Seafile 7.0 addresses the issue of how to better manage files online. We have made a lot of improvements in the following area:
- Markdown editor
- Wiki-like features
- File search
- Activities
- File histories
- File tags
- Sharing permissions
With these improvements, Seafile also becomes a good solution for knowledge management .
By online documents, we mean documents that can be viewed and edited online. Like Markdown and a rich document format that we are implementing.
Markdown editor
The Markdown editor is much improved compared to the editor in version 6.3. The new interface is cleaner. The view and edit modes are combined into a single edit mode.
Images can be resized and cells in tables can be selected and copied.
Wiki-like feature
The Wiki feature has two uses in Seafile. One is to organization files and document internally, and the other is for publishing.
For the first use, in version 6.3, the user needs to create a private Wiki. If we have a lot of libraries that want to be organized as a Wiki, we have to create a lot of Wikis. But in this way, for the same contents, we will have two ways to access them with different URLs. One is the wiki interface, and the other is the library interface. To solve this problem, in 7.0, we added a two-column view mode (or Wiki view mode) to the library. This way you don’t need to create a Wiki to view the contents of a library in a Wiki way.
For the second use, version 7.0 added the feature of library publishing.
Column mode
The column mode display the library as a Wiki. You can easily jump among online documents by clicking files in the tree view. Files and folders can be moved via drag and drop. Context menus are also added for you to access file operations quickly.
Drag and drop:
Context menu:
Libraries publishing
If you want to make your documents public visible, you can publish a library. The published library will be displayed in a Wiki like view.
Search
When you write a lot of online documents in Seafile, a quick search and access to the corresponding documents becomes a very important feature. In Seafile 7.0, we added real-time search. You can see the search results in real time as you type. This way you can adjust your search keywords to find the corresponding document faster.
In 7.0, you can also search the library by the library name and then quickly access the library.
Activities
When the whole team are actively using Seafile, it’s even more important to quickly understand which files others have changed. For this we have improved the activities feature.
The interface of file activities is much cleaner now. We also added some smart features. For example, if you uploaded 30 files in a single library, the records will be aggregated. You will see only a single record that “30 files are added” instead of 30 records.
File tags
Seafile’s tag is working at library level. So users can use the same set of tags for a shared library. It is meant to help organize files with a shared library. It is not for personal usage. So there is no global tags.
In the root of a library, tags will be listed and you can quickly access the tagged files.
File histories
For online documentation, we often need to know what other people have made to a document. To do this, in 7.0, we recorded the history of the document (including Markdown, Word, Text files, etc.) into the database. This gives you a quick access to the history of your files. The Markdown file supports the functionality of Diff. When you browse the historical versions, the changes will be highlighted.
Sharing permissions
Two new permissions are added to better control the sharing permissions.
- Preview-Edit-on-Cloud, users can view and edit file online via browser. Files can’t be downloaded.
- Preview-on-Cloud, users can only view files online. Files can’t be downloaded.
Last but not least
The Web UI has been rewritten with a new UI framework. With the new UI framework, all the UI components like dialogs, dropdown menus and buttons are now having a consistent look and feel.
