Last week was exciting! We made major progress towards the Android app and fixed/improved lots of other things.

This week we’re experimenting with adding categories (e.g. “minor UI” and “iOS web”) to the list of changes to make it easier to scan. Here’s the list:

Features

• Read mode for mobile. Now by clicking on the “book” icon at the top, you can enter the read mode. You can zoom in, collapse/expand, and check checkboxes, but the keyboard will never pop up. In the read mode, the “book” icon will become a “pencil” icon. Clicking it again will return to the normal mode.

Ongoing

• [Android app] We’re now ready for internal testing to iron out major bugs. Hopefully the closed beta will happen soon!

Improved

• [Performance] Big sync optimization. Basically we made loading and syncing faster by avoiding doing unnecessary things. How much time it would save depends on how much stuff you have in your document and how many changes you make; in theory it would made a pretty big  difference.
• [Desktop] Added the options to print and zoom.
• [Mobile web] Added save status to the main menu (accessible by tapping the three dots icon at the top right corner).
• [Minor UI] The undo button will be disabled and the redo button will be hidden on mobile when they’re unavailable. Redo is hidden to make space for the read mode button because it’s the least used one among the four buttons.
• [Minor UI] Bumped image preview size to 1.5x.
• [Minor UI] Collapse/expand option is removed from the node toolbar because the option is already available on screen without the toolbar.
• [Locale] Added support for the Czech keyboard layout.
• [Performance] Added a bunch of miscellaneous UI optimization that makes the page load faster. It’ll be unnecessarily trivial and technical to expand on that, but it has a lot to do with a JavaScript library that starts with a lowercase “j” and rhymes with “mercury”.

Fixed

• [Android] Fixed can’t copy and paste on Android.
• [Minor UI] Fixed jumpy document title when you try to rename it.
• [Mobile web] Fixed scrolling the document would trigger zoom and expand/collapse if you happen to have your finger over these icons.
• [MacOS beta] We now don’t override Alt+Left/Right for going back/forward. We learned the shortcut is important for Mac users, really sorry about that!
• [Custom shortcuts] Fixed custom shortcuts wouldn’t persist when you set too many of them. Silly mistake on our end.
• [Sharing] Fixed file right click menu doesn’t show up for read-only files someone else shared with you.
• [iOS web] Fixed note still occupies full space when the note visibility setting is set to “1st line only”.
• [Minor UI] Fixed the current line highlight leans towards the bottom by 2 pixels.

That’s it guys, see you next week!

This week we’re adding a new “Ongoing” section to update you guys on the not-really-visible-but-we-spent-time-on stuff.

Also announcement first: we’re looking for beta testers for the Android app closed beta. To apply, please shoot us a note via the in-app feedback option and let us know the Google account you use for the Play Store. Please do not leave your email address in the comments or in the forum to avoid getting spammed.

Ongoing

• We’re in the middle of closed betas for macOS and Linux. We’ve received a bunch of feedback, fixed some issues, and we’ll wait some more for it to become stable.
• We’ve successfully made the Android app work on a phone, and we’ll start using it internally soon. The next big step is to make offline editing work well. Apps get killed much more often on mobile, so we’ll have to spend extra time making sure. Right now we’re aiming to release both the Android and iOS app before end of 2016.

Improved

• New font option: system font. It uses your system font depending on your platform. That means it’s Segoe UI on Windows, San Francisco on macOS, etc.

Fixed

• Mac closed beta: fixed cannot copy and paste with Cmd-C and Cmd-V.
• Mac closed beta: allowed hiding app with Cmd-H.
• Fixed symbols like ½ appear as black boxes under the default font setting. This also fixes the ugly style for bold and italics, plus characters like ć and ñ.
• Fixed spaces at the beginning and end will be trimmed when you paste into Dynalist.
• Fixed page style is broken for print.
• Fixed the note icon when notes are hidden would disappear when you refresh the page or switch documents.

That’s it, we hope you have an awesome week!

The biggest news is that we’re starting the closed betas for both MacOS and Linux later today! We’ve spent a fair amount of last week working on shipping them, and we’re super pumped about them!

Aside from the closed betas, we’ve also worked on and fixed a bunch of smaller things. Read on if you’re interested…

Improved

• Full-screen experience when sent to iOS home screen. Before, the address bar still shows up after being sent to the home screen. If you’ve previously done so, please remove the icon and add it again.
• Disable rather than hiding mobile toolbar options. Before, when an option is not available, it simply disappears from the mobile toolbar, making it hard to predict where to tap. Now the unavailable option still shows up; they are greyed out much more to show they’re disabled.
• Allow empty image description. Before, ![](http://example.com/image.png) doesn’t get parsed as an image at all.

Fixed

• Fixed can’t type ń on a Polish keyboard. Before, the Alt+N shortcut is taken by toggling visibility of notes. Now you can set you keyboard layout to Polish and use alternative shortcuts. See details here.
• Fixed misalignment with multi-line code segments. Before, the first line of code would have padding on the left side but the other lines don’t.
• Fixed formatting shortcuts like Ctrl+B and Ctrl+I not working when you select a portion of the note.
• Fixed formatting shortcuts only working for the top level items when you have multiple items selected. Now it works for their children and grandchildren items as well.
• Fixed note not getting copied over when you convert a list to a document, or copying an existing document with the “Make a copy” option.
• Fixed scrolling in the Setting screen doesn’t have inertia on iPhone.
• Fixed the Upgrade option appearing for users who’re already Pro on desktop app.
• Fixed onboarding tutorial not showing up on desktop app.
• Fixed scrollbar problem when viewing a publicly shared document. Before, the scrollbar is invisible, but you can still scroll.
• Fixed selection automatically getting deselected when you use Tab to indent multiple items at once, making it hard to indent multiple items multiple levels.
• Fixed checked items not properly hidden when searched. Before, if A has a parent B that’s checked off and A matches the search query, the visible parents of B still shows up, making it hard to understand exactly what was matched (since both A and B are hidden).
• Fixed changing the “Display images inline” option not taking effect immediately.

That’s it guys… see you next week!

Biggest news: our Windows desktop app is ready for public beta! Click to download it now.

Why you would want to use this rather than in a browser: you can edit offline and launch it directly from your desktop or Start Menu.

(To closed beta users: please uninstall the old version and install the new version.)

Improved

• Login request for Windows desktop app. The app now requests authorization from the browser. This makes Google Login easier: we do not have access to your existing Google session on your browser, so you would have to enter both your email and password in order to login with Google.
• Added an option to download as HTML when exporting.
• Now your name and email are shown at the top of the main menu, just to make things clear (only you can see them).

Fixed

• Fixed scrolling in the left pane would scroll the document underneath it on iOS.
• Fixed “# not tag” would be recognized as a tag.
• Fixed browser tab name is not updated when you rename a document.
• Fixed editing a date would add a space after it.

Lastly, we’re looking for MacOS and Linux closed beta testers. Shoot us a note if you’re interested!

Last week, we launched our new forum. We’ve always felt that we owe you guys a good place to talk, and now here it is (Trello and blog comments are terrible for discussions, seriously).

We were also wrapping up our Windows app to get ready for the public beta. Unfortunately, we added Google Login recently and it’s hard to get it working properly on desktop. We’ll have to spend some more time on that. Hopefully by end of this week we can finish it. MacOS and Linux desktop apps are almost ready too, stay tuned!

Another thing is that we had about 9 hours of downtime starting Friday midnight (read our postmortem). We’ll set up an alert system and a status page soon.

Bug fixes

• Fixed cannot position cursor when renaming a bookmark.
• Fixed broken left pane in older versions of Safari.
• Fixed dates displayed like “in 4.0416666667 days” because of daylight saving.

That’s it, see you next week!

Here are the latest from us:

Improvements

• One tap to zoom and collapse/expand on mobile. Now you can tap on the bullet to zoom, and the collapse/expand icon is on the right. No need to bring up the keyboard for these two most frequently used actions any more! Note that the “Use bullet to zoom” setting does not affect mobile.
  
• Some improvements for the Windows desktop app private beta version. We disabled options that don’t work while offline, and added shortcut (Alt+Left and Alt+Right) for going back and forward. We haven’t released the new version yet, but it will be out soon.

Bug fixes

• Fixed item toolbar not properly updated on mobile when you focus on an item. Before, this would cause some buttons to disappear when the action should be allowed under that situation. Sorry about that!
• Fixed internal links occupy more than one line when the browser window is narrow.
• Fixed date, image, and internal link misalignment in the current header.
• Fixed menu icon misalignment in Article View.
• Fixed breadcrumb layout problem on mobile (under no document border setting).

That’s it, thanks for reading!

Hello and happy Monday! Here are the newest changes:

Features

• Google sign up & login. As an existing user, you can also link your Google account so that you can log in with you Google account rather than typing out your password. To link your account, go to Settings→Account.

Improvements

• Now the “Export” and “Get link” option show up for the document title as well, so you don’t have to find it in the file pane in order to export the entire document.
• Made both “Login” and “Sign up” visible in the header of mobile landing page. Before, there is only a login link (because of space limitation) and to sign up, you have to scroll to the very bottom of the page.
• We’ve updated our jQuery (a JavaScript library) version from 2.1.4 to 3.1.1. This should bring some performance improvements when there are lots of elements on the page. We’ll do more performance optimization soon as well, but it’s a good start!
• Improved help center categorization to help find things faster.

Bug fixes

• Fixed “Collapse all” and “Expand all” option bug for the zoomed in item. Before, “Collapse all” appears when “Expand all” should and vice versa.
• Fixed Ctrl+F twice bug. Before, the first time you press Ctrl+F would open Dynalist search, and the second time would open browser default search rather than exiting Dynalist search.
• Fixed ugly button on Search Everywhere page on iOS Safari. We forgot to override some default styles and it looked really weird.
• Tweaked Sepia theme, specifically the keyboard shortcut background color in the shortcut help pane.

Update for the Windows app private beta: everything looks fine so far, no disasters like critical bugs or data losses. There are a few hiccups here and there, but we’re fixing them and they are all relatively minor. Next up, our plan is to release the Windows desktop public beta before end of October, as well as starting private beta for both MacOS and Linux. Stay tuned for more updates on that in our future weekly updates!

That’s it, have a great week guys!

Happy Thanksgiving to anyone also in Canada! We’re very thankful for having awesome users like you guys. Seriously.

Features

• We’re sending out invites for the Windows app private beta later today, super excited! We’ve spent a fair amount of time on this during the past week fixing bugs and doing final polishing, and we hope the private beta would go well. (We’ve got more than enough beta testers onboard, so unfortunately we can’t accept more beta testers last minute. The public beta version will be out soon!)

Improvements

• Added new options to display images inline along with text, rather than showing a link. The displayed image will be downsized if the original image is large. You can always click on it to open up the original image in a new tab. The setting can be found in Settings → Preferences → Appearance.

Bug fixes

• Fixed pasting screenshots not working. Before, when you paste in a screenshot that’s saved in your clipboard, the image markdown will be created but the placeholder URL won’t be replaced by the real URL even after uploading has completed. In other words, the image always shows as “This image is being uploaded”.
• Fixed timezone not recognized. Before, if you enable the “Show timezone” option and change the timezone, the change won’t be recognized.
• Fixed wrong bold and italics format when exporting to plain text. Before, HTML would be exported in plain text instead of markdown (e.g. “<b>text</b>” instead of “**text**”).
• Fixed pressing Enter twice at the top level would zoom out.
• Fixed title selection bug. Before, you can select text in the title from right to left but not from right to left. This is a tricky bug, but Shida nailed it!
• Fixed Shift+Up/Down while focusing in note would blur the cursor.

That’s it, see you next week!

Happy Monday guys! Here’s the update from last week:

Features

• Introducing our newest free theme, Sepia! It’s easier on the eyes and softer than the default theme, designed for people who spend a lot of time reading stuff on Dynalist.
  

Improvements

• Now you can Alt+Click a tag to remove it. No fancy animation for now, but hey, it works 😉
• Bold or italicize multiple items at once. Before, you could only format inline text segments.
• Improved categorization in the shortcut help sidebar so it’s less messy. We also put the basic shortcuts at the front so they are more accessible. Thanks for this suggestion by the wonderful Dan Rosenstark!
• Fixed hover icons (hamburger and zoom) alignment for different combinations of various font sizes, list densities, and heading styles.
• Fixed line height problem caused by internal links, images, etc. Their box is now smaller and interfere less with the normal flow of text.

Bug fixes

• Fixed broken reset password page. It was accidentally broken by our new development build system until a user tries to reset her password and couldn’t 😅
• Fixed missing “Delete checked item” option for the currently zoomed in item.
• Fixed lack of right margin under the “Comfortable” list density option.

Lastly, a minor update for the Windows app beta: the progress is looking good, and hopefully we can put the first beta version in your hands by next Monday.

See you next week!

First of all, we’re looking for beta testers for our Windows desktop app! If you’d like to test it for us and provide feedback, contact us using the in-app feedback option. The beta version should be ready in the next two weeks. (Don’t be sad Mac users, a MacOS version will be here soon!)

As usual, here’s the update from last week:

Improvements

• We added the option to highlight overdue items in red. You can find this option in Settings → Preferences → Date.
• We added a new way to navigate between siblings of the current root item. The shortcut is Ctrl+Shift+[ to go to previous of current root, and Ctrl+Shift+] to go to the next. Pro users can customize this shortcut to your liking.
• Now you can add notes to the document title itself. You can use markdown or dates in it; it’s just like any other note for consistency’s sake.
• Added extra error reporting mechanism for Can’t Sync errors, since it’s very hard to debug on our end alone. Now when you run into this error, you can click on the Can’t Sync label to open a popup that shows exactly what failed to be synced. You can also download the error as a .log file and send to Dynalist Support. We take sync really seriously and hopefully with this new mechanism, we can eliminate Can’t Sync errors altogether.

Bug fixes

• Fixed broken document title layout for read only documents.
• Fixed desktop layout showing up in BlackBerry Passport. We know not many people use BlackBerry Passport, but it’s nice to have Dynalist work in one more type of mobile device!
• Fixed search tip popover disappear when you click on Search Everywhere or a search modifier.
• Fixed hidden note icon showing up in the when the page is printed.

That’s it guys, looking forward to the Windows app beta! 🙂