Geek Testing: November 2009

Google Wave's interface is similar to your average modern email client, in that it has an Inbox, allows you to create Folders, and allows you to Search for waves with various keywords.

The important thing then, becomes that just like email, when a wave you are interested in gets updated, you should know as soon as possible. And if you are not interested in something anymore, you should be able to make it go away.

Mark waves as Read/Unread: Just like Email, you can mark a Wave as Read or Unread. To do so, click the "Read" or "Unread" button in the toolbar on the wave pane. Unread waves show up in bold text in your inbox. Once you marking a wave as Read, you will see further updates marked differently when you open it. Newly inserted text will show up in yellow, deleted text will show up in red with a strike-through, and new blips will show up with a green vertical bar to the left.
Use folders to keep your Inbox clean: Reading Public waves is a good way to learn about how to use Google Wave, and discover gadgets, and robots, or find solutions to problems. However, as soon as you read a public wave, it will show up in your inbox. Read a few public waves, and your inbox gets cluttered, since every update to these waves sends them to the top of your inbox.; You can create folders, by clicking the (+) button next to the word "Folders" in the Navigation pane. To move a wave to a folder, select the wave, then click "Move to" and select the folder. A wave that's moved to a folder, will show up in your inbox again when updated. Moving waves to folders makes it easier to find them later, if they've been archived. (more on that below)
Don't want to follow a wave anymore?: If you are no longer interested in knowing about updates to a wave, open that wave, and click the "Mute" button in the toolbar of the wave's pane. (Remember to use the Mute button in the toolbar rather than the one in the Search pane. The buttons in the Search pane don't always work as expected.) Doing this will remove the wave from your inbox, and you will never be notified of updates to it. This is also true of waves you may have edited, or even started. Also, at this time other followers of that wave will have no way of knowing that you have muted it, so they may continue with the conversation assuming you are reading their updates. However, muted waves still appear in your search results.; If you want to see all the waves you've muted, search for "is:mute".; If you want to search waves you've muted, append "is:mute" to the search query.; If you want to excluded muted waves from search results, add "-is:mute" to the search query.
Make a wave disappear till someone updates it: The lesser the number of waves that appear in your inbox, the easier it is to manage. So once you have read all the latest updates in a wave, you might not want it to show up in your inbox till someone updates it again. To do this, select the wave, and click the Archive button in the toolbar of the wave's pane. (Again, remember to use the button on the wave pane, not the one on the Search pane.)
Ignore a wave and stop it from showing up in searches: Muting a wave allows you to ignore any updates to a wave, but such a wave will still show up in your searches - with a small box with the word "Mute" near the title of the wave. If you are sure you have no interest in a wave anymore, you can send it to Trash. Just click the Trash button in the toolbar of the wave's pane. If your wave pane is too narrow, the Trash button might be hidden. Click the "..." button to show the remaining buttons on the toolbar. Just like Mute, other participants on a wave will not know you've sent that wave to your trash.

Labels: Google Wave, Technology, Tools

So you are one of the lucky few who got a Google Wave invite, but you've been letting it go to waste because you just can't figure out how to use it.

This is the second in my series of tips for Google Wave users, which should make it a little easier for you to start taking advantage of this new technology.

Easily read new updates to a wave

If you're following a busy wave - one with a large number of users for example - the frequency of updates may make it difficult to follow the conversation, because Google Wave allows you to add replies anywhere, not just at the bottom of the wave. To go through all unread updates, us the SPACE key on your keyboard. Pressing will take you through all unread updates since they last time you read the wave, one by one.

Increase your screen real estate

If you have a monitor with a resolution of only 1024x768, you probably think the Google Wave user interface is very cramped. This is true. At such a low resolution, the existence of so many panes - Navigation, Contacts, Search, etc - leaves very little space for the wave you might be interested in. There are different ways of increasing how much you see on your screen.

Maximize the wave - This is the simplest way to see more of your wave. To do this, click the "Maximize" button (the square one) on the top right of your wave pane. The disadvantage of this, is that you can no longer see the other panes like Navigation and Search.
Resize the other panes - You can resize the other panes to make more space for your wave view pane. To do this, hover over the space between two panes, and you should see your mouse pointer turn into a resize icon.
Decrease your browser's font size or Zoom Out - Most browsers allow you to reduce the font size of the content in a web page, or even zoom out the page completely. The default fonts used in Google Wave can seem a little large if your monitor is at a low resolution. Both Firefox 3.5 and Chrome, support 'Zoom Out', and using it (click Ctrl and '-' together) allows you to see more of your wave on a small screen. Using Zoom Out in Chrome, prevents you from resizing any panes for some reason. This is probably a bug in Google Wave that should get fixed at some point. It works well in Firefox though. Do note that many websites aren't tested to work well with browsers' Zoom Out feature, so it's possible that your experience might not be perfect.

More easily make a wave public

There seems to be a new robot that makes waves public, which works a little better than public@a.gwave.com, which I mentioned in my previous post on Google Wave tips. The new robot has the address easypublic@appspot.com and doesn't continuously disappear from your contacts. However, easypublic is a user contributed robot, so there's no guarantee that it will always be around. Also, it seems a lot slower. I also expect public@a.gwave.com's issues to get fixed soon.

Keep your wave small

A lot of processing in the Wave UI is handled by Javascript, which runs in your browser. So a wave with a lot of data, or a large number of updates/blips, will be slower, since it is your browser on your desktop/laptop/netbook that processes it all. A large number of active participants can also slow your wave down.

Be careful about making a wave public

Once a wave is made public, it's not possible to make it private again (at least right now). And a public wave's history can be seen by anyone who has access to Google Wave. In the future, it'll probably be viewable by anyone whether they have Google Wave access or not. So if you added some private information to a wave, and then deleted it before making it public, anyone can playback your wave to see your data before it was deleted. This is true about adding any new participants to a wave. Everyone who has access to a wave, will be able to view all its history, no matter how late they were added.