We have released a number of improvements to the collaboration system:
* Previously, invitations to collaborate showed up as "messages" in your RC messenger, from today onwards they show in their own list: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/collaboration/list. You can find this page, through your profile -> collaborations.
* Accepted or obsolete invitations will automatically move to backlog.
* Invites always include a link to the exposition and user.
* You will be notified when you are invited, you can turn on/off these notifications in settings.
* There is a backlog of all collaboration interactions of the past.
* For portal admins: when a user requests to become a member of your portal, the request will also show up in your accounts' collaboration page.
Kind wishes,
RC development team
Dear portal admins,
There is a new option in the portal settings: " linking to external portal page instead of rc profile page.". If you activate this option the portal link of you portal on the right hand side will link to your portals url (outside the RC) instead of the portal page on the RC.
Best wishes
RC Team
Expositions can now be exported (downloaded) for offline reading. The export contains all media files and pages as html files.
Users can request to be added as portal members (on the respective portal profile page) and edit their portal membership settings from their profile page.
Portal admins can add existing RC users to their portal (use the autocomplete of names in the “add user” dialog window).
The RC database has been completed. Virtually the entire system has been rewritten. Performance has been improved significantly.
The picture tool now supports SVG files.
Video Upload Issues:
Currently we are investigating an issue regarding the uploading of large video files (> 400MB). It appears that uploads sometimes break off around point, without reporting any error. Most uploads below that size do not appear to suffer from the problem. A tempory solution is splitting the video in parts with iMovie, Windows Movie Maker or the terminal tool ffmpeg*.
Together with the developers we are trying to find a permanent solution, we will inform you as soon as this is working correctly again. Meanwhile, we are sorry for the inconvenience.
* = ffmpeg is a terminal tool, but quite easy to use see: http://j4n.co/blog/easily-split-videos-with-ffmpeg.
Footnotes can now be inserted into text (via link buttons) and will be displayed as popovers, that may contain any tool. Footnotes can be selected and edited via the tab in the editor on the left hand side. Images can also be used as footnote links. Further documentation will be added to the RC Help.
There is a new inline text tool. Text can be typed directly into tool on the editor. It supports a reduced subset of HTML functionalities and filters pasted content (from Word etc.). Tools can be converted to HTML-Tools for further editing.
We have switched completely to SSL/HTTPS encryption. This significantly improves the security for transmitting passwords and confidential data.
The work details page has been overhauled. It now contains a listing of all media files and each file can be described and downloaded.
This feature allows users to stay informed about other users’ and portals' activities as well as projects, expositions, works, and degrees. Users can bookmark objects and users and will receive messages about changes, comments, publications, and new activities. This will improve the possibilities of communication and interaction among users.
There is a new shape (vertical line) available in the shape tool
There now is an "EDIT" link in the menu bar (when viewing expositions), which directly links to the worspace editor for the respective weave, so one can easily switch back and forth between editing and viewing.
The decline message (for submitted expositions) can now be edited. This is particularly useful if one wants to return editing permissions to the author before publication. The message can now be edited in order to prevent misunderstandings and to clarify the reason for returning the permissions.
Notes will now always be on the top layer. Moreover a number of bugs have been fixed which had prevented notes from being closed.
The system will now ask for confirmation when one attempts to close the browser while editing unsaved data (in the tool edit windows, e.g). Moreover, the back (and forward) browser buttons are disabled while editing unsaved data in order to prevent data loss.
It is now possible to embed gif animations in expositions.
We have increased the quality of the audio file encoding and now use 256 kbps mp3 encoding (no longer 128 kbps).
It is now possible to access all messages (sent and inbox) using "more" and "back" buttons (no longer only the 30 most recent messages). It is also possible to select messages (all messages or individual messages) and delete them or mark them as read using a pull down menu at the bottom of each group ("inbox" and "sent").
The search function has been substantially overhauled. It now includes autocompletion of names, keywords, and titles; improved performance; and results will be displayed on several pages.
The sending of portal messages (such as newsletters) has been overhauled. The message will be queued and send latest 5 minutes later. The status in the log will change to "in progress". If an error occurs the sending will resume automatically. When the sending has been completed a message with statistics will be sent to the sender. Furthermore messages with duplicated content will only be sent once.
"Recent Activities" on the Portal Profile Pages now only shows expositions that have been published (not objects that are in review).
Members of a portal can now select publications to be limited to a portal when submitting research. The admins of the respective portal have to create an issue for publication and may then publish the research. It will only be visible to members of the portal. Under the author a flag will be displayed, such as " Limited publication. Only visible to members of the portal : <name of portal>".
The list of portal admins now includes links to send messages to each admin. (http://www.researchcatalogue.net/admin/portal/list?context=1). A message to all members of a portal will now also be sent to the portal admins. The “send portal mail” window also includes a tab titled “log,” which lists all portal mails. Furthermore sending mails no longer blocks other activities on the RC, i.e. one can now continue using the RC in a new tab while sending a message.
The public profile pages have been updated, extended, and new functionality has been added. The update includes the exposition of publicly accessible works (exhibitions, installations, etc.) and the addition of new elements “project” and “degree.” These can be connected to portals and supervisors can be linked to the projects and degrees. Moreover, a CV may now be uploaded and the user profile includes new fields such as “keywords” and “tagline.” Custom groups containing expositions, works, degrees and projects can be created and rearranged (drag & drop). The public visibility of all objects can be set by the user. Documentation can be found here: http://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/13747/130354/
When a page is opened in a browser, the text is actually rendered by the browser dependent on the browser version, the operating system and the fonts that are installed on the computer. This can lead to research appearing differently in different environments. In order to at least highlight issues, we included a message at the top of each page if (1) a font that is needed is not installed (2) the zoom factor is not set to 100%. These messages can be closed so as not to impact on the viewing experience.
The initial values of the tools in the toolbox can now be adjusted by double-clicking on a tool in the tool box (rather than dragging it onto the page as usual). For example, a double click on the text tool lets you set the standard size of a text tool making it unnecessary to manually adjust the tool every time it is used.
Note: tool templates are set for all tools in an exposition; the settings work for all contributors but only within a single exposition.
It is now possible to play/autoplay the slide show. In the slide show properties, a new section in the options tab ('automate') allows to set the mode (no, start on click or start on page load) as well as the amount of time each slide is displayed for.
Note: when the slide show is set to start/pause on click, it is not possible to enlarge an individual image per click in a popover. In this case, the tick box 'on click open image in pop up' in options > settings will be disabled and its value reset. A message will indicate this.
It is now possible to display an additonal text as the mouse pointer moves over the tool. Previously, it was only possible to display copyright information (which some people misused in order to display a different text). If text and copyright is to be shown, the copyright will be shown below a line at the bottom of the text. The text can be entered in the tool's properties, option tab.
Tools that are still loading when a page is opened are now shown with a gif in the centre in order to indicate that content in this area of the page is still loading. In small pages with few images, this will be next to invisible.
The objet viewer allows to display 3D objects that can be turned on mouse move. We opted for a very simple implementation, which requires a set of images to be uploaded in a zip archive that show the object from all (necessary) sides. See http://www.thoro.de/page/3dnp-introduction-en for a description of the process and a Blender script.
Note: Blender is not straightforward to use. In time, we will develop an extended help file for this. We may also work towards alternative solutions for the generation of those images.
A user who submits his/her research to a portal will now receive a message that the research has been received by the portal and that contact will be made. This is meant to reassure a user about what is actually happening. Previously, the research was simply set to 'in review'.
There is now a new tab 'history' in every tools properties, which can be accessed bu double-clicking on that tool. 'History' shows a list of changes to that tool. By clicking the respective 'restore' button, a previous version of that tool can be restored.
Furthermore, should a tool have been deleted, it is now possible to undelete the tool. In the workspace under the commands-tab, click 'restore deleted tools' in order to see all tools on a page that have been deleted. Press 'restore' of the desired tool to restore this tool. Go to the tools history to return to a previous version should this be necessary.
Reviewers can now be assigned to a submission either as single or as double-blind reviewers. If the latter is chosen, the auther name is (where possible) made anonymous (for example, the HOME menu or the reference and whereever the exact user name appears as text in an exposition.
However, if the spelling is different, or if the name appears in supporting documents (say a pdf or in a video) the RC will not be able to anonymise this. It has to be picked up in the editorial process and blocked.
All Administrators and Portal-Administrators will now receive notifications of updates to the RC added to this page http://www.researchcatalogue.net/portal/updates/
Messages sent to a user by either the RC or another user are now send as part of the notification email. When a user receives a message, he or she does now not need to log into the RC to read it. However, in order yo reply, the user will need to click on the reply link at the bottom of the notification, which takes him or her to the RC messaging system where the reply needs to be entered.
If a user hides notes (in preview, menu: reviewing > hide notes), those notes now remain hidden even after a refresh. Before, a user needed to hide them again, after the page was refreshed.
Co-authored research will now be listed in a user's profile in a separate section 'my coauthored research'.
The text tool text editor will now remember the status of its menu (i.e. whether the extended menu is visible or not). No need to re-open the extended menu again for each tool that is edited.
When the mouse pointer is moved above a media file, the copyright holder of that file can now be displayed also for videos and audio. In the properties of the tool, click on 'Options' and select 'Show copyrigt' to display the name of the copyright holder that was entered when the file was uploaded.
The tool acts like a Post-it. It can be placed on a page to leave notes for yourself or for collaborators.
In 'Note View' (upper right corner in a research workspace), all notes can be seen in a list and assigned to a collaborator as task.
Reviewers may add notes; these are only accessible to editors.
The RC workspace layout was simplified.
There is now only one menu bar at the very top. Additional functions have been moved to the 'Commands' tab below the toolbox, or, if they are tool specific, they can be accessed with a right-click on the respective tool on the page to open its context menu.
Commands tab:
Context menu (key shortcuts are indicated for Windows operating systems):
Preview:
Text View:
Note View:
Portal administrators can now send notifications via email to the users associated with the portal. The types of notifications are:
Notifications can be send to all users of a portal or those with full accounts only.
Additionally, the administrator of the Research Catalogue portal is able to send noitification to members of the Society for Artistic Research.
The update refers to this new page http://www.researchcatalogue.net/portal/updates/ allowing to see a history of all Research Catalogue updates from March 2014 forward. Only RC Admins can add/edit RC update information.