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Version 1.17 adds a host of small features, some of which I've been planning on doing for a long time. There are also recent suggestions from users that enhance day-to-day usage of the app. Highlights: support for submenus (bookmarks, page tools, split view, and user data), text snippets, additional search URLs, visual UI tweaks, resizable input/upload/bookmark dialogs, improved upload editor, new input prompt functionality, and support for Nex.
Two months ago, when I took a hard look at the project to-do list, it become clear that things had gotten a bit out of hand. I had been working at the tip of the iceberg while a huge backlog of items was accumulating below, unseen. Of course, the year prior had been a chaos and a blur — a forever-repeating sequence of baby duties and family routines, with work, hobbies and parenting mixing seamlessly into one bewildering experience.
I had hoped to start work on version 2.0 but after browsing through the entire to-do list, it seemed that instead of going for the really big items, there were several smaller things that actually had higher priority. Investing time into enhancing the core user experience is never a bad idea. I grouped all the small nice-to-haves together, and while it was too much for a single release, it seemed pretty good when split into two. Here you now have the first of these: v1.17.
If I had more free time on my hands this release would not have taken three months to finish. I prefer to look at this glass half full, though. I'm pleased to have had any time to work on fun software projects while most of my life has been focused around being a dad.
Without further ado, let's take a look at what v1.17 has to offer. I will just go through the highlights here in the release announcement. If time permits, I will elaborate with specific details in follow-up posts.
The GUI toolkit has been enhanced with the ability for popup menus to have submenus. This opened up several opportunities for improvement in the app's menus:
The Bookmarks menu now actually lists all of your bookmarks and folders in a hierarchy, so you can access them without opening the sidebar.
The page context menu has a Tools submenu.
The Split View actions are now in a submenu like they were always intended to.
There is a User Data submenu for exporting your data as a ZIP or as Gemtext pages.
Every time I write a gemlog post in Lagrange, I've been missing a way to conveniently paste in my post template. Inspired by this specific use case, v1.17 has a built-in snippet manager where you can store often-needed pieces of text. Snippets are fully integrated into the app: they are exported/imported as part of user data and are available in every input field, so you can use them for other purposes, too.
It is now much easier to configure your search URL: when you find a good search engine, right-click on its Search link and select "Use as Search URL".
While having search integrated in the navbar URL field is great, there are many different search engines and searchable services in Geminispace. I considered different solutions for defining multiple search URLs, but after adding snippets I realized they were perfectly suited for this as well. Snippets whose name starts with a bang (e.g., "!w") can be invoked in the URL field to make customized queries.
Color palette tuning. Particularly noteworthy: "Colorful Light" backgrounds were adjusted to be more consistent across the color spectrum, and some color combinations were swapped for more pleasant ones.
Blank pages have a logo graphic as a placeholder.
Menu separators have a more distinct appearance.
On macOS (and on mobile in upcoming builds), the swipe navigation animation was rewritten to be more efficient and robust.
You can import all links on the page as bookmarks, with headings forming the bookmark folder hierarchy. You can also choose the root folder for all the new bookmarks.
Bookmarks can be quickly added/moved to a specific folder by right-clicking on the navbar's bookmark indicator (inside the URL field).
"Fold All" and "Unfold All" context menu actions.
Input prompts, upload dialogs, and bookmark editors can be resized manually with the mouse by dragging their right or left edges.
In addition to the dialog being resizable, the "Upload with Titan" text editor now supports text zooming and Gemtext syntax highlighting.
The Ellipsis menu in the input prompt dialog has gained new functionality:
You have the option to tell Lagrange to immediately prompt for input _before_ requesting the URL associated with an input prompt dialog. This makes it faster to play SpellBinding, for example, when every gameplay action requires just a single request and not two.
The menu lists the most recently submitted input so you can restore them later. You can use this as an alternative to the "Paste Preceding Line" method of editing content that you've recently submitted.
The page auto-scrolls when selecting text with a mouse.
Configurable feed subscription refresh interval. (Based on a patch by Michael Nordmeyer. 🙏)
Newly created client certificates do not expire (until we hit the year 10000).
Any valid UTF-8 content is displayed as plain text even if the media type is not recognized.
More options for collapsing preformatted blocks.
Fixed various glitches when multiple windows are open.
On macOS, you can use the system UI accent color for a more integrated appearance.
As usual, the .0 version is not going to be particularly bug-free. This time, given how full of interruptions and fragmentation my time has been, you should probably treat .0 as a public beta. I've been sorting out various glitches all week and I doubt I managed to squash them all. If something seems off or blows up, please file a bug report:
The mobile ports still need a bit more work: a few dialogs are missing and I need to figure out how to get snippets pasted into the native input fields. New builds are on the way after these are sorted out!
📅 2023-10-07
CC-BY-SA 4.0
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