Tag: user interface

This time we’re rolling out 8 new updates

October 5, 2011 /

With the mega-ton of feedback that we’ve been getting, it’s quite easy to find new ways of further improving our product.

Here’s what we’ve got in store for you this time:

  • We have updated the Get Started Tutorial, and now it includes more information about Spin Rewriter’s new “Fast Mode”.
  • You can now quickly deselect all synonyms of the current word! The first time you click the A button, all available synonyms of a particular word are selected. When you click this button for the second time, all synonyms are deactivated.
  • We have bumped the number of generated text files when exporting your projects from 400 to 1,000!
  • You can now edit your finished (spun) articles and save the changes you made.
  • We have fixed the issue with   characters being shown in exported text files. We have also fixed the (very rare) issue where exported text files didn’t preserve paragraphs.
  • We made sure that Spin Rewriter fixes the most common spelling mistakes even more robustly than before – “cant” becomes “can’t”, “wierd” becomes “weird”, etc.
  • We have added a number of new answers to the Frequently Asked Questions section of SpinRewriter.com.
  • We fixed a couple of other minor issues, so the user experience is even smoother now.

We wish you a lot of business success! 😀

Just another manic Monday …

October 3, 2011 /

… or – “Spin Rewriter gets the FAST REWRITE MODE!”

What does this mean? Well, you should probably just try it out, it’s quite amazing. 😀

You can now simply open up the list of suggestions of the first word of your article and click the “detach” button in the top right corner of the interface. The list of suggestions (along with all applicable meanings) will jump to the bottom of your screen, the less important parts of Spin Rewriter will be hidden behind a dim overlay, and the editing area will focus solely on the part of the article you’re currently rewriting. Then you can super-quickly jump to the next word with the “Shift+S” keyboard shortcut, or return to the previous one with the “Shift+A” keyboard shortcut.

All this time (while you’re selecting appropriate synonyms, adding new ones, and using the “T” and “A” butons that do practically all the work for you) the list of suggestions stays at the same exact place, and you’re just jumping to the next word or phrase as quickly as possible. With this approach you can create a top quality rewrite of your article in just a couple of minutes!

Hope you like it! 😀

No more “Whoops, where did it go?!”

August 19, 2011 /

I wrote about a functionality that was requested by a couple of our Beta Testers about a week ago – our users demanded something that would prevent them from losing all their hard work if they accidentally pressed the “back” button or somehow left Spin Rewriter’s Edit Mode without saving their progress.

We just improved Spin Rewriter’s user interface and added what was requested – from now on you can no longer accidentally lose your progress. Whether you click the “previous page” / “next page” button, refresh the page, click on a link or close your browser while you’re in Edit Mode, you will be asked to confirm if you really want to do that. This way you can feel safe and happily click on everything you want, and you’ll never lose your hard work.

Try it out! 😀

Prevent users from accidentally leaving the page [JavaScript]

August 18, 2011 /

Sometimes your users might lose important information that they’ve been working on by accidentally leaving the page. They can either press the “previous page” or “next page” button by accident, or they can hit the “backspace” key on their keyboard, inadvertently click a link etc.

Luckily you can prevent them from losing their progress by using the following bit of JavaScript code:

window.onbeforeunload = function() {
    if (your_users_might_lose_their_work) {
        dialog_text = "IMPORTANT: Are you sure you want to leave this page?\n\n";
        dialog_text += "WARNING: If you leave this page, you will lose all your current progress.";
        return dialog_text;
    }
};

This code works perfectly fine with all modern browsers, with one small disclaimer: Firefox will not show your custom warning to your users, instead it will simply state “This page is asking you to confirm that you want to leave – data you have entered may not be saved.” However, that’s exactly what you usually want to say in this situation anyway.