20 May: Commenting improvements, link UI improvements, a new dashboard and more

We’ve made comments easier to read and use, tweaked the UX for adding and editing links, fixed some bugs and made other smaller improvements

✨ New and noteworthy

Comment upgrades

With this release we’ve improved the design and layout of the comments side panel. Comments take up less space, and show limited options — Resolve, Edit and Delete — by default. Clicking a comment makes it active and shows more options, including Reply and an emoji reaction.

We’ve also made the on-page highlight more visible for active comments. When you select a comment the block will be highlight in orange, making it easier to see the comment in context.

You can now also filter comments in spaces and change requests by author, so you can check on a specific person’s feedback, one at a time. Open the sidebar and use the drop-down menu at the top to select or search for a user.

Finally, we’ve made the Leave a comment section at the bottom of the side panel much smaller — giving you more room to read the existing comments. Clicking the box will expand it and show more options.

Link insert palette improvements

This week we shipped a bunch more editor improvements — including a number of upgrades and fixes focused on links.

First, the link insert palette now has better search input width, so you can see more of your search or URL when adding or editing a link. The palette also now has an empty state, so it’s easier to understand what you can do with it — and it’ll accept URL strings without needing to add www. or https:// in front of them.

If you want to edit an existing external link, clicking the Edit link button now shows the existing URL in the search palette — so you can manually amend links without needing to copy and paste it in again.

New site dashboard

We’ve been working on improving the site dashboard — particularly aimed at those creating a site for the first time. The new dashboard puts all the information about your site, including the preview, URL, status audience and structure on the left-hand side.

On the right you’ll find a number of suggested actions to help you get the most from your docs site — great for those creating a new site, or just trying to make their site the best it can be. Below that is the insights overview, which gives you a quick glance at how your site performed over the last seven days.

Improved

• We’ve improved the look of @ mentions in the app to include the user’s avatar alongside their name.

• We’ve updated the icon in the Ask or search menu — you can see it at the top of the left sidebar ✨

• Last week, we added the option to turn paragraph blocks into all kinds of other blocks, such as expandable and list blocks. But with all those new options, the Block options menu was very long. So we’ve moved those options into a sub-palette to reduce the size of the menu. Reusable content lives there now, too.

• We’ve unified the design of all internal, external and @ mention links in the app to make the experience more consistent. They’ll now all appear blue, with highlights for page and section links, and @ mentions.

Fixed

• Fixed a bug that prevented you from removing the fallback URL for a docs site using Visitor Authentication in the audience settings panel.

• Fixed an issue that meant invalid URLs would be accepted as header links, but wouldn’t work when the site was published

• Fixed an issue that meant some customization options, such as announcement banners, were not handled as overrides. Now you can add an announcement banner to an single, specific site section or variant, if you wish.

• Fixed an issue that meant you couldn’t reorder spaces within a collection — now that’s possible again.

• Fixed an issue that meant a Publish site button would still appear in the site preview for already-published sites with ‘share links’ visibility.

• Fixed a bug in the version history side panel that meant the currently-selected version wasn’t highlighted. Now the version you’re currently viewing will be marked in the side panel.

• Fixed an issue that meant sometimes users permissions would not be created during the signup flow, leading to permission issues later,

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