GitClear offers a rich set of formatting options to leave detailed feedback on code that you're reviewing:


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The full set of formatting options can be seen in the editor's toolbar, and includes a full code editor (via CodeMirror) to allow developers to offer specific suggestions for improvement. Also included, as of January 2023:

Bold/italic/strikethrough

Highlight

Heading level 1 or 2

List item bullets

Numbered bullets

Link (URL)

Image

Block quote

Literal

Code block

There is also an emoji selector available by pressing : (colon) at the start of a line, or after a space.


You can invoke this formatting either by using the markdown for the element, or using shortcut hotkeys. The hotkey can generally be seen by hovering on the toolbar icon. The editor shown is a pared down version of the editor we use in our note taking & todo app, Amplenote -- you can check out the full set of hotkeys for Amplenote (and thus GitClear code comments) here.


linkConveniences available besides the comment itself

Aside from the editor itself, there are a few options that augment standard code commenting fucntionality:

Code Reactions. A way to easily summarize the types of feedback that a developer is receiving over a given time range. Read more about Code Reactions.

Response action expected. When this box is checked, we will track your comment such that you can see when action has been taken on your suggestion by visiting the Highlights page. "Taking action" in this case means that the developer has either responded to the concern, manually marked that the suggestion was addressed, or made a substantive change to the code that was originally commented upon.

Deliver immediately. When you're collaborating with developers from different time zones, you generally want to avoid leaving a code comment at an hour that they would not be expected to be working. GitClear derives the working hours for each developer (either by them specifying, or by looking at the historical timestamps of their commits). When you leave a comment that is outside 8am-6pm in their time zone, we will hold your comment, only emailing the developer next time it is 8am on a weekday in their time zone. When an email is sent to the developer, we will include all comments that have been left since we last emailed them, to minimize their inbox noise. 🎁

In general, developers are like everyone else: they hate receiving email. That's why we try to go the extra mile to minimize inbox pollution of your overworked colleagues.