YouMeScript Forum

Hi there! I've been writing a lot with a friend of mine, and we use Google Docs for brainstorming and outlining.

One of the most important features when collaborating with another user, is being able to click their profile photo in order to jump directly to the user's cursor. This allows both users/writers to work on and view different parts of the document at the same time, but then jump back to the other user's cursor when there's something pertinent to be discussed.

This might be a component of a larger user id system, but even just having colored squares with "user1, user2" along the border of the browser window that could be clicked would be extremely helpful in being able to track around the document.

I'm happy to answer any questions about this or help develop this feature in any way.

Thanks,
Mike Zazaian

Mike, I very much like this idea, and have had thoughts about it before.

I would imagine it should take only your view to the other person's position, not your cursor. Then to write there, you would click somewhere. Doing it this way would mean that hitting any arrow key etc would take you back where you were.

As for the user boxes, there could be another item below the last menu item when there are collaborators, which expands to show all the users when hovered... Or something.

Thoughts? Also what do you mean by a larger user id system?

Jake.

Hey there Jake,

Thanks for the prompt reply! I think we're on the same page here. The idea is that by clicking a little avatar or something for one of the other users you could jump to their "position", or the position of their cursor, etc. The idea is just to be able to quickly look at what they're looking at without having to scroll down through the whole script looking for a cursor.

Just FYI - the workflow that I'm used to with my writing partner here is basically sitting on the phone or on a video chat while writing at the same time. He'll tell me, "take a look at this", and in Google Docs I can just click the avatar and jump to where he is. For simultaneous collaborative writing this is a big time-saver.

I think what you mentioned re: showing all collaborators would be useful. If you can hook into the Google Drive permissions and get the user info from there, even just providing the name/avatar would be helpful. Maybe take a look at how Google Docs implements this to get some inspiration.

When I'm talking about a larger user ID system, I guess I just mean that it would be useful to have a way to identify who did what beyond the color of the comments. If I make a note or a comment in the document, it would be helpful for my name to be next to it so that it's obvious that I created the comment/note; at least when I scroll over the comment or note.

In general the concept of a user in YouMeScript doesn't seem to go much beyond the authenticated ID from Google Drive plus some colors to indicate that there are separate users. Having additional markers to indicate the presence/contributions of various users feels like it would be useful. For example, will the colors remain consistent from session to session? Will my comments always be marked in blue, or does it changed based on who logged into the document first? Can I change the color of my cursor/contributions? Some additional features like this would go a long way to better defining the concept of a user, at least within the UI.

Mike

Mike, a fair bit of what you describe is already there, for instance hovering over a cursor tells you who it is, and any comment or comment reply has an icon that can be hovered for details. However, if you're using a touchscreen or another device without the ability to hover, then you're definitely being underserved... and I should look at that. Notes aren't identified by writer, though I suppose they could be - they're a regular paragraph type, so that might better wait for mark up / revisions mode - you allude to that, I think.

But as I said, at least the jumping to another user is a no-brainer: it's now officially on The List.

...also on the subject of colors and user details: they're provided by Google, and as far as I can tell, they're the same as in Google Docs. Each user will see different colors locally, but as to how they're assigned, Google doesn't say. I'm not about to try to take control of that, though.

I am provided with a link to the icon or photo a user has, and could add that to the hover tooltip - being able to do that was one of the reasons I built custom tooltips a couple of months ago. The other was more consistency between browsers, as ever.

Hey there Jake - sorry this has ballooned into a such a large thread, I was going to post some other comments on another one to try to keep the threads concise.

On colors: It's understood that this is probably constrained by the Google Drive API. I don't think the ability to change colors matters so much as consistency. I guess having a colored block as previously mentioned, with the user's name, and/or avatar would better correlate each user to a color in the mind of the user. That might make it less important to see the user's name next to each comment.

Also on the subject of the tooltips - now that you've mentioned that I can hover over the colored box in each comment to see the user name tooltip, I see the functionality there. It wasn't obvious originally. I think it might be more useful to get that tooltip when hovering over the entire comment rather than just the little user box. It's a bit unwieldy to have to try to center your cursor on that box, especially when using a touchpad.

Other than that I haven't been getting any kind of unexpected behavior. I'm using Chrome on Ubuntu 16.04 and there haven't been any browser compatibility oddities for me.

Thanks again for listening to my thoughts here. It's greatly appreciated.

Mike

Mike, honestly it's you doing me the favors here. Between 3500 and 6500 weekly users... and basically zero feedback. Anything from users who are really using the features, and have views, are greatly appreciated.

...and having the name etc in the tooltip for the entire reply / comment would make sense.

Cool cool, happy to help however I can. I built a screenwriting plugin for vim many years ago and I recall how important it was to have feedback in that process: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2447.

Feel free to hit me up anytime for feedback on new features. Thanks again!