Wouldn’t it be great if you could instantly get more followers on TikTok or Twitter? Sadly, we can’t help you with that, but wait—we can get you instant followers in CodeTogether! Read on for details on our new “Force to Follow” feature, enhancements to the Terminal and our On-Premises distribution, in this fabulous 2022.2 release.
Watchers No More, Followers We Shall Be!
From its inception, we’ve used “watch” terminology in CodeTogether’s interfaces. You watch someone browse through the workspace, or watch them code and execute tests. However, we’ve realized that many of our new users are looking for the ability to “follow” instead, not realizing that “watch” does exactly what they need.
To make the interface more intuitive, we’ve decided to switch to “follow” terminology instead. You will see it replace watch in the editor annotations, commands and the CodeTogether view.
Want to be Followed?
With this release, we’ve added a new ability where a participant can force everyone else in the session to follow them. This is especially useful in classroom sessions when you want to ensure everyone is looking at the same file—simply choose the “Force all to follow you” action in the CodeTogether view.
Note: To limit abuse in larger sessions, including education, only the host can use the Force to follow action if there are more than 3 guests in the session.
Following is Easier
In one-on-one sessions, if you’ve separated from your partner, you’ll see a more obvious Follow node below their name, which you can use to start following them. Of course, you can also just click/double-click their name to follow them, as you did before.
Terminal Focus
When a guest types in a shared terminal, it will now be brought to top in the Host IDE for better visibility. This does not steal focus on the host side, so if the host is actively typing, for instance, they won’t be interrupted. If you don’t like this behavior, turn it off in the CodeTogether preferences/settings.
Refresh Account from View
If you’ve purchased a CodeTogether Teams or Pro account but don’t see this reflected in your CodeTogether view and usage, use the “Recheck Access” link in the CodeTogether view to refresh your account status.
On-Premises Improvements
- In a multi-server deployment you can connect to your database with SSL, without having to specify certs for the connection.
- The Helm chart has been cleaned up in several places, and is now checked into our GitHub repository here: https://github.com/CodeTogether-Inc/CodeTogether-Live/tree/master/helm
We’d be happy to receive further improvements to the chart through PRs—thanks to those who have already contributed! - CodeTogether server startup has been improved to do a better job of validating inconsistent configuration values—if something is wrong, you should see better error messages.
Miscellaneous Fixes and Enhancements
This release is now compatible with Eclipse 2022-06.
In some cases, joining subsequent sessions from the same VS Code instance would silently fail—this has been fixed.
A few fixes were made to the proposed-API enablement to allow the CodeTogether extension to work well with Gitpod and VS Code running in WSL.
Finally, we’ve improved the feedback flow you may be presented with at the end of your session—do share your experience with us, good or bad. If you didn’t enjoy your CodeTogether session, please include a valid email address so we can follow up and address your issue, we’d appreciate that!
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