July 2010
The Document Viewer has always supported the ability to create “page notes” — annotations that sit between two pages and provide commentary about a specific page as a whole or an introduction to a new section of a document. This morning, we released an update to DocumentCloud that provides a way for you to create page notes from within the viewer.
To try it out, open a document you’ve uploaded and click on one of the “Add a Note” links in the sidebar. Hover your crosshair over the margin in between pages, and you’ll see a dotted line appear, with a note tab on the left:
If you click, you’ll create a page note in between the two pages. Add a title and some text and click the “Save” button. The note’s title will appear in the navigation on the right. Of course, page notes are viewable and editable from the workspace, just like any other.
If you’re logged in, you can take a look at the sample document shown here.
Monday morning we rolled out SSL support on DocumentCloud.org — visit https://www.documentcloud.org to view, browse and edit documents in your workspace over an encrypted connection. When you use HTTPS, all traffic between your computer and DocumentCloud is encrypted before it’s sent over the internet. If you’re working on a public wireless connection, are on an unsecured network or are dealing with highly-sensitive documents, we recommend using HTTPS.
You can tell if you’re an secure connection by looking at your browser. When visiting a secure website, all browsers display a lock icon somewhere on the window. Here’s what the lock looks like in Google Chrome:
More Search Parameters
We’ve also added new ways to filter your DocumentCloud searches. You can now use “access” to filter your documents by their access level, and “projectid” to designate a specific project when you’re using our search API. (Access to searches and the API are limited to registered users during the beta.)
To view only your private documents in a particular project, you can add “access: private” to your search terms. Searching by “access: public” will show you only public documents, while “access: organization” will show you those documents shared within your organization.
Already using the search API? We’ve added search terms that let you limit public results to a single project. Drop a line to support AT documentcloud DOT org if you’d like to take advantage of this one.
Still waiting for an important feature? Let us know!
These improvements are only available to users who have an account on DocumentCloud. If you’re a reporter who works with primary source documents, and you’re not using DocumentCloud yet contact us to find out how to start.
For some time now, instructions about how to use the DocumentCloud workspace have been available through our wiki. This morning, we released an update that pulls the help pages right into the workspace for easy access, and hopefully makes it faster to get your questions answered. Continue reading »
Last week, we rolled out an update to DocumentCloud’s document viewer that included a wide range of improvements that you might never even notice. Page layouts and scrolling look very different under the hood, pages load and scroll much faster now, annotations work better, readers can resize a document viewer without setting off a barrage of little hiccups. We replaced much of the viewer’s JavaScript with CSS, which we hope will form a much more stable foundation for DocumentCloud development going forward. In the process, however, we stopped supporting for Internet Explorer 6.
IE6 has long been the bane of web developers: developing web applications that work as well in IE6 as in other browsers is substantially more difficult than bypassing the ten year old browser.
IE6 users will still be able to download a original PDF of any document and will see a landing page that encourages IE6 users to upgrade their browser or install Chromeframe.
The New York Times, with whom we continue to collaborate closely on development of the viewer component of DocumentCloud, has long planned to phase out support for IE6. They don’t test new tools against the browser and will soon update to the same version of their document viewer that DocumentCloud is running on. The Times isn’t alone: YouTube began phasing out support for IE6 in March and other Google products are expected to follow suit. We’re certainly open to feedback on our implementation.
Meantime, take a look at some of the great things reporters are doing with DocumentCloud.
Our third hire! Developer Samuel Clay joins DocumentCloud today, bringing our full time staff to a total of three.
Samuel joins us from Storybird, a collaborative storytelling startup which works with artists to give children access to high quality narrative art that they can use to publish their own original stories. He’s also the mastermind behind NewsBlur, an open source feed reader that uses artificial intelligence to suggest stories you might want to read. Think of it as an RSS reader with intelligence.
Samuel lives in Brooklyn with his dog and guinea pigs, where he photographs historic districts for New York Field Guide. Find him at samuel@documentcloud.org or on twitter.
He’ll be bringing his formidable JavaScript skills to DocumentCloud’s workspace, which should be getting more awesome twice as fast now.
