Collaborate Menu

About Collaboration

Fade In provides the capability to work in real time with one or more other other collaborators. Changes that you make when editing in a collaboration are reflected on your collaborators' copies of the document.

The collaboration feature allows multiple people to edit the document at the same time, and will intelligently resolve any conflicts (such as when two or more people try to change the same thing at the same time).

An internet connection is required. (A broadband connection is recommended.)

As always, please be sure to back up your work.

Start New Collaboration
Start a new collaboration session using the currently open document. A unique collaboration session ID will be provided that you can then share — through email, instant message, etc. — with your collaborator(s). The session ID is good for the current session only.

Starting a new collaboration will prompt you to save the document, optionally under a new name. It may be desirable not to save the document for the collaboration session over the previously saved version.

Join Collaboration
To join a collaboration, you'll need to enter the session ID provided by the person who started the collaboration. You will also need to be approved by an existing member of the collaboration.

Collaboration Status
This will give you the session ID of the current collaboration, for reference, as well as a list of all currently connected collaborators.

Resync This Copy
Requests (for whatever reason) a resync of the current document from the collaboration server.

Leave Collaboration
Disconnects from the collaboration. You'll be given the option to resync your copy of the document before disconnecting.

Chat
Fade In includes a lightweight chat client to allow you to talk (or rather type) with collaborators. It also provides other useful information such as a list of currently connected collaborators, and indicators of when a sync is in progress, when the document is temporarily locked by another collaborator, etc. To stay out of the way, the chat window is (mostly) transparent while you're typing in the document itself.

The chat window also gives in indication of when another collaborator is editing/typing, as well as when the document may be temporarily locked due to a change being made by someone else.

You may find it useful to have an alternate chat method open instead, or in addition, such as Skype or FaceTime, etc., that can run in the background and which provides audio and or video communication.

Clear/Copy/Save Chat
These enable you to manage to manage the contents of the built-in chat client. You can copy the chat to the clipboard, save it to a file, or clear the current chat history. Note that clearing the chat affects only your chat display, not that of any collaborators.