A September to Remember
Big updates and big releases for new.space
Whew. It has been a whirlwind of a month. There have been loads of improvements and fixes coming to new.space. Before we get into the big list, I just want to share how stoked (kids still say 'stoked', right?) we are for the upcoming launch of new.space on Product Hunt (a neat site where you can well…launch stuff). If you haven't already, head over to the teaser page and hit the ‘notify me' button to know the moment the announcement goes live. We would love to have your support. 🙇♂️🙇🙇♀️🙇♂️🙇🙇🙇♂️🙇 (there are 8 of us that build new.space and other apps)
Alright, enough of what's coming up, let's look back on what has been added to new.space in September.
Improved
We updated the handling of UI messaging when selecting and trying to download items in a space that aren't yet available for download.
We changed the way the site loads. The landing page (all the stuff behind the app) is now rendered on the server. This should make everything simply faster and more stable when loading the app for the first time.
As an improvement to the mobile UX of the app, the empty state will now load with the action sheet expanded.
We changed the default action when clicking an item. It will now open to the fullscreen view. The details can be seen by clicking the i button in this view. Let us know what you think of this change! 🔎
We inverted the colors of the action bar. We think this simply looks nicer and does a better job separating the space and the header.
We have been optimizing images across the board. Check out this post about how we made our shareup.app site faster. Specifically here, we improved the new.space preview image to be much smaller as well as the thumbnails that are generated for images.
Actual photo of our dev team There are a heap of accessibility improvements. From labels on buttons, to icon usage, and adding correct attributes to tags. We improved our lighthouse score to a 91. 💪
When the QR code window is opened for the first time, there was a moment where it was tiny before the image loaded. This is now much smoother and won't jump around.
We made a slight change to how new.space works. When you have a tab already on new.space and go to new.space again in the same tab, you will be redirected to that space that is open. We think this is a more predictable UX for nearly every use-case.
We added a tiny bit of padding to the bottom of the page so that your cards won't ever be covered by UI at the bottom of the screen. 🤏
Gifs are now render as images. 🤔
In preparation for the upcoming Product Hunt launch, we've improved some of the copy and buttons on the landing page.
Fixed
The error state for the link input field will now update in real-time instead of when the focus goes away from the input.
Added special rules for mobile Safari so that text in the link input will render correctly.
The carousel will now no longer scroll every time when opening it
Various problems have been fixed to the zip processor in Safari. The overall experience should be consistent, let us know if you see any problems.
There was a wild state the app could get into when an item was in fullscreen and then deleted. This has been fixed to gracefully resolve.
Our error page had a broken email link 🫠
When we inverted the colors above, we broke the focus state colors. (and then we fixed them)
Paste was not working on mobile Safari. (have you noticed a theme yet?) 📱
Item order is now enforced. When adding a group of items, they will no longer dance around as they upload. I’m personally, very happy about this change.
Sometimes while uploading a file, if you changed the space title the value would rubber band and revert to the previous. This shouldn't happen now.
New
Added a "Report this space" button in the menu. If you are shared a space that goes against our Terms of Service, please use this button.
Added a download button to fullscreen view.
Removed the invite code. This means that new.space is in open beta. 🥳Head over to the page to get notified when it is ready!
This is a huge list and we are thrilled to finally open up new.space for everyone to use. As always let us know in the comments if you have anything you would like to see in this list in the future, as we continue to develop new.space.
Till next time, happy sharing!