Today we’re bringing autosave to Basecamp (for messages and comments), Highrise (for notes), Backpack (for messages, comments, and notes), and Writeboard (for documents and comments), as well as right here on SvN.
Autosave keeps a local copy of your work in your browser’s storage as you write, so you’re always protected against accidental refreshes, closing the wrong tab, a browser crash, or clicking a link that opens in the same window. The local copy will be kept in your browser’s local storage until you submit that message or comment.
If you accidentally close your browser or refresh the page, everything you’ve typed will be restored automatically when you return. You don’t have to do anything, it just works.
Autosave works with modern browsers: Internet Explorer 9+, Firefox 3.5+, Chrome 4.0+, and Safari 4.0+. If you’re not already using one of these versions, now’s a great time to upgrade!
We hope this gives you even more confidence in working with our products. Losing something while you’re writing it stinks – hopefully this helps cut those incidents down dramatically.
Noah wrote this on Dec 14 2011 There are 74 comments.
Joe 14 Dec 11
Yeah!
Mat 14 Dec 11
Excellent! More features now please. There are too many companies doing what you do to not invest in your own product. Basecamp could use a facelift, it’s a bit dated, my friends!
John Ainsworth 14 Dec 11
Great! Was just thinking how useful this would be the other day, when I accidentally closed the wrong browser window and had to rewrite my Highrise note.
Chris McKinney 14 Dec 11
Very nice update guys. Good work!
James 14 Dec 11
That is great news. Basecamp rocks.
Danny Naz 14 Dec 11
Thanks guys, makes me happy to see you are always making improvements.
Would love to see some type of visual calendar for upcoming tasks!
Dominique Chartier 14 Dec 11
Merci c’était très attendu!
Simon Tye 14 Dec 11
Ah ha! That explains why that comment seemed to stick around. This happened before today?!
Good job. Thanks.
Johnathan Foster 14 Dec 11
And the heavens rejoiced! Finally!
Christopher Beckwith 14 Dec 11
First, with the recent “Undos”, now “Auto Saves”...it’s like Christmas. After years it appeared 37Signals disregarded the needs of it’s modern user, but that all appears to be changing and the most dramatic changes most sure to come in Basecamp 2.0 announced released as Basecamp Next. Thank you guys!
Robert Becker 14 Dec 11
Bravo! This is a much needed improvement. Thanks for making it happen.
Joshua Pinter 14 Dec 11
About time! ;)
@Mat: Not sure if you’ve been paying attention but they have Basecamp Next coming shortly.
adam s 14 Dec 11
great feature – how about a little visual feedback when the autosave happens so we know its saved, wordpress and google docs do this pretty well
Adrian 14 Dec 11
I just got someone else’s half-written message when I clicked on “Post a new message”. It was definitely written by someone else on the same project.
Possible? Or am I going mad?
Benjamin 14 Dec 11
This is a nice addition to a great service. I have always been paranoid when writing long notes in Highrise (or any other website) and I made it a habit to CTRL +A CTRL +C to make sure I didn’t lose data. This new feature will make Highrise even better. Continue the innovation!
rebecca 14 Dec 11
WHOOT !
Tom Ordonez 14 Dec 11
This is awesome, I always lose my half way-written notes when I am at places with spotty internet
alexpoell 14 Dec 11
Nice! — Especially because we don’t have to learn anything. It just works.
Thanks for listening and making it happen. ; )
NL 14 Dec 11
@Adrian: drafts are stored in your local browser only, so that shouldn’t be possible. If you drop us a note via support@37signals.com with your browser, version, and any plugins/extensions you’re using, I can take a closer look.
Anon 14 Dec 11
@37signals
How is this actually implemented? Is the data just stored in the session cookie? (If so, why would this only work with recent browsers then?)
Is it using HTML5 ?
Matthew Jones 14 Dec 11
THANK YOU ! I don’t know how many times I’ve lost a note I was typing in because of something stupid like this. This is a great addition! You guys rock!
Avin Kline 14 Dec 11
Perfect. I’ve copied every message before posting for years because of the one or two times I’ve lost it :).
Avin
Brandon 14 Dec 11
I’m guessing if you have the AutoSave extension for Chrome, now would be a good time to disable that.
Ced Funches 14 Dec 11
Thanks. Another minor but very important update. I have lost messages so many times that I have actually gotten better at typing.
Charlene @ Sweetchic 14 Dec 11
YAY , thank you!! I can’t count the number of times I’ve lost a message before having a chance to post it…
George 14 Dec 11
Good job, 37signals guys! I hope you can extend “AutoSave” feature to other input source like the contact input in Highrise etc. : )
Anton 14 Dec 11
Works in Opera 11.60 as well.
Sylvain 14 Dec 11
Great. Now, if only there could be a way to upload files in the background or something, so you don’t lose an upload if you navigate away from a window while uploading. This has happened so many times to my client, I have to explain to them that they can’t do anything unless the upload has finished (I personnaly work in many windows just to cirvumvent that problem, but this should work without requiring a workaround).
Josh Freeman 14 Dec 11
Great news!! Thank you so much. We’ve needed this many times.
Geoff 14 Dec 11
Much appreciated. This has been my one frustration with Basecamp. Glad to see it scratched off the list.
+1 to this comment:
I’m curious, as well.
Amy 14 Dec 11
WOOHOO ! Thanks.
rusdaddy 14 Dec 11
Thank you Santa – we
Alan Wells 14 Dec 11
Great news! Been waiting for this for years.
Out of curiosity – did you guys already have this in the works, or was this in response to the comments on the undelete announcement? Seemed like autosave was the #1 request in the comments on that post.
JF 14 Dec 11
Alan: We had it in the works before the post, we just hadn’t finished it yet.
Eric Thibeault 14 Dec 11
That’s really nice – thanks!
Saul Edmonds 14 Dec 11
Nice one guys, thanks for the upgrade !!
Melissa 14 Dec 11
Awesome—this will save me much stress and foul language at work. Thanks guys!
Stacy 14 Dec 11
This is a dream come true for me and my fellow co-workers. I accidentally closed my message FOUR times the other day. It was awful!
Ichiro 14 Dec 11
Thank you! Great improvement!!
Josh Goebel 14 Dec 11
Does this not work when editing existing notes (that load via AJAX )? Only for text boxes already on the page when the page first loads? For the life of me i can’t get it to work with existing notes.. but I see where my content is saved for a new note.
Egor Volkov 15 Dec 11
Thank you!
Frank Palumbo 15 Dec 11
Excellent – now I just need to get use to not clicking – add this comment, every couple of minutes.
Cheers,
FP
Kannan 15 Dec 11
Thanks, It is really a good stuff!! Keep it up.
Josh Goebel 15 Dec 11
I thought this was great. I never thought of using localStorage to keep track of autosave fields before… lightweight and requires no knowledge or strain on the server-side. I wrote a quick implimentation in CoffeeScript… if anyone wants to add it to their own apps:
https://github.com/yyyc514/autosave_coffee
Many thanks for 37signals for the idea and also the default suggestions for how to generate the hash key for large web apps.
Josh Goebel 15 Dec 11
Sorry, no auto link here:
https://github.com/yyyc514/autosave_coffee
Josh Goebel 15 Dec 11
When posting comments on this blog autosave seems “stuck” in that whenever I return after posting a comment the body of my previous comment is always loaded in the form.
Rob Wood 15 Dec 11
Fantastic addition, particularly for Writeboards. I think this may be enough to switch me from Google Docs (I much prefer the versioning in Writeboards anyway).
Paul Underwood 15 Dec 11
Brilliant idea! All we need now, is for the page to drop down when clicking on ‘Read More’ instead of opening a new window. I’m forever losing my place when I do that! Keep up the good work!
Tim M 15 Dec 11
How aggressive is the save?’what if power goes out and my iMac flicks off?
Frank 15 Dec 11
Awesome! Finally…
Liz 15 Dec 11
auto save is a g reat improvement…even better would be if the system would ask if you want to save your work. Many times I realize I am putting a note in the wrong place.
Stan Hansen 15 Dec 11
How come you’ve never created a blogging platform? it seems like a natural fit for your software to plug right in.
Daniel 15 Dec 11
Thank god!!! That was the one big frustration I’ve had with Basecamp, which I otherwise love.
But it would also be great if you could apply this to Internet Explorer 8!
Lisa 15 Dec 11
please oh please can the next thing be to be able to message all projects at the same time (via basecamp, without having to email them I mean….....) That would save me hours and hours and hours when I have to send them all the same piece of info and for data protection can’t blanket email (and don’t want to either, I want to be able to use basecamp)
Ta
Lisa
Angelo 15 Dec 11
Thank you for this! Can’t tell you how many times I’ve crafted that perfect message for my client and lost it all because of an accidental “Back” button hit or closing of the browser window.
Jared 15 Dec 11
This is a great update! So many times I’ve typed out an hour long message with updates to make and I’ve accidentally deleted the message or the browser cache.
Thank you for the great updates that don’t muddle the functionality but add to the ease of use!
dusoft 15 Dec 11
Hooray to that! specially for the writeboards. That should have been introduced ages ago, even if only as a server storage.
DL 15 Dec 11
EXCELLENT , LOVE YOU GUYS !
scott 15 Dec 11
woohoo…
bye bye notepad and copy and paste when putting together an important message :)
Andrew Robulack 15 Dec 11
Sorry to not sound thrilled, but it’s about freakin’ time! This feature was loooong overdue.
Andrew Barter 15 Dec 11
SOOOO glad you did this… I have a couple of moments where I wished for this feature…
Many thanks!
Dave 15 Dec 11
Awesome. Thanks guys.
My favorite part, and something we ALL love to hear: “You don’t have to do anything. It just works.”
Harpal Singh 15 Dec 11
I’ve lost the threads countless times and changed my habit to typing in textedit first. Most of the times it happened for funny reason that I touched the magic mouse and it sent me to prev page.
Jigar Panchal 16 Dec 11
This is an absolutely THE MOST DESIRABLE features of all times. I can’t imagine writing the lost comments again and having same impact of message.
Thank you Basecamp for this feature!
Harvey Mason 16 Dec 11
Boom! My frustrations have just been eradicated! Lost messages many of time… Great feature! :)
Thiết kế logo 16 Dec 11
I also hope the issue concerns all help. Thank you very much. Thiết kế logo
Christian Hoppe 16 Dec 11
Thanks for that guys! That was THE ONE thing I really had to criticise. Thanks for solving that problem. You’re doin’ a grat job :-)
Carlos Ramirez III 16 Dec 11
This was my #1 feature request for Basecamp. Thanks so much for implementing it and making a great product even better.
Beth 16 Dec 11
About time!
Melissa 16 Dec 11
Thank you; it was definitely a problem and not up the standards of everything else. I feel much better about recommending Basecamp to others now.
Meron 18 Dec 11
Ohhhhh great!!! I just lost a very long message last week, got so pissed off (Safari crash). This is fantastic news!!!
Przemek Olesinski 18 Dec 11
Clever improvement. Thanks.
matt kocaj 19 Dec 11
Yeah! Killer feature.
I’ve had so much pain from loosing POSTs that failed for various reasons. Good work guys.
Suzanne Zaleski 19 Dec 11
So glad you implemented this change – can’t tell you how many times I’ve lost work in a tab accidentally closed.
This discussion is closed.