Real-Time Collaboration, Updated Formatting, and More
Graphite just had its biggest release to date. So many new features were pushed out, in fact, that we decided the best way to capture and convey them all was through a blog post.
So, let’s dive in.
Real-Time Collaboration
This has, perhaps, been the most oft-request feature within Graphite. To date, collaboration within Graphite has been limited to sharing a document with another user, that user adding the document to their own collection of documents and making edits, then that user sharing the document back. Not optimal.
While you will still have to do that for private, encrypted documents, this first iteration of real-time collaboration allows you to share a public link to a document with anyone, and collaborate in real-time. It became clear that one of the many uses of Graphite was collaboration with other users who might not have a Blockstack ID and may not know what Graphite is. Now, you can do that.
Fixed Editor Toolbar
We listened to the mounting feedback. As pretty as a clean document interface might be, discovering the formatting options within the document was not easy with the “Medium-style” pop-up toolbar. So, we have re-introduced the fixed toolbar at the top of the screen.
With this re-introduction, we also added some new formatting options. One of those will get its own section below, but a quick rundown of the other new formatting options are:
- Code Formatting
- Super-script
- Sub-script
- Font-types (more types comes soon)
- More Heading options
- Sub-bullet points (this “a” and “i” beneath your parent bullets)
Right To Left Writing Support
There is a significant portion of the world population that writes and reads in right-to-left languages. Because Graphite wants to support as many languages as possible, a big first step towards full internationalization was supporting the ability to write right-to-left.
Graphite has always supported additional language entry into the text editor, but that does little good if you write in Arabic or Hebrew, for example, and need that full right-to-left support.
Now, users who write in right-to-left languages can start using Graphite for the first time.
Dashboard Experience
The main landing page after a user logs into Graphite always felt like it was missing something. With the help of a contribution to Graphite’s open-source repository by Thorbjørn König, we have now released an updated entry page with a more dashboard-like experience.
The new entry page includes some basic information about all areas of the Graphite application—Documents, Spreadsheets, Files, and Contacts. This information gives users a quick view into their activity while still allowing them an easy link into each section of the application. Additionally, a global “Recent” section gives insight into which documents, spreadsheets, or files a user has been working on. Think of it as a shortcut to picking up where you left off.
Going Forward
While this was Graphite’s biggest release to date, there’s still a lot of work to do. This is not a full roadmap, but the list below should give a better idea of the direction Graphite is going and what features/products to expect in the near-to-long-term future.
- Real-time collaboration on encrypted, private documents
- Mobile apps
- Decentralized and traditional app integrations
- Graphite for Journalism converting to a full publishing platform
- Uplift to Graphite Sheets
- Multi-cursor tooltips when collaborating on documents
- Image/video import into Documents from Graphite Vault
- Table support in Graphite Documents
- Table of Contents creation in Graphite Documents
- Contacts notes
- and more
If you haven’t yet taken advantage of the first truly decentralized and encrypted alternative to Google’s G-Suite, go experience cloud convenience now with none of the tradeoff. Give Graphite a spin.
Special thanks to Ethan Ryan who spent a ton of time making sure real-time collaboration worked and worked right.
