The first release candidate for AmCAT version 3.3 has been published on http://amcat-dev.labs.vu.nl. Although we have tested this version extensively while developing, this upgrade adds quite a number of features and has a completely refactored system for generating the website (reflected in the new UI), so it is quite possible that there are still some bugs. Please report any bugs or feature requests on the new issue tracker at https://github.com/amcat/amcat/issues.
The ‘amcatbook’ has also been updated and is available from https://www.dropbox.com/s/nnkhzlcuhza9f69/amcatbook.pdf
- Completely overhauled navigator UI. The new UI is a lot more standardized across pages and has less clutter, making it easier to use especially for new users.
- Complete rewrite of the annotator which greatly improved performance when using large and/or many codebooks. Keyboard shortcuts and supported browsers have also changed, so please consult the “help” link in the annotator before coding. You can also indicate which part of a sentence you are coding if ‘subsentence’ is selected in the coding schema.
- Queries and some actions are now run in the ‘background’, and the website displays a progress dialog. This makes the server less likely to become too busy and gives the user an indication of what is happening.
- Codebook handling. You can now export codebooks and all labels to excel and various formats, and import them from csv. You can also update an existing codebook with new labels or structure from a csv file.
- Improved export. All tables now have excel and SPSS export. Aggregations and Associations now have correct field type for SPSS.
- Performance improvements. Performance of complicated queries has improved a lot (this was backported to production around Christmas). Summary now makes a single call to get both total #hits and the top 10 hits.
- Minor usability improvements, such as opening articles in a new page from the query screen, association interval and other options have been revamped, …
- API improvements, especially token based authentication and full support for query search and aggregate. See also https://github.com/amcat/amcat-r and http://amcat.nl/R/amcatr.pdf
- The biggest priority is the query screen. It is confusing that some options are only accessible once you have performed a specific query (amcat/amcat#18). It is also annoying that changing e.g. association settings requires first asking a new summary. Also, articles found through a query should be highlighted with that query. (amcat/amcat#6)
- Storing more state, especially storing queries and offering a list of recent queries, recent projects, etc. (amcat/amcat#16, amcat/amcat#17)
- Security. Although there are more checks in place to make sure that users can’t do things they are not supposed to do, this needs to be checked more systematically and tested (amcat/amcat#5)
- Improving the API. There is a new ‘hierarchical’ API in place (i.e. where an articleset is located under that project at api/v4/projects/X/articlesets/Y) which also allows creation/modification. In 3.4 this new API will replace the old API, meaning that all old resources should be present in the new system and that security should be checked thoroughly, especially as the API also allows anonymous access. (amcat/amcat#15)