Introducing Publii 0.36

Following almost six months of design and coding work, along with some exceptional efforts by our beta testers, we're feeling rather proud of our progress and can finally share the results of all this hard work; Publii 0.36 is ready for download and bursting with a ton of new features and fixes.

There's so much added in this release, and it represents a huge leap forward compared to the previous 0.35 release. The entire editing experience has been revamped, with two completely-new post editors (bringing the total to three!), a spellchecker, and rebuilding the editor page layout to make it more intuitive and writing-friendly.

That's not everything though; there's multiple UI/UX improvements, an updated Taste theme, and an oft-requested feature to make Publii easier on the eyes; a dark mode. Publii's development has been flying along at a brisk pace, and we are edging ever-closer to the end of the beta period and the first full release. So, without further ado, let's get down to the nitty-gritty and see what new features you'll be able to use once Publii 0.36 is installed:

Block Editor

The block editor has been designed to simplify the creation process, making adding content intuitive and a writing-focused alternative to the standard WYSIWYG editor. Each paragraph of text is separated into its own block, which can then be individually controlled; switch between HTML elements such as lists, headers, and quotations, align the text, apply built-in styling included with the theme, or assign specific CSS classes or IDs. Each block can also be moved, making it easier to rearrange your post when making changes, without needing to copy and paste.

The Block Editor is the main addition in this release, so we’d appreciate any feedback you can provide.
More details on how it works can be found here.

Markdown Editor

This is the third and last editor we have added to Publii. The base for our Markdown Editor is https://simplemde.com/, but we’ve added a few modifications. It’s now possible to add a post link using the CTRL+K or Command+K shortcut, and images can be uploaded using drag & drop.

Updated WYSIWYG Editor

The standard, no-thrills WYSIWYG editor in Publii hasn’t been left in the dust; we’ve updated it to Tiny 5.1 version, which brings lots of little fixes and some nice new functionalities such as emojis and an image resizer. We’ve also rebuilt all the functions that support the editor to make them smoother and more stable.

Spell-Checker

Everyone gets a little paranoid about their spelling abilities now and then, especially when writing in English which, to be honest, takes gleeful pleasure in being unintuitive and contradictory. With this feature, you can check your work for errors and get spelling suggestions to help you on your way.

We’ve implemented the native spellcheck included with Electron 8 that uses OS spellchecker for MacOS and Hunspell on Windows and Linux and can be enabled on a website-by-website basis.

Rebuilt Post-Editing Page

We really want Publii to put the emphasis on writing, so we’ve rebuilt the post-editing page so that it defaults to displaying the Editor only, with no option clutter or other elements; kind of like a blank sheet of paper (though with more features!). The right-sidebar options and stats bar can be displayed by clicking the settings icon or the ‘View Stats’ text, respectively.

New Site Management section

We've added a new ‘Site Management‘ section which lets you see the long-name of your sites, and perform site-management functions like duplication, deletion or creation without needing to switch between your sites in the Publii interface.

Native Lazy Loading

Instead of using the external script to lazy loads images, videos, or iframes, Publii uses now the native browser lazy loading mechanism (requires a new, simple image markup in your theme) what makes a significant contribution to improving the website load times, minimize bandwidth for users, and reduced memory usage.

More details how it works now can be found in or docs.

Enable Responsive Images

From now, you can choose if you want to deliver different sized images at different screen resolutions depending on breakpoints defined through config.json or serve the original RAW images (requires a new image markup in your theme). This option can be very helpful and needed by photographers, design agencies in order to present a portfolio with high-resolution photos.

Dark Mode

The new and very popular dark mode has finally debuted in the Publi app. A "magic button" has been added to the top menu (tree dots) so now you can switch between dark/light mode, and give your eyes some respite from the bright white LEDs of your monitor.

New Taste theme

The Taste theme has been completely redesigned and rewritten; includes many new features like a new menu system, native lazy loading, built-in support for block editor; based on CSS variables and uses minimalistic (vanilla JS) scripts, allows you to quickly modify its appearance.

In general, almost all free themes have been refreshed, rewritten and adapted to the new options that come with Publii 0.36.

So don't hesitate, visit our marketplace and download them now. Enjoy!

Improved UI/UX

Thanks to the great support of our community, their feedback and comments we’ve made lots of small changes to the UI and UX, so you should find working with Publii a more pleasant experience than before, in particular:

Add a file from File Manager - this feature adds a new link type to the Insert/Edit Link option; File from File Manager. When creating a link, you will see this option in the available link types. It also comes with an additional attribute, ‘Download’ which, when enabled, will force the file to be downloaded instead of displaying it in the browser.
Save & Preview - now you can choose whether you want to quickly preview the front page or the entire site.
Rendering process - the rendering process has been optimized, now all files are copied to the preview folder only the first time, and then only those that have been changed or new once. It’s very helpful for a website with a large number of images or other files.
Performance of WYSIWYG editor - we've improved the bad experience when writing long entries, now the editor works much quickly and efficiently.
Refreshed app UI - the top bar of the app has been removed; the site functions have been moved into the Page Management section, which allows for more space for the main Publii content.
Additional Gallery layouts - there are two new layout options: wide and full that allow you to display the gallery more widely or on the whole page.
SEO improvements - we've made several small but significant changes to the SEO layer and websites optimization.

A Big Thank You

We’ve spent a lot of time fixing the user-reported bugs from the five prerelease versions. The full list of all changes/commits can be found on Publii Github repository

Now we would like to thank you for all your comments regarding bugs. We tried to fix each of these reported issues in the next prerelease versions, not everything was done, but finally, most of them were fixed and improved.

Especially, we want to say "Thank You": Verhoeckx, Kamil P., Dawid M., trumpetto, Bert, ajeet, andriezzo, Yoav, itips3727, champi, Harald K., yuri018, TinyBatz, gpsblues, alfatreze, noapmtl, Alex, Theo, GoFaster, anguo.

That's all for this release, but stay tuned; we've got more updates in the pipeline! If you want to stay on top of the latest developments, you can follow us on our Twitter page, or for up-to-the-minute info on what's being added, check out our GitHub project page.

Download Publii