Raplets API update: new UI in private beta
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Martin Kleppmann
Mar 11, 2011, 12:44:49 AM3/11/11
to raplet-dev, raplet-announce
Hello Raplet developers,
I'd like to share something special with you today.
New Rapportive user interface in private beta
A while ago we realised that if someone has a Rapportive profile with lots of links, and you also have a few Raplets installed, the sidebar gets very long. That gets particularly inconvenient on a long conversation thread, because you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom in order to see the rest of the sidebar — not the nice elegant experience we want Rapportive to be. We figured that we had to make better use of the available screen space.
So we've been hard at work to bring a new user interface design to Rapportive. It breaks the sidebar down into distinct sections, and for many sections we have a small, collapsed version as well as the full expanded detail. This means that if screen space is tight, we can display only the collapsed summary; if you want to see the expanded section, just hover your mouse over it. If you want to see a particular section expanded by default, you can just click a button and the expanded information slides into the sidebar.
The new user interface isn't ready for the general public yet: there are still plenty of bugs and design issues, and performance in Firefox is awful. But since you may want to take it into account when designing your Raplets, I'd like to give you priority access to the private beta. :) Although it currently doesn't work very well, it is going to get a lot better over the coming days/weeks.
I'd like to share something special with you today.
New Rapportive user interface in private beta
A while ago we realised that if someone has a Rapportive profile with lots of links, and you also have a few Raplets installed, the sidebar gets very long. That gets particularly inconvenient on a long conversation thread, because you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom in order to see the rest of the sidebar — not the nice elegant experience we want Rapportive to be. We figured that we had to make better use of the available screen space.
So we've been hard at work to bring a new user interface design to Rapportive. It breaks the sidebar down into distinct sections, and for many sections we have a small, collapsed version as well as the full expanded detail. This means that if screen space is tight, we can display only the collapsed summary; if you want to see the expanded section, just hover your mouse over it. If you want to see a particular section expanded by default, you can just click a button and the expanded information slides into the sidebar.
The new user interface isn't ready for the general public yet: there are still plenty of bugs and design issues, and performance in Firefox is awful. But since you may want to take it into account when designing your Raplets, I'd like to give you priority access to the private beta. :) Although it currently doesn't work very well, it is going to get a lot better over the coming days/weeks.
To opt in to the private beta, please go to https://rapportive.com/preferences?user_email=f...@example.com (replacing f...@example.com with the email address of your Gmail/Google Apps account) and check the box. You can opt out again at any time. Please don't pass this on.
Raplet support for new user interface
If you want, you can take advantage of the new user interface by providing separate expanded and collapsed versions of your Raplet content. We have updated the documentation to show you how to use the new features.
The good news: you're not required to change anything. Your existing Raplet should continue working just fine. By default, it will show your content in the expanded view, and automatically generate a collapsed view based on your Raplet's name and icon. If you encounter any problems, please email the raplet-dev mailing list, at raple...@googlegroups.com, and we'll sort it out.
Other Raplet API updates
We're taking this opportunity to also make a number of minor updates:
• There is a new field in the Raplet metadata, called small_icon_url. It lets you specify a 16x16 pixel icon in addition to the 100x100 pixel icon in the icon_url field.
• Inline <script> and <style> tags in your HTML response have been deprecated for a long time, and now we're beginning to strip them out entirely. Please put your JavaScript and CSS in the js and css properties of your response.
• The documentation described caching of js and css properties of your response, but we never actually implemented it, so we're removing it from the docs.
• For users on the new user interface beta, we cleaned up the CSS environment for Raplets. If you were accidentally relying on some of our internal CSS rules, your Raplet's look may change. Please make sure that all your CSS is specified in the Raplet response's css property.
• In last month's update we introduced a feature which lets you override the default Rapportive profile to show for a conversation (useful if your app sends notification emails). This feature now also supports looking up profiles by Twitter username, not just by email address.
If you have any thoughts on the updates, we'd love to hear what you think on the raplet-dev mailing list, at raple...@googlegroups.com.
Cheers,
Martin
Martin Kleppmann
May 20, 2011, 9:28:11 PM5/20/11
to raplet-dev, raplet-announce
Hi all,
Just a quick update — the new Rapportive user interface (announced below) is now rolling out to all Rapportive users. We've spent a lot of time making it great, and it should be compatible with all existing Raplets. If you have any problems with it, please drop us an email and we'll try to sort it out right away.
Best,
Martin
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