Two years 3x3Links - Bonus features

Here we are now,
2 years,
4,917 pages,
6,981 logos &
116,263 links later. Not bad at all for a hobby, which 3x3Links is for me.

Seven users decided so far to donate $9 to 3x3Links, and they got some bonus features unlocked:

A CSS editor and Private Logos.

Private Logos allow you to upload any image you like to your private logo pool and assign those to any folder or link you like.
CSS is good for altering the Look&Feel of your page: change colors, fonts, effects and size of the dials. No problem with a little bit help of CSS.

99 Logo Challenge
Starting today, there is another possibility to unlock the CSS editor and Private Logos: Help other users by uploading missing logos. Once you uploaded 99 logos and got those approved, the features will be directly unlocked. Go to Options -> Missing Logos to upload all your missing logos, and afterwards globally missing logos.

Skins
You are a designer and would like to create a customer 3x3 theme/skin to share? Contact me at info@3x3links and send me a mock-up of your theme idea. You might get an invite to make it real.

Bad news
I will be moving to a new flat this month and will not be able to develop new features. Feel free to send me feature requests. I will collect those and implement to most requested feature next.


Have a nice day,
Federico of 3x3Links

PS: I invite you to post as a comment to this post how long you are using 3x3Links already.

Collaboration: Invite a guest to edit your 3x3Page

Example: Sharing a 3x3Page with your department

You have created a 3x3Page with the most important web-links for your daily work. You share the page with your colleagues and they do really find it helpful, but they also would like to add their web-links. No problem anymore!

1. Select any of your 3x3Pages
2. Go to Options » Collaboration^New!
3. Enter the E-Mail addresses of your colleagues
4. Save changes

Your colleagues will now see your page in their "My Pages" menu in the upper left of the page. 
It is possible for them to edit, create and delete links and folders. The options menu is not available while working with a shared 3x3Links page. Only the owner may edit the options of a shared page.

Changes made by guests will be displayed in the Collaboration menu as a brief change history. 

As always, I'm open for feedback how to improve this feature further. Send me use-cases along your ideas via the contact form or as comment below. This feature was originally suggested by the New York City Department of Education.

Back to work: A roadmap

As you might know, 3x3Links is developed by one lonely developer, who recently returned from his summer break. For that time, I aligned with my lovely girlfriend that I would not code for 3x3Links to have more time for more important things (like her for example)!

Well, actually I just aligned not to "code for 3x3Links"...

I wisely used some free time to create a tool which would help me to bring order to my current projects and focus on the most important tasks while not loosing track of other ideas floating in my mind.

I invite you, dear 3x3Links users, to take a look at the future development of 3x3Links and to be the first to take a peak look at my new little tool called TaskEater. Inside TaskEater I created a TaskSpace with all tasks related to 3x3Links. I tagged the TaskSpace as #public, so you can view it without signing in.

The 3x3Links Roadmap

Using it for about two months, TaskEater completely replaced my post-it notes and other to-do lists. I have TaskSpaces for my regular job, 3x3Links and even TaskEater itself.

But back to 3x3Links: I need only to add one more feature to TaskEater, design two websites for a customer and I'm back working on the next 3x3Links feature. Expect it to arrive in a month.

PS: A new version of SDF is on it's way, but you probably already saw this on the roadmap...

Summer Break and Offline Copy

First the sad news: I will pause further feature development on 3x3Links for the next two months. There will be only bug fixes if required. You may still suggest features!

One final feature before I go sunbathing: On the bottom of the "Personal Links" page you'll find a link to an offline version of your 3x3Links page. Save this file and you'll receive a single HTML file you can copy wherever you want to: Your USB drive, your intranet server or on your hard drive as a simple backup if 3x3Links should go offline due to the massive traffic spike once Techcrunch decides to write about it. :)

Donors received also another feature, but more on this in the next post.

HTML5 support and recent updates

Starting today, 3x3Links will begin rolling out a neat new HTML5 feature: Local caching. This will result in your 3x3Page loading up to 5-times faster and below 0,4 seconds.
First, only your Homepage Link will support this new feature (former no-sign-required link).

Homepage link example: http://www.3x3links.com/?open=587ea729b400c82a325dfe971cc9918e

I've tested a lot of browsers together with the new feature, but if you still experience any problems, please let me know immediatelly.

Recent updates:

• Use an URL as background image. This is quite cool for daily changing background images.
• If you link to a local IP address, localhost or another 3x3Links page, you may upload an own logo for this link without the need for the logo being approved!
• "No-sign-in-required" link renamed to "Homepage" link, as you should really use this one as your browser homepage when at home.
• "Personal Link" renamed to what it is: a Vanity URL.
• Now accepting Donations. If you use 3x3Links daily, you won't regret donating.

In work:

• Offline Version
• Own CSS support
• "New Tab 3x3Links" extension for Chrome.

The latest on 3x3Links

Early this month two popular blogs wrote about 3x3Links: Lifehacker and MakeUseOf. This led to an unplanned load (or stress) test for the whole service. It was pure luck my payed(!) Google App Engine traffic quota was high enough. Traffic jumped from 0.1 page requests per second to more then 16.

Thanks to all those new users, more then 1000 new logos have been uploaded (and approved by me).

Now things are back to normal and I'm processing all the user feedback and fixing bugs.

Localhost and IP address links
For example I fixed a bug making it not possible to assign logos for http://localhost:80/ or http://192.168.1.1/ links. To fix the bug, you have to refresh (hit edit and save directly) your relevant links and upload a new logo. This logo will be only visible to you and directly approved. Nice, right?

What's next?
I will start accepting one-time donations from happy 3x3Links users. More on this later, but I can already tell that this is related to the need for beta testers: There will be special features reserved for donators...

Does 3x3Links feel a little slow right now?
Sorry, but this issue is known and the whole App Engine team is already working on this.

Refactoring and redesigning 3x3Links

In this post I would like to share my vision of the upcoming 3x3Links changes with you. Most of the changes will be unnoticed. First, the 3x3Link source HTML files will consolidated allowing easier editing of the 3x3Links look&feel. This is called a "code refactoring" - changing code without effects to the user interface.

Next, the user interface will be redesigned. Here are some of my ideas.

1# Options 

• new left sidebar navigation
• some of the current option pages will be split into multiple parts
• each new option page will only have as many options as fit the the page without scrolling

2# Logo handling

• the current Logo Central will disappear for users - it is slow and complicated
• you will be able to directly jump from the customizing screen into logo selection or suggesting and back to editing

3# Other changes

• You will be able to jump between 3x3Pages using a drop-down menu - the current "My Pages" choosing screen will disappear
• Pages will be divided into standard pages displaying all internal links and dialog pages, allowing you only to change something, accepting the change or to go back to the previews page.

I invite you, dear 3x3Links users and blog readers, to participate in this changes in the comment section below.