Navigating the Nomosphere

An Assortment of Small Improvements

2012 is well underway, and while we’re working on some big new features for the site, we’d like to take a minute to describe some of the smaller updates that have recently rolled out.

Titles

Sometimes long lists of ingredients or directions need some help staying organized. Forkchop can now render headers in these sections of recipes. To add headings, simple add a colon (:) to the end of those lines like this:

These lines will be displayed in a special way so it is recognizable as a heading:

Recipe Importing

Recipes can now be imported from from Saveur.

Replies to Shared Recipe Emails

If you share a recipe with someone via email, any replies to the email sent to recipients will be sent directly back to you. Previously these messages were getting lost, as they were being sent to our no-reply email address.

Signing In

We’ve made many improvements to address issues some users have had with signing into the site. As a part of this, the “Remember me” checkbox has been removed from all sign in forms. If you should want to log out of the site, just click “Sign Out” in the top right corner of the header.

Improved support for iOS devices

About 20% of the traffic on Forkchop over the past month has been from various mobile devices (mostly iOS), and while it was always possible to get the bookmarklet installed on these devices, it was far from easy.

We’ve just rolled out a new guide that shows users how to get the bookmarklet installed on an iPhone or iPad. We tried to make the process as straight forward as possible (it still involves a lot of steps, but each one is small and simple). Please let us know if you have any problems with it. 

In the process of making the guide, we also tweaked how the bookmarklet displays on smaller screens. We’re in the planning stages of some other UI improvements for mobile, so stay tuned!

More Ways to Share Recipes

Previously on Forkchop you could share recipes with anyone by emailing it to them through the application. While nice, a lot of users found this limiting (and rightly so).

Today we’ve rolled out a new sharing screen that offers a few more ways to share recipes: via Twitter, a URL, and the aforementioned ability to send them via email:

The URL option is nice for chat, text messaging, or just anytime you need a short URL to give to someone.

These sharing options are accessible via the “Share this Recipe” button on all recipe pages:

We will be adding more ways to share recipes (and batches) over the coming months. 

Import a recipe from a URL

While it has been possible to import a recipe using the bookmarklet for quite some time, it wasn’t possible to import one directly from a URL until now. This feature was requested by a few users, and gives you another way to get recipes into Forkchop:

Happy importing and cooking!

Login (and signup) with Twitter

To make it easier for users to try Forkchop out, you can now sign up for Forkchop or log in using your Twitter account.

Clicking the “Sign In with Twitter” button will take you to Twitter, where you can authorize the application to have access to your account. We will never post anything to a user’s feed without them requesting it.

If you are a new user, you will then be prompted to confirm your name and provide an email address. This is so that we have a way to contact you should we ever need to.

After submitting this information, the signup process is complete.

If you already have an account on Forkchop, you can link it to your Twitter account by going to your profile (click your name in the right side of the site header, and then click “Link with your Twitter Account”.

Once you authorize Forkchop to use your Twitter account, your accounts are now linked. You can then sign into Forkchop by clicking the “Sign In with Twitter” button on the sign in page.

Add Photos of Batches for Fun and Profit

Part of the process of getting better at a recipe or cooking technique is looking back at how you’ve faired in the past and learning from your successes and failures. Sometimes the best way to show the results of a cooking expedition is a photo.

When creating a batch on Forkchop, you can now upload photos from your computer:

These images will appear on the recipe page, where you can hover over them to see a larger version:

They will also appear on the dashboard wherever that batch is listed:

We’re working on providing an easy way to add photos from a mobile device. In the meantime, iOS users can take advantage of iCloud’s Photo Stream to make capturing images on a mobile device and uploading them from a computer more convenient.

Introducing the Dashboard

For logged in users, the Forkchop home page now sports a nice list of recent events that have occurred on that user’s account:

Now it’s easy to look back over what you’ve made over the past few weeks or months.