Q & A

What is Draftastic for?

It’s for any writing done by more than one person.

Specifically, it works best as a way for people to get together and hash out the text and layout of a document in real time.

It’s great for brainstorming, group reports, recording events, or getting live feedback from your favorite copyeditor.

What is Draftastic not for?

Word processing. Draftastic is for getting the text to say what everyone wants. That includes some basic style, but fancy typesetting is best left to dedicated publishing tools.

Draftastic is also not for programming. We don’t do syntax highlighting, we don’t integrate with interpreters and compilers, and we have no plans to switch to a monospaced font. Despite using some typical programming tools like version history and diffing, Draftastic is designed for the messy business of prose, which has different requirements from the messy business of code.

If you need a collaborative editor with syntax highlighting, line numbers, meaningful whitespace, etc., we suggest EtherPad, or, if you’re lucky enough to be using a Mac, Coda.

How is Draftastic different from other collaborative editors?

Unlike wikis and pasteboards, we let you and everyone else edit the same page simultaneously and see each other’s changes in real time. Unlike Google Docs and other real time editors, we keep all those people from getting in each other’s way. You can see everyone typing, but you can’t type over each other.

We don’t have any fancy syncing algorithms, because we don’t need them. Draftastic takes advantage of AJAX when it’s available, but doesn’t require it, and doesn’t rely on any cutting-edge HTTP tricks. You’ll get the best experience with a modern browser on a fast connection, but Draftastic will still work with no Javascript and tons of latency.

We’re not the only editor with version histories, but, for collaborative writing, we think we do it best. Draftastic doesn’t just have save points, it stores every change and remembers who made it.

Want to see how your document has changed from last week? No problem. Like something you wrote then better than the new version? Just a click to get it back. Want to know who wrote that really clever bit in paragraph three? That’s there too. We want to give writers tools that programmers have taken for granted for years.

What browsers do you support?

We test against Firefox 2+, Safari 3+, and Internet Explorer 6+.

We can’t promise anything else will work, but, in a pinch, just about any browser should do fine if you turn off Javascript.

(Yes, we tried it in Lynx. It’s not fun, but it works.)

How secure is it?

It isn’t; security is not a design goal. We’re looking into offering private instances, but right now everything is public. Don’t put anything on Draftastic that you wouldn’t want your mother to read.

How do I format text?

Draftastic uses Markdown to convert your plain text into nicely formatted HTML. For example, **bold** becomes bold, *italics* becomes italics, and [a link](http://draftastic.com/) becomes a link.

You can do some pretty fancy stuff with it, but in general, if you just write as you would an e-mail, it’ll work out. Or you can just use the handy buttons above the edit box.

Can I use my own HTML?

Sure! You can mix it in with Markdown too. However, your HTML tags won’t render until you export your document.

Again, Draftastic isn’t ideal for coding, and that includes complex HTML, but it comes in quite handy if you’re, say, writing a blog post with an embedded video.

Any tips or tricks?

There are several keyboard shortcuts. For example, ctrl+s saves an edited section, ctrl+b makes text bold, and ctrl+l adds a link.

Double-clicking a section edits it. (Fair warning: you’ll come to expect this from everything.)

The log is a good place to give feedback on other people’s changes.

Play around. Experiment. Rearrange stuff. Make several copies of a section and try out different phrasings. If you change your mind you can always undo and redo. Draftastic is very forgiving. Draft is right there in the name.

Where do I send feedback?

E-mail support@draftastic.com. We particularly love detailed bug reports!