Previous updates
see What's New? for most recent updates.
11 November 2021
Markdown files
Ensembling now understands and previews Markdown files with a .md
suffix when uploaded in the usual way.
Markdown is a simple syntax
applied to plain text which expresses basic formatting such as
headings, paragraphs, bold and italic, bulleted lists, links etc.
See more about markdown in the context of Ensembling
11 November 2021
Security hardening
Changes made to include recent web security controls. While you
shouldn't notice any difference, this has required quite a few code
changes. So if anything isn't now working as expected, please send
feedback (top right).
3 November 2021
Preview links
Use to obtain a link to a document, folder or project
that is suitable for posting to social media and similar (like Slack) which can produce small summary
panels of a page when links are posted to them.
Note this will expose some of the content to people who wouldn't otherwise be able to see the page.
Though smaller than most pages, the preview image is larger than a thumbnail, so text in it may be readable.
People following the link from the third-party still need to log in to access the full document or folder.
22 September 2020
Download All now available at the top level
You can now download all your project folders at once with
in the top-level Ensembling folder
16 January 2020
Different kinds of folder
Additional icons have been introduced to differentiate better
between different kinds of folder.
The behaviour hasn't changed at
all, but projects (top level folders which people are
assigned to and therefore control who can see what) are now shown with
a filing cabinet icon 
. Project
and ordinary folder 
icons are shown in the "breadcrumb trail" (the line at the
top showing where the item you are looking at sits in the hierarchy of
folders). The special folders for deleted items 
,
search results 
and
show 
also now have their own icons.
. Project
and ordinary folder
icons are shown in the "breadcrumb trail" (the line at the
top showing where the item you are looking at sits in the hierarchy of
folders). The special folders for deleted items ,
search results and
show
also now have their own icons.22 October 2018
Google Titan hardware key can now be used to log in
As well as Yubico keys (see 3 August below), you can now also log
in without a password using Google's equivalent hardware key,
called Titan, or its cheaper, unbranded
cousin, Feitian ePass.
In both cases, only the USB keys, not the Bluetooth equivalents,
currently work with browser logins (in general, not just Ensmbling).
18 October 2018
Information for unassigned project visitors
People who follow a link to an item in a project to which they are
not assigned can now be greeted with a customized message about the project to
help them consider whether to proceed to request assignment.
Only project leaders can do this, by choosing
the
button on the menu.
4 September 2018
Streamlined file chooser
When you , in the
file tab, you can now choose more than one file at the same time,
rather than having to press the Choose File / Browse button
multiple times.
While you could always previously have added more than
one file with repeated button clicks, this makes it more efficient to,
say, add numerous photos at once.
By the way, Firefox has also joined Chrome in that you
can drag and drop (one or more) files onto the file
chooser button rather than clicking it.
3 August 2018
Password-less logins
One of the original aims with Ensembling was to make login as
friction-less as possible, such as the links in invitations that log
you in as they take you to a document, and login-by-email.
Now there's another way: logging in using a physical key, or biometric
(fingerprint, face recognition etc). A new standard was agreed
recently (called "webauthn") to allow browsers to use these, and Google is coming out with
its own keys, called Trident, this autumn. I think this is going to
become widespread in the near future.
But it's already possible to get one from Yubico:
To set up a key, log in another way, then click on your
name, or then
in the top right corner and click the key/biometric button.
Then in future, click the key/biometric button on the login page to
log in (it'll remember you did this for the next time).
14 May 2018
GDPR
Various changes related to privacy – because new data protection
rules come into force shortly, Ensembling has tightened up on some
areas related to data retention and processing:
- To avoid having to ask complicated permission, third-party services (other than openID) that may previously have processed your data have been removed. In particular, it appears the third-party login service was no longer viable*, and Google Analytics has been removed (you may still have some Analytics cookies, but they are inactive).
- Addressing consent to process data, when inviting people to join a project, you must now confirm you have their permission to do so.
- Furthermore, invitations no longer store any information about you until you accept an invitation. People are no longer subscribed "provisionally" to a project prior to accepting an invitation.
- Addressing the rule that it should be as easy to leave as to join, there is now a link at the bottom of most Ensembling emails to resign from a project or leave Ensembling altogether without needing to log in.
- Addressing the rule to not retain personal data longer than necessary, if you have no activity in Ensembling in a year, we'll send an email to let you know, and a month later delete your information if you don't respond.
* if you were logging in using Google, Yahoo etc, you can still login to Ensembling by entering just the email associated with that account, and we'll send you a verification email instead.
I hope to be able to offer further non-password means to login in the near future - a new browser feature has been added to Firefox, and shortly to in Chrome, that will enable biometrics like fingerprints and hardware tokens like the Yubikey to be used to log in to websites instead of using passwords. You can expect to see many sites adopting this technology soon.
16 Jan 2018
Keyboard shortcuts for next/previous comment
CTRL+DOWN-ARROW and CTRL+UP-ARROW respectively.
History links
Where appropriate, [history] now has links to each comment,
version, document or folder that was added or changed, not just the
most recent version of a document it was in.
25 May 2017
Recover (un-delete) button
It is no longer necessary to manually move something out of the
deleted items folder that was deleted by accident back to its original
location. There is now a button in the menu for each item(*) in the deleted items
folder which will put it back where it was. This also works for
project folders which, it became apparent recently, could not be
recovered by moving them manually.
(* for items deleted from 25 May onwards, not for items put in the
deleted items folder before that which would be deleted on or before 8
June.)
May 2016
New formatted text editor
The formatted text editor (on the Add Document and Supersede
panels) has been update to use a more recent incarnation of the
software (TinyMCE version 4; previously it was its
much older predecessor ckeditor
July 2014
Pushover notifications
Both and
can now trigger
Pushover notifications on iOS
and Android phones and tablets, and Chrome, Firefox and Safari desktop
browsers (Pushover app purchase required).
Pushover notifications on iOS
and Android phones and tablets, and Chrome, Firefox and Safari desktop
browsers (Pushover app purchase required).