New release 2006-02-11 - Netvouz menu system!

Today I've launched the first in a series of interface improvements to Netvouz which will be rolled out during the coming weeks. The first change is a menu system which makes navigating Netvouz much like using a regular PC/Mac application.

When you log on (the menu is only available to logged on users) to Netvouz you now have familiar menus such as File, Edit, View etc. All functions and options available on Netvouz is now accessible through these menus. This centralizes navigation and makes Netvouz even easier to navigate.

The menu is tested and works in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera.

Unfortunately, however, the Arrange Hotpicks and Arrange categories functions to not work perfectly in Opera. You need to re-select the item each time you want to move it up/down. This will be fixed in a future version.

If you have any feedback on this new feature, please let me know (either with a post here or a mail to Netvouz).

//Henrik

Minor bug fix 2006-02-05

Just wanted to let everyone who has been trying to post a private bookmark using the Add2Netvouz button during the weekend know that.... now it works again. There was a small bug introduced a few days ago which prevented you from posting private bookmarks (public was ok), but that has been fixed now.

And in case you're wondering what's going on... I'm working on a new, much simplified and cooler, menuing system so you should easily find all the administrative functions Netvouz has.

//Henrik

New release 2006-01-26 - Improved import function

This release is a very small release. This time the import bookmark has got some extra options; skip default bookmarks and skip empty categories. The first option skips bookmarks that come pre-installed with common browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox (links like Windows Media, Windows Marketplace, Firefox homepage etc.). The other option skips all categories that are either empty in the bookmark file you upload, or which becomes empty after factory bookmarks and duplicates with existing bookmarks in your Netvouz account have been removed.

That's all for now. Next up are some GUI changes; a menu system to easier find all the administrative tasks and then some improvements to blue bookmark admin form. Perhaps I'll add the capability to alert you if you already have a copy of the bookmark you are submitting as well.

//Henrik

Netvouz review on 3spots

Have you seen the positive review of Netvouz on 3spots ??

If not, do spend a few minutes there and read about what this user thinks about Netvouz. And this user is not just any average user. If you read her blog you see that she has been all over the social bookmarking globe, trying out pretty much all (social) bookmarking services. Finally (well, you should never say never...) she has switched to Netvouz. I'm flattered!

//Henrik

New release 2006-01-22 - Link Validator (and some other enhancements)

• This release brings the Netvouz Link Validator back in business again (it has been offline for quite a while now). This means that from now on all your links will be verified once a week to see if they are working.
  
  If the Link Validator discovers that a link is not working, it is marked as "possibly broken". If it is still not working on the next run (one week later) it is marked as "broken". If you have broken links (seriously broken, not just possibly broken) you get a message about that when you log on to your bookmarks page (or when you have submitted a link thru the Add2Netvouz button) and you can then go to the broken links administrator (only visible if you have broken links).
  
  The broken links administrator gives you basically three options for each broken link; delete it (if you know it's broken), mark it as valid (if the link validator incorrectly has reported the link broken), or mark it as intranet (links on an intranet are not accessible by the link validator and are therefore reported broken, by marking them as intranet you excluded them from future link validations). If you are not sure if a link is really broken or not (the Link Validator may, in some situations, actually report working links as broken) you can click the New window to open the link and see if it works.
  
  Just so you know, I expect a massive number of support mails in two weeks time when lots of users are thrown into the broken links administrator for the first time... Puh ;-)
  
  
• This release also merges the two cookies Netvouz has used to keep you logged on into a single cookie. The new cookie does not store your password in the cookie itself (the older did, albeit in encrypted form), but rather a so called challenge string calculated using an algorithm based on some information in your account. This also increases your security, as not even a single bit of your password is stored on your computer. The only drawback is that because the old cookie is not used anymore you will have to log on once again.
  
  
• When you have submitted bookmarks using the Add2Netvouz button, the last "success" page has been removed so there's one less click you need to make. If you have broken links, however, the page is still displayed and gives you an option to process your broken links.
  
  
• When submitting a bookmark using the Add2Netvouz button and you have not entered any description or tags, a popup window asks if you really want to save the bookmark without that information. Some people may find this a bit annoying but it's really there to make the bookmarks on Netvouz more informative and easier to find, both for yourself and for others. So please, take a few seconds and enter a description and some good tags. The description can even be copied automatically from the page you are submitting and tags are retrieved from the description, so there's really no excuse not to do it...
  
  
• Added some feeds that will be used for some cool stuff by the upcoming Netvouz plugin for Firefox.
  

Next up is some improvements to the Import bookmarks feature.


Update 2006-02-02 - Link Validator suspended
Because of some stability problems the link validator is temporarily suspended. The problems have already been fixed, but in order to be 100% sure the link validator will be offline for a few more days.

//Henrik

Happy New Year - new release 2006-01-08

If you wonder why I'm not posting so often in this blog it's because I spend all my time developing Netvouz, and here's the features added in this last release:

• Allow bookmarks to be saved without tags. If you don't enter any tag the bookmark is automatically given a system:unfiled tag.
  
  
• Search engine now also searches the tags (yes, it has only searched names/titles and descriptions until now, I apologize...).
  
  
• Re-added the "copy bookmark" link, which unfortunately was lost in the previous release.
  
  
• Added possibility to include bookmark tags in JavaScript and HTML feeds (perfect for bloggers).
  
  
• Added a target parameter to the JavaScript and HTML feeds so you can open the links in a new window (use target=_blank) or any window name of your choice.
  
  
• Rearranged the small windows (I call 'em "portlets") a bit to remove information that was not actually contributing to the page.
  
  
• When searching for bookmarks a list of the most common tags for the bookmarks found (displayed) is now shown on the right.
  
  
• Improved the visual appearance of the tag cloud.
  
  
• Added a tag table that lists all your tags in alphabetic order (there will be an option to sort by frequency as well soon).
  
  
• Added a one line of descriptive text on top of each page, which describes what you are actually seeing on pages like "new", "popular" etc.
  
  
• Moved the blue admin form that is shown when in Edit mode to the top of the page instead of at the bottom. If you have many bookmarks you had to scroll all the way down to find it.
  

I think that was about it. In the next release will be some improvements to the import feature, RSS/JavaScript/HTML feeds for your tags (so you can display a tag cloud on your blog) and a bunch of "under-the-hood" improvements. So... if you don't hear from me in a week or two or three, you know why.

And to everyone who gives me feedback - I really appreciate it!

//Henrik

Another christmas release (2005-12-27)

• Added notes support. Now you can write a short note for each of your bookmarks. If the bookmark is public the note can either be public or private (if the bookmark is private the note is always private).
  
  You can use the notes field in many different ways. For example, if the bookmark is for your web mail account you could create a private note and save the userid/password you need to log on to your mail account there and when you browse your bookmarks you (and only you) see that information. Nice, huh?
  
  It may also be good to know that notes are not (yet) searchable.
  

• Re-added support for popular links. The http://www.netvouz.com/popular page again shows the most clicked bookmarks on Netvouz (it has been disabled for a few days). Clicks generated by search engines such as Google, Yahoo etc. are not counted. A great place to see which links are really active.
  

Puh, christmas sure is a busy period....

//Henrik

Merry Christmas!

Today I launched a new version of Netvouz. It doesn't look much different from the previous one so you may not be too excited about this. But for Netvouz it's an important release.

This version is a major improvement of the core platform that Netvouz stands upon. With the enhancements in this release Netvouz now has a more robust, faster and flexible platform that we can continue to add new exciting features to. And the features list is long, so you will see new releases coming out at a steady rate over the weeks and months to come.

There will be improvements to the search engine, support for adding short notes to bookmarks, tags as RSS and JavaScript feeds so you can publish your tag cloud on your blog, visual improvements to the tags list, improved documentation, bookmark subscriptions, an API etc. etc. etc.

Also a big thanks to everyone who is sending cheerful and inspiring mails!

//Henrik

Work is progressing well

I promised you a new Netvouz release which would fix the administrative tasks once and for all as well as restore the enhanced social capabilities we had a month ago. Just wanted to let you all know that work is progressing well.

I have rewritten and improved much of the core framework Netvouz stands upon to improve its performance and stability.

The new release should hopefully see public light in a week or so.

//Henrik

Administrative tasks fixed

Because of the problems with the administrative tasks that began with the last update to Netvouz, I've decided to back out to the earlier version (2005-11-11). However, I have retrofitted some of the fixes and enhancements that was made in the latest version.

So what does this mean? Well, it means that the feature to display who else has a bookmark is currently disabled, but on the other hand the administrative tasks work well.

I will fix this once and for all and will update to a version with fully working administrative tasks as well as the social capabilities.

Stay tuned ;-)

Sorry for the inconvenience...

//Henrik

Administrative tasks are slow (and may fail)

After the last upgrade we are having some problems with the performance of the administrative tasks (e.g. moving bookmarks, deleting categories etc.). If it takes long, wait another minute. If it fails (and you get a yellow error message box), try again but with a smaller set of bookmarks or categories.

We are working on fixing this problem.

//Henrik

Netvouz goes more social! (New release 2005-11-21)

In this release I've added just one single feature, but it's a major feature - the ability to see who else has also bookmarked a link. This makes Netvouz much more social (and fun to use!) than it has been in the past. And we won't stop there... The social features will soon be enhanced further.

Adding this social feature revealed one thing to me that I hadn't really been thinking of before - how many duplicate bookmarks people really have. So I wrote "Develop a duplicate bookmarks wizard" on my to do list :-)

Oh, yes, I've also fixed some (but not all....) problems in the import bookmarks routine. Importing bookmarks is certainly not a trivial task... And I understand why not all the other bookmarking sites have it ;-)

//Henrik

New release 2005-11-11

• Added a Copy bookmark feature. When logged in you see a copy link next to all bookmarks that are not your own. If you click it you can quickly copy another member's bookmark.

//Henrik

New release 2005-11-08

Again a small update with the following enhancements:

• JavaScript and HTML feeds ("linkrolls") used to include your bookmarks on your blog (or homepage) are now documented. Click the "Tools" link on your bookmarks page to get instructions on how to use them.
  
  
• If you have a blog you may also appreciate the new Add2Netvouz button you can put on your blog to allow your visitors to easily bookmark your posts. This is an early version of the link, it will be enhanced soon. It's on the Tools page as well.
  
  
• When importing bookmarks (using the Import feature on your bookmarks page) you can now skip all bookmarks that you already have. This is useful if you want to import bookmarks from several computers and don't fancy having duplicates.
  
  
• New tabbed dialogs when submitting bookmarks. This layout is both space-saving and looks pretty good, if I may say (but who do you think designed it...). It has been tested in Internet Explorer v6, Firefox 1.07 and Opera 8 and if it works well it will be used on all Netvouz dialogs (it's also used on the Tools page now).
  
  
• ...plus the usual bunch of bug fixes and hidden improvements you never really get to see...
  

If you have any feedback or comments, post'em here or email us.

//Henrik

New release 2005-10-25

This release brings some more usability improvements.

• There's now an option to display all your bookmarks in a flat structure (without the categories), just like any other social bookmarking service. Personally, I think it's really difficult to find my bookmarks using this layout. But since the other social bookmarking services have it, and it was really easy to add, if anyone likes it here it is! :-) Note: This option is only available if you're logged in, and as usual you can select to show all your public only, all your private only or all regardless if they're public or private.
  
  
• Moved the links to show 10/20/50/100 bookmarks per page and the sort order to the bottom of the page, to make room for the Public/Private/Both and Show All Bookmarks links at the top.
  
  
• If you are searching, browsing by tags or displaying all your bookmarks there's now a link "Default view" which quickly takes you back to the default layout.
  
  
• Added an option to export bookmarks using the Firefox bookmarks file format, which honors "charset=UTF-8". There were also some problems exporting bookmarks using BIG5 encoding (such as Chinese). These are now fixed in the Firefox export option (still remains in the Internet Explorer option though).
  
  
• Added JavaScript feeds in addition to the RSS feeds. So now all you bloggers and homepage owners can very easily display your favorite bookmarks on your own pages. This is still a preview. It's currently being tested by a number of users and will be documented and released to the public in a week or so.
  
  
• Added an option to show new bookmarks only, which works like the all bookmarks view but always sorts the bookmarks in descending order of creation. This option is primarily intented to be used with the JavaScript feeds so you easily can publish your most recently added links on your blog.
  

//Henrik

New release 2005-10-17

This minor update improves usability even further.

• The ratings are now shown with icons instead of figures. A bookmark rated as poor is shown with a thumbs down icon, an average bookmark is shown without icon and bookmarks rated good, very good and excellent are shown with one, two and three yellow stars, respectively. This should make it more obvious, I hope, what the ratings are and how to use them. When adding/editing bookmarks the dialogs also show these icons and they are clickable.
  
• The admin tasks (Add bookmark, export/import, etc.) have been moved from the admin menu on the right hand side to the blue area at the top of the page. The most common tasks (Add bookmark, Tools and Settings) are shown by default and if you click the More Tasks>> link some less frequently used tasks are shown. The normal/edit mode switch is the first link among the default tasks. I hope this new design helps everyone to find the admin tasks (some users missed the old menu).
  
• Some users (especially those with huge bookmark files or slow internet connections) have had problems importing their bookmarks. This should work better now.

There will be even more usability improvements in the next release, soon to appear. Stay tuned... ;-)

//Henrik

New release 2005-10-11

I have now improved the performance of the tag type-ahead feature further. This time it's a significant performance improvement, so now it should handle also very large amounts of tags well.

//Henrik

New release 2005-10-10

Another minor update with a few fixes:

• The type-ahead feature for the tags field was slow if you had an extreme amount of tags. It has been somewhat improved but I will improve it further over the next couple of days.
  
  
• Also, if using Internet Explorer and its feature for remembering form data, Internet Explorers dropdown suggestion list would sometimes interfere with the tags type-ahead drop-down list.
  
  
• Some people had problems importing large bookmark files (usually over slow connections like modem dialup). This is now fixed, I believe.
  
  
• ...plus the usual couple of hidden fixes and improvemements.
  

//Henrik

New release 2005-10-04

This is a minor update with the following enhancements:

• There's now a non-popup version of the Add2Netvouz button (bookmarklet) available. This was a request from a user and because I had most of the code ready I just enabled it.
  
  To install it log in on your bookmarks page, switch to edit mode and then select the Tools menu option.
  
  
• Some versions of Internet Explorer had a problem with the new tag type-ahead feature. The tags drop-down list was hidden under the "Rating" drop-down list. This is a bug (or is it "broken by design"...) in Internet Explorer. To work around it I changed the Rating drop-down to a horizontal list instead.
  
  
• Netvouz now only registers a click to a bookmark if you are logged on. This way I can get rid of all the clicks made by search engines etc. crawling the site. So now the Popular links page should be more correct because it's really what the Netvouz users are using.
  
  Note: The Popular page nor the click statistics does not reveal who has clicked a bookmark, it could be any logged on user. And only public bookmarks are counted.
  
  

//Henrik

New release 2005-10-02

Usability! Usability! Usability!

In this release I've focused on two usability issues:

• First is the ability to display both your public and private bookmarks/categories/tags at the same time. This may seem like an innocent change but because Netvouz was originally designed to clearly separate public content from private content it has been quite a fundamental change. This is also the reason why this new release has taken some time. But now it's here, and it's great improvement for all you users who have both public and private bookmarks.
  
  So now you can easily switch between displaying your public bookmarks, private bookmarks or both at the same time (which is the default). The setting is stored in a cookie so it's remembered until the next time your visit Netvouz.
  
  And if you e.g. display all your private bookmarks tagged "sports" and you then click the Public link, the search criteria remains so Netvouz then displays all your public bookmarks tagged "sports".
  
  If you then decide you want to modify the bookmarks displayed you just click the Edit mode link at the top of the page and your bookmarks page is decorated with the edit options making it very easy to update your bookmarks.
  
  To distinguish between your public and private bookmarks/categories, your public ones are displayed in blue while your private ones are displayed in green.
  
  
• The next usability improvement is type-ahead support for the tags field. When you submit, add or edit a bookmark and you start typing in the tags field you will see a drop-down list of matching tags that you can select from.
  
  This makes it much much faster to enter your tags and also minimizes the risk of entering tags similar to the ones you already have (e.g. flight, flights).
  

Let me know if you spot any problems - or have any suggestions!

IMPORTANT!
Because the stylesheet (css) is updated you should refresh your browser's cache (hit F5) when visiting Netvouz. Some users browsers cache the old stylesheet and therefore do not get the correct layout.

//Henrik