. We hope that helps build the good habit of double checking the fields to ensure citation accuracy.

Remember that the Citation Editor is viewable in multiple ways, including (a) by clicking the Citation Icon at the far right of a source entry in the Library, (b) by clicking the Citation Icon to the left of a citation in your bibliography in the Bibliography Tab and (c) in the On-Page Citation Sidebar when viewing a source.

**Autogenerated citation at the bottom of the Citation Editor**

Updated Browser Extension Button

The buttons for our Chrome and Edge browser extensions are now updated to a teal color that matches our current logo and is frequently used throughout our interfaces. If yours hasn’t changed yet, it should automatically update in the next few days. New button color; same great features!

**New Scrible browser extension button design**

New On-Page Sidebar Tabs Panel

The tabs for sidebars that accompany the Toolbar on right side of a webpage and in our PDF Viewer are now all visually grouped together in a single panel. On a webpage, this panel can be moved up and down using a grip area at the top and bottom of the panel in case it’s blocking underlying content.

You’ve always been able to move the Toolbar on webpages using the grips on either end.

**Sidebar tabs can be moved vertically on an article to uncover underlying content**.

Updated PDF Page Zoom and Navigation Controls

In our PDF viewer, we’ve consolidated the page zoom options in the Toolbar into a single dropdown menu and moved the page navigation controls to the Pages Sidebar (f.k.a. Thumbnails Sidebar). This declutters the Toolbar a bit and sensibly unifies page navigation with page thumbnails.

Page zoom and navigation controls updated in the Scrible PDF Viewer

We hope you like the makeover and that it helps you work more efficiently and effectively. As always, if you have any questions or run into any problems, please let us know!

February 16, 2021 By scrible

Scrible Improves Support for National History Day

Building on our existing support for annotated bibliographies, we’re excited to announce new citation management features to improve support for National History Day (NHD) projects. NHD rules require citations to be grouped as primary and secondary sources within the bibliography.

So, we’ve added a new option in our Citation Editor to allow students to designate each information source as a primary or secondary source. Sources without either option selected are treated as secondary sources.

In our Bibliography Editor, we’ve added the option to split the bibliography into primary and secondary sources. Students can toggle between a standard bibliography and the new split bibliography simply by checking or unchecking the Split primary/secondary sources checkbox.

Finally, in Scrible Writer, our Google Docs Add-on/Microsoft Word Add-in, we’ve added the option to split the bibliography into primary and secondary sections. We’ve also added the option to use the annotated version of a bibliography in the document simply be checking a new Annotated Bibliography checkbox.

May 16, 2019 By Victor Karkar

Scrible Overhauls How-to Guides and In-App Tours

We’re excited to announce a major refresh of our How-to Guides and in-app Tours. These are 2 distinct types of self-help and training resources available under the Help menu when you’re signed into your Library.

How-to Guides

Our new How-to Guides replace our previous Scrible Edu Guides, which were a set of PDFs containing screenshots and captions on different topics to help guide you through various aspects of using Scrible Edu such as signing up, installing and using the Scrible Toolbar Chrome Extension, connecting/syncing with Google Classroom, etc. Those guides were launched a year ago and became increasingly outdated with major product updates we made in May and November of 2018.

The new How-to Guides are better because:

New Interfaces. They’re updated to cover those product changes and show our current interfaces.
More Topics. There’s more of them covering more topics. This is an ongoing effort. Our library of How-to Guides will grow over time and cover an increasing number of topics. Let us know what’s missing that you’d like us to cover next.
Bite-Sized. They’re more succinct and focused. Some of the previous PDF Guides were long and covered multiple topics. These new Guides are shorter and easier to digest quickly.
Webpages, not PDFs. They’re built as responsive webpages instead of PDFs. So, their size/layout automatically adjusts to the screen size you’re on. This prevents you from having to constantly zoom in and out if you’re viewing a guide on a phone or tablet.
Personalized to You. The Guides are automatically grouped and shown to you based on who you are and the Plan you’re on so that you see the guides that are most relevant and useful to you. For example, if you’re a student on our free Edu Plan, you’ll be shown the student guides for our Edu Plan. If you’re a teacher, you’ll see How-to Guides (Edu Pro Plan Teachers) under your Help menu. Selecting that will navigate you to a page listing Guides for Edu Pro Teachers, which looks like this:

**How-to Guides Page displaying list of Guides for teachers on the Edu Pro Plan**

From there, you’ll see the list of guides relevant to you and can click on any of them to view the particular guide of interest.

In-App Tours

Our in-app Tours provide in-context guidance to help you understand how to use Scrible while you’re signed into your account. They walk you through key features in different interfaces of our system. Each Tour is presented as a set of steps, with each step highlighting a particular feature and showing explanatory text and, in some cases, a screenshot or animated GIF to clarify how the feature works. For example, if you want to understand how our Outline Editor works, under the Help menu atop your Library, select Tours > Outline Tab Tour.

This’ll navigate you to the Outline Editor in the Outline Tab of your Library and launch the first step of the Tour. In the top left corner, you’ll see the 1/3 in a small green box indicating that you’re on the first step of a 3 step Tour. In any Tour, you can click Next>> or <<Prev to move to the next step or previous step, respectively, in the Tour or Ok, got it to end and exit the Tour.

As with our How-to Guides, this is ongoing effort. Our library of in-app Tours will grow over time and cover more interfaces and features. Let us know what’s missing that you’d like us to cover next.

**Step 2 of 3 of the Outline Tab Tour, which walks you through the Outline Editor**

We’re excited to update these self-help and training resources. Please let us know what you think! We welcome feedback and requests for additional Guides and Tours and even other types of resources!

-The Scrible Team