Slatebox — Visualize Everything

Jan 16

Customizable images and pop-down menus

Based on the recent feedback, I’ve made two quick adjustments:

  1. The welcome message now loads bottom-up so it will not obscure the menu (Doh!) I’ve also changed the image search and text editing menus to pop up from the bottom as well.
  2. Now, not only can you search the web for existing images, but you can also  your own image URL. Check it out!

Embed your own image into any Slatebox node with a custom URL.

Doh! issues

Dianne Rees recently posted a thoughtful article on Slatebox and I thought I would offer a couple of reactions.

SlateBox relies on HTML5 and Javascript, which means that slate creation is fast. You start off with a prompt to get you on your way and you really can probably figure out most tricks to SlateBox just by clicking around, but I’ll point out some of the doh! issues I experienced.

I am so grateful to actually hear of the Doh! issues, especially being a small fish in a big sea — it’s great to hear what issues users are actually running into while building slates.

Decidedly, one of the big Doh! issues is the silly welcome bar when you first create an account — it hides the menu, which includes the save button!

Look, there's a silly welcome message in my way!

Another problem that Dianne noted was the need to manually save slates. With the intent of giving users undo/redo capability, I decided this manual-save-my-slate approach was decidedly 1997esque. Now, slates will always be auto-saved, any time you make a change.

Soon, I will change the welcome screen to provide more useful information and remove the obscuring top bar altogether. Thank you for this great feedback.

Many thanks to Dianne for her excellent post. Please check it out if you’d like a great overview of Slatebox: http://bit.ly/xNaHqu

Jan 13

Welcome

So, Slatebox. What is it? Why did I build it? What’s the vision behind it?

It’s the content, stupid

That’s my brain telling me: technology drives production. What users actually produce with Slatebox is what matters most. Can Slatebox get out of the way? How friction-less can I make this experience? Are students actually learning with this tool? Are users actually finding it useful and inspiring?

To that end, I began rewriting Slatebox one year ago. I had learned too much to pretend my previous foundation was solid. I scraped everything I had written from 2009 through 2010 and started over.

What you see now is the result. I believe there is a lot of potential to Slatebox as a visualization platform. I will ensure it continues to be drop-dead simple and lots of fun to use, and yet very extendable and powerful as a visualization tool.

Thanks for visiting! There will be plenty more to come.