Hackpad is a simple, easy to use wiki with real time updating and requires no special text editor. It can be used a better option for collaborating that the traditional wiki or Google Docs. Hackpad allows you to share your docs realtime and it uses color coding to show which authors have contributed to which content. It also allows in line photos, checklists and can also be used for coding as it offers syntax highlighting. Getting Started: Signing up is really simple. You can sign up on Hackpad.com using your facebook, google account or you can enter your own email address. The benefit of using goood account is that it can sync in your contacts so it makes it easier for you to invite people on your wiki. Once signed up, you can login and start creating your own wiki pages by clicking the plus button. The dashboard also allows you to search for all your pads and gives you the list for the pads that have had latest changes.!! 1
A new pad just looks like a word document, so you can start typing in things like you normally would. You can also see a toolbar on the top that gives you various formatting options provided by most of the word processors. Also when you start editing you will see the name of the authors that have contributed to this document. Each author is denoted by a different color, making it easier for the users to know who updated which content. Formatting: For making a text bold you can press Ctrl+B or Cmd+B. For italics you can press Ctrl+I or Cmd+I. For underlining you can press Ctrl+U or Cmd+U. Like word processors, hackpad allows you to format the text. You can either select the text and click your desired format using the toolbar on the top or you can select and press keyboard shortcuts.!! 2
Task list: You can also make a bullet list or add a task list which makes it handy to keep track of what tasks are pending. To do that you can bullet list select the desired style from the top bar. Task lists can also created by typing an open bracket and a close bracket [] in front of one of the task. This will automatically convert it into a task list and then you can add more tasks by pressing enter. Comments: You can also add a comment to a text which can be expanded or closed. So letʼs say we want to specify what things in the room need to be cleaned up. We can do this by adding a comment box (available from the top menu ) next to the tasks. For this first select the desired text and then click the comment box from the top menu. Now you will see a comment box instead of a check box. Next, press enter on that line and then you will see another comment box appear and you can start typing your comment. Once you are done typing you can click on the first comment box and it will close and the box will show a + symbol indicating that there is a comment. On clicking that comment box, you can open the comment. This gives you a condense way to organize tasks or provide additional information in a document.!! 3
Inserting Images: You can also insert images in the wiki by either dragging and dropping the pictures from your computer directly into the pad or if you have a link, you can use the insert menu from the top menu and select image. Clicking Image will open a box allowing you to enter a url. Enter your URL and you can see the image in your document! Videos: Likewise we can directly embed videos from popular video sharing sites such as Vimeo and Youtube. To embed a video, simply copy the youtube URL and paste it inside the pad and it will be automatically embedded!!! 4
Inserting Tables: Tables can be inserted using the top menu bar. Click Insert and then click Table from the drop down menu. By default it will insert a 2x2 table that would look something like this. To add more cells you can simply right click by the table and it will give you the desired options as you can see in the picture on the side. It also gives you option for deletion. However the one interesting feature about Hackpad tables is that it will automatically keep adding rows and colums as you need it. So lets say I create a list of people and their contact info, I start out with something like this. Now when I press enter it will automatically add another column automatically. So now I donʼt have to right click and add another column because it already added one for me and so I can name that as Phone number and so on. The same thing happens in rows, i.e. when you type in something in the last row it will automatically add another row. And you can always delete when you donʼt need it. Adding links: show up on the side. Just like a word processor, hackpad allows to create links by selecting the desired text. Once the text is selected, you will see Create Link option!! 5
Click that and then you will see a dialog box that will allow you to either link the text to a URL or you can link it to a new pad. And then click Create and your link is live. Hackpad allows an easier way to link different hackpads within. So letʼs say you have a hackpad saved as Recent updates and you want to link that pad in the current pad. All you have to do is just type @ and you will see a box below that shows up like this Recent updates. Now you can start typing the word Recent updates and if a pad with the name Recent updates exist it will show up and you can select that. If not then it will give you an option to create a new pad with the name You can link people in the pads using @ just like you would do in Facebook. If you signed in using your google account, when you type anything after @, hackpad will look up your contacts and show you if any email/name matches. Once you select the desired person, hackpad will automatically invite them to view the pad. If they arenʼt on hackpad, they will get an invitation to join hackpad.!! 6
Inviting people to view your pad: As mentioned earlier, if you link an email in a pad, hackpad will automatically send out a message on that email with the link to the document. If you want to add more users, you can do so by adding people from the right sidebar. You can type in the email or look up from the contacts. Also by default, you can just copy the link and anyone can view the pad. Code Syntax Highlighting: Hackpad also allows syntax highlighting for most common programming languages. To activate this feature you simply name the title followed by the extension of the language. Here I used C++ extension (.cpp) in the title and so the syntax highlighting feature is activated for C++. Inline Code Snippets: If you a begin a line with 4 spaces, you'll start editing in code mode. Other languages supported are C, C#, CSS, CoffeeScript, Java, HTML, etc. For a full list please refer to the link https://hackpad.com/o9ey5hjlybq#hackpad-code-syntax- Highlighting!! 7