Draft Announcements: Offline access!
Hello. Draft has a few new things:
Offline Access #
This has been the most requested feature since I started Draft over a year ago, and I’ve needed it too. Every so often I find myself in a place where I want to write but I don’t have internet access, and so Draft hasn’t been there for me.
Now there’s a solution.
Just go to Settings → Labs and enable offline mode.
Please read through the bits there about using it. Offline Draft is an experimental and stripped down version of Draft.
It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but what it does do is pull down the 50 most recent documents you’ve been working on and let you work on them offline. You can also create new documents offline.
Sync is still a manual button click: if you have new documents or changes created offline, when you come back online, just click the Sync Changes button that will appear:
And when you want to go offline, before you do, make sure you visit the offline page to trigger a sync.
Please note the risk using offline browser applications. I still hear stories today of people using offline Gmail and have mail go missing. Also, offline documents will be available unencrypted to anyone with access to your computer’s browser. This shouldn’t be used on a public computer at a school or library.
That being said, I’m using Chrome and I haven’t lost anything yet. I’ve even written this announcement using offline mode. Draft also makes sure that any changes that are synced back to your online documents create Minor revisions so your original online content is backed up there before the sync occurs.
Even with the caveats, I think you’ll find offline access very handy to keep your documents in Draft and still have something available when you don’t have internet access. But please be cautious.
Fast Search #
Search has been getting slower and slower in Draft given the amount of traffic and documents it’s now hosting. It needed to be improved.
Draft now has an indexed search making many of your searches instantaneous. New documents are indexed asynchronously as you update them so there might be a short delay searching for something you just added, but it should be ready soon after.
Remove Collaborators #
You can now remove collaborators on your documents.
If you are revewing a collaborator’s changes, there’s is a small “Remove” link next to their name:
Or if you are looking at the list with all the collaborators on your document:
Presentation Improvements #
If you are using images in a Draft Presentation, those images are now sized automatically to fill the size of the browser window better - they’ll be as wide or as tall as the browser, but won’t stretch out of proportion. This makes using images a lot better in your slides.
Also, you can now hit the Escape button to get out of viewing a presentation. Just a tiny shortcut, but it felt so natural to want to do this. I think you’ll find it handy.
Speed #
Draft just keeps growing leaps and bounds. I can’t believe what you’ve helped me create. But just like any app, that popularity has brought with it a few growing pains you might have noticed over the last few weeks. Mostly, slow downs when navigating the app, using the Simplify button, or exporting documents.
So, I’ve spent considerable time performance tuning Draft, and upgrading the servers powering everything. If you are a heavy user of Draft, you might have noticed the improvement; I sure have. If there’s still something you find slow, please never hesitate letting me know.
All the feedback and email I get from you continues to help me make a great product - Draft was named here as one of the best sites of 2014.
Thank you! I hope you are having a great week. If you need me, please feel free to ask me anything. You know where to find me:
https://twitter.com/natekontny
Or the official Draft Twitter account: