Collanos Workplace 1.3.0.3 – Release Notes

[Franco Dal Molin]

>>> Get the illustrated PDF version - with many screen shots - here:
>>> http://www.collanos.com/files/documents/Collanos_Workplace_1_3_0_3_Release_Notes.pdf



1. Summary

Collanos Workplace 1.3.0.3 contains some new features, many improvements to existing functionality, as well as various minor enhancements and bug fixes. The focus of this release was to further improve the day-to-day work of users by filling in small but essential capabilities, as well as to lay the groundwork for supporting additional language translations.

New language translations can now be deployed independently from product releases in form of download-able language packs. Workplace now supports external Hyperlinks and Emoticons (Smilies) in Chats and  Discussions. Hyperlinks are also supported in the text areas of Note, Task and Link objects. Existing contacts in popular social networks can be invited directly to join Collanos. Many enhancements have been implemented and existing functions polished. See below for details.

As always, Collanos Workplace 1.3.0.3 is available in versions for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The software ships with built-in English, German and Chinese languages. Additional languages will be rolled out in the coming months, using the new language pack delivery mechanism.

The current version 1.3.0.3 is compatible with all previous 1.3 versions, and to a lesser extent to version 1.2, giving teams with mixed installations a smoother transition. The new release is available both as installer from Collanos' web site and as automatic update process for existing users (Vista users see below).

Collanos continues to improve the free version of Workplace. Our gratification is a steadily growing, active and vibrant user community. As always, we look forward to your feedbacks! Please help us by spreading the good news, for instance, by inviting your friends and business contacts to join Collanos as well. Thank you!



2. Release Highlights

This Workplace release contains a number of important improvements and new features:

• New delivery mechanism and simplified support for new languages
• Hyperlinks supported in Chats, Discussions and text areas of Notes, Tasks and Links
• Emoticons (Smilies) added to Chats and Discussions
• Invite contacts from social networks (Orkut, Friendster, MySpace, Hi5, Facebook, Xing, BlackPlanet)
• Improved usability of “Invite to Collanos” dialog
• Functions "Open With..." and "Save as..." added to Conflict Bin (for File objects)
• Central users directory now supports full name search; plus empty searches more meaningful
• Web page names fetched and filled-in automatically in Link objects
• Plus many more enhancements and over 80 issues resolved...

3 Compatibility

The current version 1.3.0.3 is protocol-compatible with all previous 1.3 versions, and to a lesser extent to version 1.2, giving teams with mixed installations a smoother transition. Users with older versions will obviously not benefit from new features. For example, a 1.3.0.2 user won't see Hyperlinks or Emoticos in Chats or Discussions, but only plain text representations. :-)



4 Automatic Update

We strongly recommend upgrading to the latest version. Existing Workplace 1.3 users will benefit from an automated upgrade process. All you need to do is restart your application to trigger the auto-update process.
Note for Vista users: On a Windows Vista with the UAC (User Access Control) activated, if Workplace is installed in Program Files, the software update does not work unless you start Workplace with the 'Run as administrator' option.



5 Detailed Descriptions

5.1 Support for New Languages

In the past new languages as well as additions/corrections to existing languages had to be delivered together with a new version of the application. The only possible way to deliver translated text resources was during the software build process, done by our engineering. Developers had to wait for translators to finish their work – and translators had to wait for the developers to finish theirs. Almost a catch-22 situation, this model was just not flexible enough and led to unneeded pressure, hurrying and overhead efforts in the last weeks and days prior to releasing a new version.

We changed the creation and maintenance process for languages completely. All language-specific resources are now bundled together in so called “Language Packs”. These language packs have their own version numbers and can evolve in parallel to the product. In other words, the language translation and delivery mechanism in now fully decoupled from the application creation and delivery process.

     [Picture: Configuration with Language Packs]

From now on, we will begin to deliver new and improved language packs more frequently, using the built-in automatic update mechanism. You will be prompted for new language pack updates that become available, let's say – for example – new Spanish or French language packs or updated version of the German or Chinese packs. Stay tuned for the first additional languages, approximately in a couple of months!

After installing a new language, you can select it using the “Preferences...” command in the “Tools” menu. In the Preferences window, select “Languages” on the left side and pick your preferred language on the right. New languages will automatically be listed in the selection box, after you have downloaded new languages packs.

     [Picture: Languages page in the Preferences]

We are now looking for translators interested in translating Collanos Workplace into new languages. Please get in touch with us, if you are interested in contributing to new language packs.


5.2 External Links (Hyperlinks)

We have added support of external links (Hyperlinks) in the following locations: Discussions, Chats, and text areas of Note, Task, and Link objects. Here are a few related screen shots:

     [Picture: Links in Discussions]

     [Picture: Links in Chat]

     [Picture: Links in text area (of Task object) ]

The following patterns are recognized by the system and automatically converted into links:

     https://     http://     ftp://     mailto:     callto:     www.

There is a small difference between links used in Chats and Discussions, and links used in editable text areas of Note, Task and Link objects.

In Chats and Discussions, once you have sent your message, it can not be edited anymore. The automatic transformation into a link happens only after sending the message! The actual links will appear in the Chat or Discussion history, but not in the text entry area.

The behavior in the text areas of Note, Task and Link objects is different. Here the links are created immediately, as soon as you enter a SPACE (= BLANK) character or when you hit the ENTER key. This brings up a minor issue, related to editing or deleting of a link. As soon as a link has been created, it is treated as one link element. If you hit DELETE or BACKSPACE, the whole link is deleted.

     [Picture: Change Link command]

If you want to edit and change the link text itself, you must use the special function “Change Link”, available in the context menu directly on the link. An edit dialog will open.

     [Picture: Editing the external link]


5.3 Emoticons

Chats and Discussions now support “Emoticons” (= emotion icons), sometimes also referred to as “Smilies”. The goal is to be able to express emotions in the otherwise rather dry text-only personal communications.

     [Picture: Emoticons used in a Discussion]

     [Picture: Emoticons used in a Chat]

The Chat window has a button “Smile” which will open a selection of all available icons. Just pick an icon from this palette to add it to the Chat text entry field.

     [Picture: The Emoticon palette]

If you leave the mouse over an icon, a Tool Tip will show the “text representation” that is available for this icon. In the above example, the icon  displays the Tool Tip “Glasses 8 )”, which means that you can also type “8 )” to create a “Glasses” smiley = .

The following shortcuts (or “icon text representations”) are available:

     [see PDF document]

The Discussion objects don't (yet) have a graphical palette to pick the icons from with the mouse, but all text-based shortcuts work as well for Discussions.


5.4 Invite Others to Collanos

The function “Invite to Collanos” can be found under the “Tools” menu. While an initial version of this function has been shipped with the last major release, we have continued to improve it. This feature allows you to easily invite friends and business contacts to join Collanos as well. You can import contacts from your existing address books, web mail lists and social networks.

The usability of the selection process has been improved. Selecting and/or deselecting contacts is now  straightforward. We added a selection control on each contact row as well as “Select All” and “Deselect All” buttons. This makes it very obvious which of the contacts in the list will be invited.

     [Picture: The “Invite via E-Mail” tab]

You can use the “Add Contact” button to manually add more email contacts to the list. The table can be sorted by clicking on the column headers. This will make it even easier for you to find and select the contacts you want to invite.

The following import sources and formats are supported for email contacts:

.Mac     AOL     Clipboard     FastMail.FM     Freenet.de     GMX     Gmail     Hotmail     Hotmail Live     IcqMail     Indiatimes     LinkedIn     Lycos     MSN     Mail.com     Mail.ru     Microsoft Outlook CSV     Microsoft Outlook Express CSV     Mozilla Thunderbird CSV     MyNet.com     Plaxo     Rediffmail      Web.de     Yahoo mail

Invite via Social Network -- Inviting from Social Networks is supported in the second tab. The main difference is that invitations are being sent using the messaging mechanism of the respective social network, and not via email.

     [Picture: The “Invite via Social Network” tab]

The following social networks are supported:

Xing     Friendster     MySpace     Hi5     Facebook     Orkut     BlackPlanet


5.5 Conflict Bin

The Conflict Bin now offers two additional functions. You can access the "Open With..." and "Save as..." functions through the context menu (for File objects only).

     [Picture: Conflict Bin with new functionality]

These functions were already available in the regular workspace content pane, but missing in the Conflict Bin.


5.6 User Search

In the past it was possible to search for users on the Central User Directory by first name, last name, Collanos Name and email addresses. Additionally now you can also search by full name (i.e. first name + last name), or even fragments of these names. For example, you could search for “Jo Samp” and would indeed find “Joe Sample” from the user directory.

     [Picture: Improved user searching]
 
Empty searches (i.e. searches with no search criteria) have also been tweaked. In the past the system returned a random selection of 150 names, but now the list shows the 150 last registered users. If you are interested, you could peek into the system to see who has signed up to Collanos in the past 2-3 days.

     [Picture: Note for empty searches]


5.7 Link Names Fetched

In the past all fields of the Link object had to be filled in manually. From now on, when you create or edit a Link object, the Name of the Web page is fetched automatically from the corresponding URL.

     [Picture: Name is fetched automatically]

If you create a new Link object, start by entering the URL. As soon as you jump to the next field (using the tabulator key or the mouse pointer), the Name will be fetched automatically from the corresponding web page.

     [Picture: Name as seen in a Web browser]

At this point, if you are not yet satisfied with the automatically fetched Web page name, you can edit the Name field manually and overwrite the presented text.

The automatic Name fetching mechanism will activate again, as soon as you edit the existing address or enter a new address in the URL field.

Dragging and dropping web pages directly from Browsers into Collanos workspaces has also been improved. A Link object will be created automatically and both the URL and Name fields filled in automatically. The Link edit dialog will remain open, to give users an opportunity to change the fields manually if needed. Otherwise just hit “OK” and you're done.

Known Limitation: The drag and drop mechanism currently works only for Firefox and Internet Explorer Web browsers, but not for Opera and Safari. We will continue to improve this and hope the support all major browsers in the near future.


5.8 Additional Enhancements and Resolved Issues

Many additional enhancements have been implemented with the release, as well as over 80 issues resolved. Without going into greater detail, here are some of the most “popular” improvements and fixes:

• Several GUI bug fixes and visual improvements
• Workspaces are now removed properly from uninvited members
• A major bug related to conflict situations when changing binary files was fixed
• Various minor Drag-and-Drop fixes
• Replicating of Global Space description attribute works
• Problems with cutting of very long directory/file paths by OS was fixed by introducing short names
• Unneeded temporary files are not created anymore
• Workplace runs without problems on Ubuntu 8.04
• Deleting many files doesn't freeze application anymore
• Traffic Out indicator fixed
• Date control now opens with previously stored value

6 User Forum, Feedback, Share the News!

We really want to hear from you!

Just go to http://forum.collanos.com/ and share your feedback with us and with others. Let the world know what you think of this release: Does it work well for you? What improvements would you like to see in the next release? Don't be shy in replying to messages posted by other Collanos users.

Finally, if you want to help us, share the news about the availability of this release with as many users as you can. Use the “Invite to Collanos” feature in the “Tools” menu, or simply write about Collanos in your Blog.

Thank you for your continued support.