Draft Announcements: Webcast, Merge Changes View, Snippets/Templates, Footnotes, and more.
There are a lot of neat new things in Draft to announce:
- Write Better webcast
- Improved merge changes view
- Snippets/templates
- Footnotes
- Tabs
- Better support for undo
- Buffer integration
- Ask a Pro message
- 100,000 document milestone reached
Write Better webcast #
On August 15, 2013 at 12:30 Eastern time, I’m doing a live webcast for the first 20 Draft users to signup here: Write Better webcast. I’ll share some current things I’m doing to improve my own writing. I’ll also pick a few users from the signup form and their writing to show what improvements I might make.
If you can’t make it or missed the signup, I’ll be archiving the video for Premium Draft users.
Greatly improved merge changes view #
The view to merge changes from your collaborator has gotten a huge and useful facelift.
The most important change is that the left side is an editable version of your document. So, if there’s a change you see from your collaborator, but you need to tweak it to make it right, you can do that right from this view.
Snippets/Templates #
Do you have pieces of text you use over and over again? Or documents that you use as templates for other documents? Now in Draft, you can mark a document as a “snippet”.
Snippets are available to you in a popup menu in all of your documents.
This makes it really easy to insert reusable pieces of text you have.
Footnotes #
Draft now supports footnotes in your document.
Footnotes are just labels [^label] next to your text that look like this:
Here is something interesting[^1]
You can also use non-numeric labels[^some-label]
You can use either numbers or text. Then, somewhere else in your document, create your list of additional notes:
[^1]: And here is more about it
[^some-label]: and it will automatically figure out footnote numbering
The footnotes will automatically show up at the end and will be ordered the way they appear in your document. There’s a footnote action menu item and shortcut to help you.
Tabs #
Writers often use tabs to indent paragraphs. The problem with traditional Markdown is it doesn’t actually support tabs that way. So, I made some changes to allow you to use tabs the way a writer would use tabs. Just use the tab key to indent your text.
Before, indented text would show up as a code block. If you need code blocks, you can use the concept of fenced code blocks. Also, if you really like tabs creating code blocks, go to Settings->UI Settings, to select the old behavior.
Better support for undo #
Chrome and Safari now have much better undo/redo support, when you use things like Draft’s shortcuts or action menu. For example, if you bold something, you’ll be able to quickly undo it with cmd/ctrl+z like you’d expect.
Buffer #
Draft has had the ability to directly publish to Twitter for some time now. I was thinking about building in the ability to schedule those Tweets, but then realized a company already has done such a great job with Twitter/Facebook scheduling, Buffer. So, you can now add Buffer as one of the places to publish to (Settings->Places to Publish). Draft your Tweets or a Facebook message, and then send it to your Buffer queue.
Ask a Pro messages #
When you order the Ask a Pro service to review one of your documents, you can now leave the editor an optional note. Let them know what kind of editing you’re looking for. Want them to focus on style more than grammar? Or want them to focus on shortening your document? Just describe your task a bit more when you use the service.
Over 100,000 documents! #
Last week we passed 100,000 documents and the count continues to climb. As I write this, Draft is now managing 104,901 documents. Thank you for helping me create something so many people are getting value from. It’s a really exciting thing to be a part of.
As always, please let me know if you need any help with anything. A couple great places to reach me:
https://twitter.com/natekontny
Or the official Draft Twitter account: