Presenting the New Saros Interface

The latest version of Saros (11.3.25) is one of the most exciting and important releases in its recent history. Why? The whole interface has been overhauled and redesigned to provide a much more usable layout. Three of Saros’s views (Session, Roster and Chat) have been merged into a single view from which you can manage your collaborations. Click on the screenshot below to see an example.

As a reminder, Saros still has all of the usual awareness information, including:

1. Marked files, which users with write-access have open (yellow) or visible (green).
2. Current text selected by another user.
3. Text changed by another user (by default, the last twenty edits are marked).
4. Current view scope of other users (i.e. what portion of a file can they see).

But the changes are concentrated in the Saros view, your main control panel for shared project collaborations.

As you can see, the view is divided into two main areas. The left pane contains the user information: your current username, who is in your current session, and a list of all the buddies you have. On the right is the on-line chat, where you can send messages to everyone in your current session. For existing users of Saros, we have tidied away many of the buttons and options into context menus, accessible when you right-click on a user.

This redesign is accompanied by a batch of other visual overhauls, including the setup and user account wizards. Here’s a sample of configuration wizard; much more informative and friendly, to ensure newbies can keep track of what’s going on.

Along with a whole raft of fixes and UI improvements, this makes the latest release of Saros a must have!