These pages are what you do with Commentware in the browser: comment on a page, move a pin and edit its screenshot, find a comment, read and silence notifications, dictate a comment, use comments over a dialog, and export and import threads. They happen on three surfaces, and knowing which is which saves looking for a control on the surface that cannot have it.
The overlay on the page
Press Alt+C — ⌥C on a Mac — and the comment overlay opens over whatever you
are looking at. This is the only surface that has the page, so it is the only
one that can place a pin, drag one onto a different element, photograph the page
or mark that screenshot up. Comment on a page covers
using it.
The toolbar is a small strip you can drag anywhere, and each control is named by its tooltip. The notch on the left is not a control — it is where you take hold of the strip to move it.
- Leave a comment — Arms the crosshair, then you pick a spot. The mark rather than a speech bubble, and the only filled control: there is one primary action here.
- Which project you are in — A folder when this browser is in none, and that project's own avatar when it is.
- Which comments are drawn — All, open, or resolved. It wears the active mode's icon, so a filter cannot be in effect without being on screen.
- Settings — Opens the options page.
- Notifications — Whether this browser interrupts you. The bell is crossed out when they are off.
- Search — Opens the side panel with the search view on it.
- Hide the overlay — The same thing the shortcut does.
The side panel
Click the extension’s toolbar icon. The panel is browser furniture rather than part of the page, and it can hold a thread from a page you are not on. Find a comment covers how it behaves.
The options page
The gear in the panel’s header. Everything that is not about the page in front of you lives here:
- Connection — your servers, which is current, the key’s user and what it may do, and the people on the server.
- Projects — create, rename, delete, the addresses each one claims, and moving a site from one to another.
- Sites — every site and its pages, most drifted first.
- Export / Import — saving a project’s, a site’s or a page’s threads as a file, and putting such a file into a project. Experimental. See Export and import threads.
- Notifications — the last 50 you were sent.
- Settings — your display name, the keyboard shortcut, the notification switches, and dictation.
- Search, across every domain, comment and person on the server.
One thread, two places
The thread card is the same component on the page and in the panel, so reply, edit, delete, resolve, mention, mark-unread and dictation work identically in both. The differences are only ever about what a surface can reach:
| Overlay | Panel | |
|---|---|---|
| Read and write a thread | Yes | Yes |
| Place a pin, or drag one | Yes | No |
| Retake or draw on the screenshot | Yes | No |
| Hold a thread from another page | No | Yes |
The two are deliberately allowed to show different threads at once. Opening one in the panel does not move the page under you; going to the page is a separate control.