After so many months of building the core foundation for Sixent, we now get to bring forward lots of new capabilities. Capabilities that add immediate value to every member.

Among many other enhancements we have planned, we will soon be adding support for Files and will be offering a great new Feed Pod (for RSS and Atom feeds). I'll write more about each of these in a subsequent post.

Recently, we added two important enhancements:

• Item navigation (next/previous)
• Improved session recovery

Item Navigation

Item navigation is the addition of "next" and "previous" controls while viewing an item in detail. That item may be a photo, bookmark, blog or status update. You can now quickly navigate to the neighbouring items. For photos, you can also click on the photo to move forward.

Clicking the small, green up/down arrows allows you to preview the list of items before making a selection. This can save you a lot of time if you're hunting for a specific item or looking for an interesting photo. 

Tip: The faster you click those arrows, the faster it scrolls to save you time. Give it a try by adding lots of photos to a single page.

Given Sixent pages are topic-centric and not tool-centric, you can add many types of items to the same page and then browse them all together. While browsing, however, you can choose to see only more of the item type you're currently viewing (e.g. "Show only photos). Try this on a page with many different items.

If you haven't already, why not create a page that only you and your close friends can see. This will create a "sandbox" for you try out new features in Sixent such as its various item types, pods and page layout options. For example, did you know you can have less than three columns or change the width of your columns with drag-and-drop?  Click "Edit" on any of your pages (dashboard, profile, personal page or group page) to see these column controls exposed. Make you changes and click "Save Changes" to make them permanent.

Improved Session Recovery

One thing we've heard from our members is that they didn't want their sessions to "expire" so visibly and definitely not while they were writing an exhaustive blog post. To overcome this usability issue, we've re-engineered our session recovery system to be more transparent. It now allows you to pick up where you left off, even if you were away from Sixent for a few hours. You may not notice this change as it's very good at not interrupting you.

We've also added some special scripts to ensure you never lose content you're currently adding or editing. The Sixent servers are kept aware of your editing activities and work to keep your session "alive". So, when you post that 10-page blog entry after many hours of writing, nothing gets lost.. no more "please login again" hiccups.

Overall, I hope you're enjoying the Sixent beta. I welcome your feedback and suggestions. Reach me on my profile at: http://pdame.sixent.com.