The Publii Beta 2 brings new features and fixes
Bob MitroWe're keeping a tight schedule with the Publii beta to make sure there's regular new content to help improve your app experience. In this article we'll have a look at the main new features, enhancements and bugfixes; if you'd rather just get started with this new Publii release then you can head over to our frontpage and grab the download; links to the downloads are the first things you'll see on the Publii site!
For those interested in digging a bit deeper into what the second beta release has to offer, stick around as we delve into what's new, starting with the major feature additions.
New Image Resizing Engine added - JIMP
The default engine used for image manipulation in Publii, Sharp, has proven to be a high-speed, effective tool for most users. However, in some configurations it was found that some issues would arise with inserted images; sometimes the image would be saved but not added to the uploaded website's content, or the uploading process would get stuck in a loop.
For this reason the latest beta release includes a secondary engine; JIMP, which, while slower than the default engine, is more compatible with the affected users' configurations. The option to switch which engine is used in Publii can be found in the Global Settings, accessible by clicking the options bar at the top-right of the main Publii screen; if you're having trouble uploading images, changing this option should provide a quick and easy fix.
Lazy Load for Disqus added to all bundled themes
Static websites are great; they're fast, safe, and easy to modify and update (at least when Publii's involved!). Even so, it's nice to be able to engage with your community rather than expecting them to passively consume your content, even if it's only in a small way. Disqus can be a great tool for that, making it easy to allow comments on your articles.
The problem is, if you end up with a very popular article you might also have a huge amount of comments to load, which will slow down the page load process and negatively affect your site's Page Psedd and Yslow scores. To combat this, we've implemented the lazy load feature for Disqus in all the themes bundled with Publii, so comments will be loaded only after all the essential page elements are ready to view and the user scrolls down past the article to the comment area. With both images and comments being loaded after the main content, your visitors will be able to start reading the page fast without losing access to the important peripheral content like photos and comments, and your site speed (and SEO performance with it) will be preserved.
Expanded Website Names
In previous versions of Publii website names were arbitrarily limited in their maximum size, preventing users from giving longer, more complex names to their websites. This restriction has been lifted in the beta, so now longer names may be used.
Full debug log for FTP connections added
Every so often, something goes wrong. It's annoying, often time-consuming, but inevitable. But when something does go wrong, it's important that we do what we can to learn from the situation so that we can fix the issue, or avoid it in the future. Which is all a long-winded way to say that we've added a debug log for FTP connections, so you'll be able to track if and when something went wrong with your upload process, and troubleshoot it accordingly.
The debug log may be found inside the Publii folder which is created during installation in the My Documents (Windows) or Documents (Mac) folder.
Other quality-of-life improvements
As well as the major features, the second beta release of Publii also includes and number of enhancements meant to improve the user experience to make it more user-friendly and intuitive, including:
- Added automatic removal of last empty paragraph in post content during rendering.
- Added strikethrough button to the editor, replacing justify text; code element added to formats list.
- Added normalized paths during deployment.
- Resized the preview window; now it doesn't completely cover the main window.
- Enter key support added for prompt windows (that is, you can now press enter to confirm instead of clicking the button!)
- Application window can now be dragged even when on the splash screen.
- The preview button in the post editor is now disabled if no theme has been selected.
- Electron updated to version 1.6.2.
- The og:site_name variable's behavior has been improved; it now takes its value from the SEO sitename, and defaults to the website name if no SEO name has been defined.
- Improved responsiveness when moving the cursor out of elements such as tables, blockquotes etc...in the editor.
- Improved Blockquote element styling in the WYSIWYG editor.
- Improved notification display.
- Improved paragraph counter in the Post Stats area.
- Improved editor behavior when dragging text/images around the editor window.
- Improved stability during website upload.
Bugfixes
It's not all about improvements; sometimes we're just fixing things we've missed, or new problems that have popped up with previous updates. In this release we've added the following bugfixes:
- Fixed rendering issues with the Mercury theme in the Safari browser.
- Fixed menu position in the Tattoo theme when viewed on a desktop.
- Fixed issue with theme settings being removed during theme update.
- Fixed auto-width issue when generating thumbnails.
- Fixed non-functional uploads for images with uppercase extensions.
- Fixed Gravatar functionality issue which blocked website rendering.
- Removed passwords from connection logs.
Keep giving us your feedback!
So that's it for another update; there's been a lot of additions, but there are still more on the way and we're still more than open to any fresh ideas you may have for improving the Publii experience, whether it's a enhancement or an entirely new feature. Drop in and give us your feedback, let us know what you want to see in the future, or report any bugs or issues you run into on our Community Hub page.