•  fastens Client-Server communication. Specifically, argument maps are only updated if they have been changed on the server. This fixes the issue that you could hardly work on huge maps online.
• improves the inplace editor for arguments and theses.
• adds context menu options: “Insert conclusion into map”, “Insert premisses into map”
• adds context menus everywhere
• eliminates group-blinking.

Until then, you can use all features of Argunet locally and offline. If the server is running again, you will be able to upload your argument maps to an online debate. Sorry for the inconvenience.

With this release the Argunet development has not come to an end. We already have many ideas for new features, a new task list and even some money for development. Parallel to this, we work on our new homepage, so expect to see something new here very soon…

With Argunet 1.0.0, four extensive tutorials are included in the program’s help, which teach you everything you need to know about argument mapping with Argunet. You will reconstruct a small debate about software patents. You can take a look at the final state of this example debate at the Argunet Server of the FU Berlin. Just login and open the debate “Software Patents” with the reader password “reader”. The last tutorial will show you how to do this. You can copy the arguments from this debate into your own debate to modify or extend them.

We hope that this will help new users to get started. We are planning to create screencasts and upload more example debates to make Argunet even more accessible. If you need more help, please post your question on the Argunet mailing list!

Release Notes:

Fixed:

• All known bugs

New Features:

• Argunet Help: Argument Mapping with Argunet. Four Tutorials in English and German
• E-mail notification: Debate editors are now notified by mail, if someone is applying for a role and users are notified if their debate role has been changed by an debate editor.
• Personal information: You can now change your personal information for your Argunet Server user account and retrieve passwords
• A lot of smaller usability improvements (Warning dialogues, tool tips, …)

Known Issues:

• So far sketched attack and support arrows cannot be copied between debates. This is not bug, it just has not been implemented yet, but has top priority on our task list.
• Some of the old debates on the Argunet Server are not working anymore, because of changes in the new version. If this is the case with one of your online debates, please contact us by mail. Most probably, we can help you!

The server has also been updated and is now incompatible with older versions of Argunet. If you want to work online, please update your client!

Features:

• Argument editor undo/redo: As long as you edit your argument, you can always undo and redo your last changes. This feature is restricted to the argument editor, because of the optionally distributed structure of Argunet. You cannot undo changes, that possibly are already used by other users, to avoid confusion and errors.
• Recently used debates: Open your recently used debates directly from the “File” menu.
• New alignment tools
• Delete debates
• Interface optimization: We have optimized Argunet’s usability in many respects.

Fixes:

• Nearly all serious known bugs (for exceptions see below).

Known Issues

• On OSX it is currently not possible to create new debates locally. We have already identified the cause and will fix this in the next days.
• In some cases, it is not possible to save edited arguments. This is our last serious bug and we will try to chase it down in the next days.

The server has also been updated and is now incompatible with older versions of Argunet. If you want to work online, please update your client! For more info please take a look at our release notes.

Thanks to all students and the two teachers for participating in this stimulating experiment! It has not only been fun to watch a whole class reconstructing argument maps with Argunet, but it has given us important insights into what specific requirements are to be met by Argunet to be ready for the classroom.