Draft Announcements: a Chrome App, inline calculator, and more…
Hello. Here are a few new handy things in Draft today:
Draft Chrome App #
I really enjoy using web applications, but there are a few things I miss when a web application can’t be launched from your native operating system.
For example, I thought it would be great if I could use Mac OSX’s Spotlight to quickly launch Draft. Turns out you can have the best of both worlds with Chrome Apps.
Now, if you have the Chrome App Launcher and you install the Draft App:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/draft/hhdpdhokkaokgnlpednnaldpikngiipa?hl=en
You’ll be able to launch Draft from places like your desktop, Apps folder, even Spotlight.
Inline Calculator #
I constantly need quick ways to do things with numbers. For example, I’ll be typing an email and need to sum up some expenses or hours, but I don’t want to launch Excel just to do these simple jobs.
Since Draft is already open all the time, and where I’m probably typing the email anyways, can Draft help me with this?
So I built a neat calculator right inside Draft.
You can use it to sum a group of numbers together, even if there’s a bunch of text included describing the numbers. Or use it to evaluate any expression. You can even use it to do conversions.
Just select the text with numbers you want to work on in Draft and use the shortcut: SHIFT+CTRL+C.
I think you’ll find it insanely handy.
New document shortcut #
Speaking of shortcuts, I wanted a really fast way to start a new document, without having to navigate the app to get to a New Document button. Now you can just type:
SHIFT+CTRL+N
To start a new document.
Comment emails #
You’ve been able to email comments in your document to your collaborators for quite some time. But I found the process cumbersome. If you wanted someone to get an email with multiple comments, you’d have to specifically make comment number 1, use the dropdown box to find the collaborator, make comment number 2, use the dropdown box again, etc.
So I made the whole process much simpler.
Now, when you make comments on your document, your collaborators will automatically get an email digest of the comments you made. These digests occur every 30 minutes (only if there are new comments, and you can turn these alerts off in your settings).
I hope you are having a fantastic summer. Mine is nuts. My wife and I had a baby 6 weeks ago: Addison.
She is awesome. Both easier and harder than I anticipated. :)
And thank you for being a Draft user!
If I can be helpful with Draft, writing, startups, whatever, please let me know. Twitter’s a good place to reach me at:
https://twitter.com/natekontny
Or the official Draft Twitter account: