Happy Friday Noodlers!

If your school wasn’t an early adopter of the beta citation form updates during the month of October, you’ll notice a change to the citation form interface today as we begin phase 2 of the rollout. Between now and the end of December, the new interface has been turned on for all subscriptions. First, some important notes:

• While the forms look very different visually, the form content has not changed — the source types, form organization, and form fields are all identical.
• During this beta period (November and December), individual students and teachers may opt to revert back to the “old” interface if they wish to for any reason — there is a simple toggle switch “New Citation Forms (Beta)” on the “Sources” screen that can be switched off at any time.

The new forms represent a complete rewrite of the underlying code, replacing aging code libraries that we had used that were no longer supported. Besides the huge improvements in the underlying technology that you can’t really “see,” we felt it was important to work towards a cleaner, more modern feel to the product. The changes also incorporate specific design principals that move us towards better usability on mobile devices.

Keep in mind that this is technically a beta, although we’ve been testing for several months already, so at this point it is quite stable. But a big part of why we’re rolling it out like this (instead of waiting until the summer) is to get your feedback as you start using it — if you find a bug, feel free to report it to our helpdesk.

A few cool new things you’ll notice in the new forms:

• Fast loading
• Top frame of the citation form doesn’t scroll (so you can see what you are citing as you move down)
• Suggestions as you type
• Annotation editing is incorporated into the form, instead of as a separate editor
• Annotations are now versioned (just like the notecards)

Check out the “What’s New in NoodleTools (2019)” archived webinar for other info about what we’re working on.