Daily Dose of Fun Launches

After 2 months of deep development cycle, we are now very proud to announce the new and very much improved ShoutOut’s Photo Album! But wait, it also comes with a new name : Daily Dose of Fun.

Let’s take a look at how far it has come :

We have received many many feedbacks from everyone and many of those changes are incorporated. Our objective is to give the backend engine a complete overhaul so that it can take more future upgrades we will throw at it. The overhaul is done and its now time to launch it for testing. During these we’ll continue on with enhancing it further.

Lets take a look at some of the changes :

The interface. The design has gone through a major retouching and we hope this will present a much nicer-to-use interface for you. The Top and Left menus has also been added in preparation for future enhancement such as Videos and Albums/Groupings. We have also added ShoutOut Panel to the right of the screen due to popular demand whereby Shouters would want to Shout from here, rather than from the ShoutOut’s own main page. So now you can Shout and Share at the same time!

Auto Refresh. Using our existing technology from ShoutOut Panel, we also designed this page to auto refresh itself. So you do not need to click on the refresh button to see the latest item. It is set to refresh at the interval of 5 minutes. Do let us know if this is too long or too short in the comments below.

 

More Details at a Glance. Now each Item has more details for you to glance at. 3 new icons are introduced, the Comments, Views and Likes. The name of the Last commented person is also displayed. At the top right, the like icon will be displayed on any item that you liked before.

 

Better navigation. All page now has a back to top button that will take you straight back to the top. All pages will also have a better paging function at the top right and bottom right. The new [First Page] button will bring you directly back to the first page.

 

 

Individual Highlight. Items are now highlighted when they are updated. And unlike previously, if you did not view them, it will remained highlighted. You will not need to worry about missing out any new updates from now on. But, what if you want to skip all the latest updated items? Just click on the Mark all as read button on the top middle of the page. It’ll set everything to read and all highlights will be removed. Any new updates after that will still be highlighted.

 

Instant login. You can also login directly from this page. If you enabled OpenID, which we highly recommend, you’ll enjoy a single-click login. No more usernames and passwords hassle!

 

Individual Item Page. This also received a couple of changes most notably the interface changes. One of the most highly requested changes are to open the individual item page on a new tab instead of a pop-up. We heard you loud and clear. Now each time you click on an item from the main page, a new tab opens and displays. Closing this new tab will bring straight back to the main page.

 

Comments, Views, Likes and Owner’s Note. At the bottom of each Item on the Individual Item Page, you’ll see this red box that shows you:

• Number of Comments
• Number of Views
• Number of Likes. Here you can click on Like or Un-like button (displayed above) if you like what you see.
• Owner’s Note is a special space for the sharer to tell everyone anything he or she wants about this item.

 

Better navigation. Also highly requested are these new features. Clicking on Add a comment … button will jump you straight to the new comment input box where you can immediately type your comment. Jump to latest comment button will take you to the latest comment that you have not read yet. This saves scrolling time for someone who is closely following that particular Item.

 

Better Commenting. Commenting system has also been upgraded to include the following visual cues:

• When the Sharer comments, a thin red outline will appear around his or her comment.
• If a commenter calls your name, a orange line will appear to the right.
• All new comments will have a brighter background to indicate new-ness. This is also where you will jump to if you click on the Jump to latest comment button.
• As the person who shared the Item, you can remove any comments made.
• If you are not the sharer, you can only remove your own comments.
• Say button removed. There is no need to click on buttons anymore. Just press enter key to comment!

 

Better Highlighting. Highlight system also received a healthy dose of upgrade. All designed to make it friendlier to use:

• The Input textbox now moves with you. Whenever you drag the highlight box, the input textbox will move with you.
• The Add button is removed. It may take some getting used to, but all you need now is just type and press the enter key. No need to move your mouse and click on the add button.
• The highlight list on the right is now sorted by time. So the bottom ones are the newest highlights and the top ones are older. This helps when you are scanning through the highlight to find the latest highlight.
• Highlight list is also highlighted (lighter font colour) to indicate new highlights that you have not seen before. This makes it very easy to notice new highlights.

 

New Logo. You noticed the new logo too don’t you? Well, the reason we change the name from Photo Album to Daily Dose of Fun is because it is no longer limited to Photos. There are plenty of stuff that can now be shared here thanks to the entire engine overhaul. The very next upgrade will be Video, stay tuned for that. So with the new name, we’ll need a new logo to go along with it.

This logo represents a Daily Dose like a bite of watermelon on a daily basis. It’s sweet, it’s tasty and it’s healthy. It like a dessert you take a bite out of when you are taking a break from office work or studies. That’s what we think anyway. Tell us what is your first impression when you see this in the comments below!

While we are on this subject, I wonder if you have a suggestion of what to call the ‘Items’. If you noticed, I refrain from calling ‘Photos’ and called them ‘Items’ instead. That’s because it will not be limited to photos, also videos, links .. so on. Any suggestion what to call that? ‘Fun’?

Cheers and thanks in advance for all your comments,
Elise & Lasker