Creating new segments made easier

We know that a lot of people add new segments to their files and projects using our web interface, so we polished and improved the interface to create new segments over these last few months.

Some of these improvements are massive new features, others are tiny details, but everything we made should make you work a lot more easier, faster and less error prone.

Autocomplete

The biggest improvement to this interface is auto-complete. When typing the key name of a new segment you will get key name suggestions based on the segments key names which are already in your file.

For instance, typing the letter d will bring all the root key of the segments having a key name starting by a “d”.

You can then choose the key among the results. Select the key that fits or else keep typing to create something new if what you are looking for wasn’t listed.

The suggestion system works great for segments from hierarchized files such as YAML or JSON files. Typing the separating dot character will list the children segments of the root chosen earlier.

You can then choose the suggestion that fits best or type your own new segment.

It’s a great way to add segments, as it was too easy to makes mistakes in segment names before (by typing something like dzatetime.distance_in_words instead of datetime.distance_in_words.

Impossible keys

What’s even better with this new feature is that it prevents the user from creating segments with impossible keys.

What are impossible keys? Impossible keys are keys that are impossible to output in a tree-base file. For instance, if we had this segment hierarchy in a file:

en:
  datetime:
    distance_in_words:
      half_a_minute: "Half a minute"

Then we couldn’t possibly add a child key to the segment datetime.distance_in_words.half_a_minute, because that segment already is the last leaf of the tree. Therefore datetime.distance_in_words.half_a_minute.now is an impossible key within that file, unless you remove the segment datetime.distance_in_words.half_a_minute.

WebTranslateIt will now let you know when you try to add an impossible key. You will get an error when you try to add this kind of key via the API too.

Improvements to mass-adding segments

When adding 10 new segments to the same file, isn’t it annoying to select 10 time in which file the segment should be added?

No longer. First, if the translation interface is filtered by file, then WebTranslateIt will automatically select the currently selected file on new segment form.

If the translation interface isn’t filtered by file, then WebTranslateIt remembers to which file you last added your segment and automatically selects it. This way, you don’t need to always choose your file when added new segments en masse.

It’s a tiny improvement but we think it will be immensely useful.

We hope you will find these improvements useful. Thank you for using WebTranslateIt.