Release Notes
The updated Slack integration for Abstract Notebooks automatically shares notifications for notebook reviews to one or more of your Slack channels of choice, and unfurls Notebook links pasted into Slack.
Sometimes your ideas need a little more structure. Whether you need to track a project, take structured notes, or organize data sets, tables are a great way to organize your thoughts. Notebooks users can now add and delete tables in their Notebook by selecting the table icon in the context menu. Tables can be retrofitted to your requirements by resizing columns, adding cell colors, and multi-selecting rows, columns, and cells.
- Added the ability to edit and delete recorded decision blocks. While it's important to maintain the history of decisions in an initiative, sometime you need to correct a typo or add clarifying details or links.
- Updated the custom templates administration page to warn administrators of unsaved template changes, improve cursor movement between title and template body, and add hover text to edit and delete icons to improve accessibility.
- Users can now highlight text in a Notebook, paste a URL from the clipboard, and the text will become a link.
Images and designs are vital components to a building out a Notebook and explaining your work. We have improved the drag and drop functionality when repositioning images and designs in a Notebook to make interacting with these components easier. Here are a few updates we made to improve repositioning images and designs:
- When an image or design selected, the curser will become a hand-grab curser .
- The image or design selected will dim to illustrate that it is selected.
- A thumbnail preview of the design will display it is repositioned
- The cursor will reflect the exact location where the item will be repositioned to.
Participants in the FigJam Plugin Beta can now use the Abstract Notebooks plugin for Figma to add content and groups to Notebooks from FigJam.
Notebooks contributors can now edit their Notebook settings to share a Notebook to anyone with the Notebook link. Unauthenticated users viewing a Notebook will be able to read the contents of the Notebook (written and image content, comments, and reviews) but will not have edit access. These unauthenticated users can create an account and request organization access to edit the Notebook.
Contributors can now add decisions to Notebooks to show how and why a design choice was made. Notebook participants can view the series of decisions made in new section at the top of the Notebook. Record a decision title and, if desired, additional information about why, where, and how the decision was made. You can even link to detailed conversations, whether those are in a Review, Comment, meeting recording, chat thread, or elsewhere.
We've collapsed the Reviews section at the top of the notebook to show only the most recent review by default. You can click "View all" to expand and view each of the notebook's existing reviews. We've also moved the "Request review" button next to the status selector to make more room for the notebook's title.
Abstract Home
- Design isn’t linear. Moving from project to project as well as designing and building in tandem can lead to losing track of where we started. On Abstract Home, your most recently viewed notebooks and pressing action items are listed for you so that you can continue where you left off.
Reviews
- Notebook reviewers can now see all their reviews at a glance on the review tab. Reviews are categorized by Assigned to me, My Reviews, and Completed reviews. Users of both Branches and Notebooks can toggle between the reviews that are visible.
Custom Templates
- Templates save teams time and ensure that Notebooks have consistent content. Enterprise organizations can now extend the default set of Notebook templates to include custom-defined templates which meet the specific needs of their organizations.
Notebooks Contributors can now resolve individual comments made by themselves or others within a Notebook to indicate that the comment does not require further conversation.
This version contains various updates to ensure better app performance and stability
Clarity is key and, this release, we’re helping you bring more of it to your team. With Sketch Hotspot support you can now present designs the way they’re intended to work. Plus, we’ve added comment resolution so you can focus on the feedback that needs your attention 🙌
Features
- We added support for resolving comments.
- When presenting a collection you can now navigate designs by clicking through hotspots that were created in Sketch.
- Can’t think of a commit message? We made them optional.
Enhancements
- Support for Adobe Xd 31.
- Added support for Sketches new “tint” feature.
- Added support for storing and merging Sketch assistants and embedded fonts.
- We added tooltip with user's name to everywhere that avatars appear.
- Inspect will now adjust redlines for "No symbol" overrides inside of symbols with horizontal smart layout enabled.
Bug Fixes
- New new sidebar navigation now ensures that the active project is always in view by default.
- We continued to fix individual issues that can happen during syncing.
- Fixed an issue where clicking the share link for a previous commit in a collection layer brings the user to the collection page rather than layer detail.
- Resolved an issue where opening Abstract on the developer’s beta of macOS Big Sur crashed the application immediately; work is still on-going to fully support Big Sur before its release.
Continuing in the spirit of ease and flow— this release, we’re making it easier to focus on your top priorities by adding them as favorites to our new sidebar navigation. We’re also completing the roll out of smarter syncing and bringing your projects up to speed, at speed. We smashed a few pesky bugs along the way, too.
Features
- We rethought project navigation to make it easier to jump between projects and reduce clicks. Be sure to favorite projects you use the most to pin them in the sidebar and make the most of the new design.
- We added the ability to restore a single file to a previous commit
- A new "My branches" card was added to project overviews to make it faster to get back to your previous work.
- Continued rollout of smarter syncing – we’ve removed the need to manually sync projects in order to browse them and reduced the total data download needed to a minimum.
Enhancements
- We made it easier to leave a comment in present mode with a new input that’s displayed when the comment sidebar is collapsed
- The 'About' card on project overviews is now collapsible
- It’s now possible to share a link directly to present mode, just click the “share” icon when presenting a collection
- The in-app commit form has now gained the ability to jump to individual changed files
- Files that have not yet been changed on a branch are now displayed on branch overviews
- It’s now possible to filter projects in the “Link Library” interface
- We’ve continued to make improvements to UI performance
- All projects now show as options in the “Link Library” interface, previously only projects you’d explicitly chosen to “sync” appeared here.
- Linked library dependencies are now automatically synced when changed by another contributor
- We’ve removed one step when updating your branches from Master, to make it easier and faster.
- We’re introducing a new master icon to make the context clearer.
Bug Fixes
- Local project data is now removed automatically when a project is archived
- Fixed a display issue on the active outline on collection cards
- Fixed an issue where the changed diff in inspect would flip added/removed items
- Fixed an issue with “quick synced” projects where it would not be possible to open a file in desktop from the web app
- Fixed an issue where multi-select using the shift key could select layers that had been visually filtered out.
- The “Clear Database Cache” command now clears more data than before
- Fixed an issue that would prevent files being imported from locations on disk that include a comma in the file path
- Improved the error messaging when attempting to add more than 100 layers to a collection
- Fixed an infinite loading state when upgrading or downgrading a users contributor role
- Nested symbol master assets from an external project now load correctly in inspect
- Point releases of Sketch and XD will now get automatic upgrade commits when opening files in the new application version.
Fixes
- We addressed a race condition that could cause an “uncommitted changes” notice to falsely appear for some users.
Fixes
- To prevent issues with opening Sketch files, we’ve automatically enabled the Abstract Sketch plugin should it become disabled
- You may have seen our new Pride icon. We updated it to be more accessible in your dock. During Pride, we acknowledge the important work that's been done by the Black LGBTQIA+ community and celebrate our LGBTQIA+ and intersectional team members and customers.
This month we’re celebrating Pride, amplifying black voices in design, and introducing a smoother, faster Abstract. Keep your flow state flowing with smarter syncing, and share links to specific sections within your Collections with one click.
Enhancements
- It’s no longer possible to get yourself in a sticky situation by reverting to a commit before a branch was updated from its parent
- We simplified the titlebar and syncing menu to make the app status clearer and cleaner
- Checklists in markdown comments and descriptions will now be rendered correctly
- The project overview screen was cleaned up to improve navigation
- We added a one-click link to share specific sections of your collection
- View your layers with improved clarity with the option of solid background colors
- Commit titles are now denoted as required
Performance Improvements
- We’ve been rebuilding data loading across the application to enable us to load things faster and require less syncing.
- Loading the project overview screen will load much faster and no longer show a spinner in most circumstances
- Pushing commits and changes to server is faster
Bug Fixes
- The app now correctly restores the previous project and branch again when reloading or refreshing
- In inspect, layers with resizing constraints now work within symbol instances with horizontal smart layout
- Fixed an issue where review text may not be cleared after submission and would be visible if you tried to leave a second review
- Disabled some controls while offline that should be unavailable
- Fixed a bug when exiting fullscreen with Escape key would exit out of collection entirely
- Discarding changes to all files not closes the commit modal
- Improved rendering speed of collections screen
- Fixed a case with possible infinite loading when attempting to upgrade or downgrade a users membership
- Fixed an issue where the context menu on layers in a collection would sometimes display less options
- Fixed a case where a library is removed on the parent branch and then you update, the removal never made it to the child branch
- Fixed up some input styling in dark mode
- Fixed an issue where deleted project sections would not be reflected on other users machines and would appear to be un-deletable
- Fixed an issue that would result in a blank screen in the update flow after files are upgraded
- We addressed a race condition where the app could show uncommitted changes even after committing
- The “commit changes” button in Sketch is now correctly disabled whilst a commit is already being written
- Fixed an issue where inspect boundaries would be misaligned on very thin artboards
- Fixed an issue where thumbnails in collections were misaligned at some screen sizes
- Various UI improvements for dark mode and loading states in inspect
- Fixed an issue that sometimes prevented flyovers from closing when clicking outside their bounds
- The correct icon for the file type as now shown in the sidebar when updating a branch with conflicts
Enhancements
- We added support for Sketch v66 🎉.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue where when signed out, the titlebar displayed functionality as if signed in.
- Fixed an issue where conflict resolution for diverged branches would be inaccurate.
This release we’re helping you move projects forward, faster. We’ve improved developer handoff in Inspect by making it easier to navigate from nested symbols to symbol masters. We also added the option to overlay conflicts when updating a branch from its parent.
New Features
- In Inspect mode, you can now swiftly navigate to symbol masters (and back).
- We added a new control to change the background color when viewing a layer detail.
- It’s now possible to create a collection on another team member’s branch.
- You can create a new branch from old commits, just right click on the commit you want to branch from.
Enhancements
- Presentation mode improvements, including larger previews, zoom controls, and better theme switching.
- We added the option to overlay conflicts when updating a branch from its parent.
- Added warnings when creating sizable commits, to help prevent downstream performance issues for teams.
- Added warnings when importing sizable files, to help prevent downstream performance issues for teams.
- Clarified messaging around sync and generation of assets, to help reduce confusion when asset generation takes longer than expected.
- It’s now possible to cancel opening or exporting files.
- Performance improvements for panning dense artboards with several nested layers in Inspect.
Bug Fixes
- Repeating symbols with unique overrides will no longer override layout redlines in Inspect.
- In Inspect we also now only “adjust to fit” symbol instances with horizontal smart layout enabled, previously all symbol instances would shrink and grow horizontally from overrides.
- Fixed a rare case where the syncing activity might display 0 failed jobs.
- When archiving a branch any child branches now display correctly as being children of the next parent without needing to reload.
- Fixed an issue where the dialog immediately closes on creation of a new file.
- The “Create Collection” buttons are now disabled when offline.
- XD files that are shown in conflict resolution now correctly display as XD files, rather than Sketch files.
- When archiving a branch any child branches now immediately display correctly in the UI instead of disappearing.
- Fixed an issue that could result in clones failing.
- The toast message now dismisses correctly when attempting to archive a branch with uncommitted changes.
- Minor styling issues.
Grouping your artboards into Collections is a great way to organize and present your work using Abstract. Now, with the ability to create sections within your Collections, you can categorize and arrange your artboards in a way that’s easy to navigate and understand.
Enhancements
- Sections within Collections make it easier to organize and present your work.
Fixes
- Fixed a data loading race condition that could result in no conflicts being shown when updating a branch. If you think you were affected by this issue please contact Support and we will help you through some easy steps to resolve.
- Fixed a regression where branches in a synced project wouldn’t load while offline.
- Child branches no longer disappear (until the app is reloaded) when a parent branch is archived.
- Fixed an issue on the Project Collections pane where users might see a truncated list of "archived" collections.
Fixes
- An error that occurred while opening some XD files when they contained references to external libraries.
- Using arrow keys in a user selection dropdown no longer clears the search results.
- A small display issue with the new branch status badges.
- Several issues around loading and filtering Collections at the project level.
Branch status labels give more visibility and clarity around in-flight designs. Plus: what remote design leadership looks like before and after Abstract.
Features
- Branch status labels got a new look. You now also have two new status options: “In development” and “Paused.”
Enhancements
- User selection inputs now load more users as you scroll, without requiring a search term.
- Improved commit UI for a smoother experience.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a scenario where the activity feed may show an endless loading spinner while switching between branches or projects.
- Diverged branches now display in “quick jump” search results.
- Fixed a scenario where collections were not dismissible.
- Fixed a flash of the welcome illustration when restoring the application to a previous branch.
- Added a “No Section” option for projects where sections have not yet been created.
- Fixed a crash in the “manage reviewers” dialog.
- Fixed a flash of an error "This section already exists" when creating a new project section.
- Fixed project settings to allow you to update project asset generation settings.
- Fixed an issue when re-reviewing a branch you’d potentially see text from your previous review.
- The reaction emoji picker dialogue is better positioned on the screen so you won’t miss it.
- Closing a collection opened from the master branch collections no longer redirects to the project collections.
- Personal organizations no longer show a call to action to “Invite teammates”
- Comment counts are now accurate for layers duplicated across pages.
- Fixed an issue where the project collections screen filtered to “Master” would show collections other than those created on Master.
- Attempting to create a project with a duplicate name now correctly shows an error.