new features

Spring Cleaning Update

by Andrew Burleson | Apr 05, 2017

I just finished a little batch of what I'd call "Spring Cleaning" work on the app. These are little things, but hopefully they'll make your time on BetaBooks just a bit better :)

Made the Feedback Manager View use a narrower filter column on very wide screens, basically this cuts down on the amount of excess whitespace.
Added a quick-login box. If you're not logged in you'll now find a "login" button in the top corner instead of "menu." If you click on it a little dropdown will appear, you can enter your login info there instead of having to continue to a second screen.
I changed it so if you're already logged in and you visit the root path (i.e. if you just enter "betabooks.co" in your browser), it'll take you to your dashboard instead of the public home page. If you'd like to see the public home page without logging out, you can click the link in the sidebar or in the footer, and it'll be smart enough to let you se the home page again without an endless redirect loop :)
I made some optimizations to the way the pages load so that alignment and colors won't flicker on slow internet connections. This was most noticeable with night-mode, sometimes if you were browsing on a slower internet connection the screen would flash white before remembering to turn dark again. It's technically still possible for that to happen, but the delay in loading should so short that you can't perceive it, even on an extremely slow internet connection.
Along those same lines I made some changes in the way the server compresses assets, which should make the site just ever so slightly faster.
I made the blog look a little prettier - but perhaps you noticed that one already? :)

If you have any thoughts or feedback on the above, please shoot me an email, I'd love to hear it!