I’m incredibly excited to report the release of Elegant 6. It’s been a long, strange trip from it’s origin over 10 years ago as ‘Green’ - a simple, intuitive DAM interface for casual users.

Many of you have seen previews from the last couple webinars we’ve held, and some of you have been Beta testers (huge props to the Beta team!). For the rest of you, here’s what you can expect:

Performance- It’s fast. Really fast. Our Engineering, Performance and Metrics team have said it’s waaaay faster than Elegant 5, Exhibit, or anything else Xinet out there. That’s a technical term, of course.

Ease of use- we stripped out as many doodads as possible, removing buttons and confusing options for the user all over the place. Everything you see on the screen that is text is customizable, so you can make the buttons say what YOU want. Makes internationalization a breeze too.

Mobile friendly- Out of box we’re multitouch compliant. Pinch and spread away, the interface will zoom in and out, just as you’d expect. Sweet for quick reviews from the road.

Ease of use also translates into more feedback. We’re providing feedback all the time- from adding files to baskets, to browsing into empty folders, you always know what’s going on. And the new interface for uploading files is “light years ahead” (another technical term) of the current. No more users cancelling big uploads, or closing windows before their time.

Send supermail from the finder! Yep, a user can be browsing from the mac desktop, highlight some files, and send links to them without having to go to portal and repeat the operations. “Amazingly useful” is the least flattering comment we’ve gotten on this one.

12000% improvement in file management. OK, that’s an approximation. But real, robust file management through Elegant’s web interface is here. And it’s awesome.

Easy color theming- using online tools like Painstrap, it’s simple to create a color scheme to die for, and then slide it into Elegant 6. See previews of the new look  in the interface as you are applying and fine tuning. We got more than a little applause from the community for this one.

There’s dozens and dozens more, of course. Since we started from scratch it’s built with modern tools, making support a breeze. There’s a self updater, so you can see what’s new in the latest and upgrade yourself to get the latest feature set. We also built it so anyone with CSS skills can change the look and feel without having to pore over a Portal manual, and climb the steep learning curve of legacy software.

We’ll be in touch over the coming days and weeks, working with you on getting you into the future right now. Feel free to drop a line to helpdesk@napc.com with “Elegant 6 install” in the subject, and we’ll move you up the list (you deserve it for getting this far in a blog post!).

Here’s some common questions:

Any downtime for the install?

No, ‘course not.

Do all my users need to switch over right away?

Nope. Elegant 6 and Elegant 5 live next to each other.  E6 doesn’t even need portal to run, believe it or not. It’s that different!

Will my Elegant plugins/ custom CSS/ custom javascript port over?

Sadly, no. Given the vast difference in the code base, these kinds of things need to be recreated from scratch. That being said, we’ve included in E6 a ton of the plugins we’ve built over the years.

Is there a video I can watch?

Yep- right here: http://bit.ly/elegant6release

How much does this cost?

If you’re currently under support, Zilch. Zip. Nada. This is what support should go to- modernization and better code. We hate fixing bugs and retrofitting code too. So upgrade, and make your life better, already!