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
Welcome to the December edition of Abstract! We've made a number of feature enhancements and fixes in this build. For a quick summary, check out our blog post or read on for all the details.
New Features
- Commit changes without leaving Sketch using our new quick commit window
- Create Collections faster by selecting layers to add first in the new "Create+Add” flow
- Update Library references by right-clicking a file and selecting “Manage Libraries…"
Enhancements
- It’s now possible to deselect layers when Multi-selecting with shift + click
- We removed the 3 character minimum on project names
- Added a button to jump from collections to inspect a layer
- Clicking on an annotation will now scroll so the comment is in view
- The Sketch plugin now communicates when a commit is happening in the background
- Comment and history panels are now resizable
- You’ll find that the color green throughout the app is more accessible for your peepers
Fixes
- Using the CMD+O shortcut from within a layer detail will now open the file for editing in Sketch
- We fixed several issues that could occur when opening Sketch files
- We now display an error when the Sketch plugin fails to install, instead of silently failing
- The text of an annotation is now selectable and copyable
- Fixed several areas where long file names could break the UI
- All warning dialogs now respect macOS guidelines and ESC can be used to cancel
- It’s now possible to create a project and import files while offline
- Fixed an issue that would make it impossible to rename files with a “|” character in the name
- Fixed an issue that would show a “Sketch Not Installed” dialog, when in fact Sketch was installed
- Fixed several display issues when a contributor deletes their Abstract account
- Inspect: Fixed several issues with loading local overrides, layer style name, and text style names
- Inspect: Fixed an issue where “left” alignment would be displayed as “natural”
- Inspect: Generated css for gradients now respects overall opacity
- Inspect: It’s now possible to select and copy individual css properties
- Plugin: We improved dark mode support
- Plugin: We fixed an issue causing the Abstract plugin to stay on screen after the window is closed
- Plugin: Fixed an edge case that would allow commits to happen on the master branch
Fixes
- Fixed a performance issue which would result in cached files not being used and a slower file opening experience
- Fixed a performance regression introduced with a libraries change in Sketch 52
- Fixed an issue that resulted in blank files being opened; this was the result of us not forwarding errors from Sketch correctly and the error will now will displayed instead
Enhancements
- Added support for displaying layer style overrides in inspect
- Added CMD+O and CMD+SHIFT+O shortcuts to open a file
Fixes
- Items added to collections from the files view will now automatically update to the latest commit
- Fixed an issue that would cause older files stored in Abstract not to open in Sketch 52
- Fixed an issue where changing between pages would not update the UI if they had the same number of artboards
- Fixes some Sketch files on very old commits having missing icons
New Features
- We made it easier to add artboards to a collection with Multi-select!
Enhancements
- Support for Sketch 52
- A new login flow design and branding update
- Support for authenticated proxies
- Draft branch reviews are now persisted so you won’t accidentally lose an in progress review
- Branch descriptions now appear on the branches list again
- Deleted artboards and symbols now show a visual preview
- We improved the visual style of artboard previews
- Artboard previews with comments now show a count of how many
- The file tree now has a search filter
Fixes
- Quitting Abstract now correctly exits all ongoing child processes
- Sidebar vibrancy now works correctly in Mojave
- Estimated width of overridden text layers now respects newlines in Inspect
- Projects are now sorted more naturally, accounting for number at the beginning
- Fixed an issue where some overrides were missing in Inspect
- Fixed another issue in inspect where it was possible to “select” multiple layers at once
- It is no longer possible to rename a branch with uncommitted changes, which would could cause uncommitted work to become inaccessible
- Artboards no longer appear as “changed” on a branch if they were only changed as part of a file version upgrade
- We addressed an issue where inviting viewers via email would try and add paid seats to the organization account.
- Lots more miscellaneous UI fixes
Enhancements
- We made several changes to improve the speed and concurrency of preview uploads, particularly when syncing large commits
- We improved filtering of debug logs to remove false positives and ensure that only logs from Abstract or Sketch are included
- Improved the logic around restarting Sketch after it has crashed, making file opening more reliable
Fixes
- Fixed an issue that would cause files to not open with no error when clicking on "Edit in Sketch"
- Collections are no longer confusingly displayed on the branch overview when your team is on the Starter Plan
- Comments with long words and URLs will no longer overflow the window bounds when editing
- Fixed an issue that could cause a forever-spinner on “Master files” when all files in a project are removed
- Fixed invisible background not ignored on artboard in inspect
- Fixed artboard preview sidebars animating in at different speeds
- Fixed a “Something went wrong” error on collections when the author of the collection had been removed from the project
- Fixed an issue where annotations would incorrectly show on file upgraded commits if they had been made on the previous commit
New Features
- Review Requests streamline your design review process and set expectations for feedback. Read the blog post.
- Layers now show the full comment history across all commits
- A shiny new “Highlight changed values” toggle in Inspect makes it easy to see which layers or properties have changed since the most recent commit
- You can now view all keyboard shortcuts from the help menu or by pressing CMD+/
Enhancements
- Improved sync performance (We’re now serving your project data via CDN)
- The commit composer got a facelift: you can also now click on thumbnails to see them larger and compare against the previous version before committing
- You can now discard individual file changes from the commit composer
- Stale branches are no longer hidden on the project overview
- Project cards now show a more accurate representation of who is working on a project
- We updated the styling of share buttons to be clearer
- Editing the project “About” section is now inline
- Synced Collections are now available offline
- Improved performance of comment loading
- Improved performance of notifications loading
- Abstract will now offer to move itself to your Applications folder if ran from elsewhere
Fixes
- Fixed an issue that would cause deleted layers to return during a merge under certain circumstances.
- Fixed several circumstances where the layer history or comments would fail to load, resulting in forever spinners.
- Fixed an issue that would make it impossible to navigate through layers while in overlay compare mode
- Fixed an issue that would cause the desktop app to appear as “Offline,” when in fact the internet was available
- Fixed an issue that would prevent commits from uploading to the server if you signed out of your account before the sync had completed
- It’s no longer possible to lose changes by linking or unlinking a library file while there are outstanding uncommitted changes
- We added a safeguard to prevent merging a branch twice by clicking the button really fast
- Fixed an issue where previews would not generate while offline
- Fixed an issue that would cause previews on a branch to disappear until the app is reloaded after discarding changes
- There were a number of places where you couldn’t select text. Now you can select to your heart’s content.
- Fixed an issue where the unread notification badge would get out of sync with reality after viewing notifications through the web app
- You can now delete a project that was created offline and never synced with the server
- Libraries in the file list are now sorted alphabetically
Fixes
- This build fixes an error that would prevent committing after creating new text or layer styles in a library file.
This build includes a fix for two pretty gnarly bugs that prevented files from opening correctly from Abstract and prevented previews from generating for affected commits.
Be sure to download this one. Special thanks to the customers who were able to screenshare with our engineers so we could piece the puzzle together. You are champions. 🏆💕
Hey everyone! Thank you for your patience with us releasing three builds in three days - please know that this is because we care, we're tracking errors and we're fixing them fast.
Your help reporting issues is greatly appreciated and, as always, you’re welcome to reach out to support@goabstract.com if you need help.
Fixes
- An issue that caused files to not open or successfully generate previews in some circumstances
- A crash in Sketch when using color picker for some documents
- Files automatically upgrading if you open them on other people's branches
This patch fixes an issue that was uncovered where uncommitted changes could be lost when opening a file for the first time in Sketch 51.
If you were affected by this bug please contact support@goabstract.com and we can help you recover work from a backup.