LuxSci has expanded the functionality of its Notepad widgets to make them ideal for collaborative editing, especially in the context of shared Workspaces.

The Notepad widget is available to all LuxSci users. It provides a customizable area where you can view and edit notes — in either plain text or using a visual editor with full HTML markup support.  The Notepad widget auto-saves any changes you make to your notes within seconds of your changes — no need to press a “save” button”.  It’s easy – you just type.

So, what’s new?

With shared Workspaces, you can view and change the content of the a Notepad widget at the same time as any number of other people.  No problem:

• Any changes made by other people will automatically make their way to your view and be automatically displayed in your Notepad within one minute.
• Any changes that you make will automatically update everyone else viewing the same widget within one minute.
• a “3-way merge” is used to merge changes made by multiple people at the same time so that everyone’s changes can be integrated and merged.
• If there is a “conflict,” where two people edit the exact same line at the same time, then the person who saved their changes most recently “wins”.
• The owner of the Notepad widget can optionally make it “read only” for everyone else.  This is good if s/he only wants them to be able to view, but not edit, these notes.

Collaborative editing: multiple people can view and edit at the same time with updates propagating automatically in near-real time.

How to you get a Notepad Widget?

To add a notepad widget, simply login to LuxSci and select “Add a Widget” from the “Customize Workspace” menu (click on the pencil icon at the top of the page).  In the resulting dialog box, click on the “Notepad” widget to add one.

Each Workspace can have any number of Notepad widgets.

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• Managing Widgets Just Got Easier!
• Shared Workspaces for Collaboration
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