✨ New editor ✨ improvements and bugfixes

As you likely already know, we released our new article editor in April. Since then, many customers have been kind enough to share their feedback and let us know what they'd like to see changed in there. We have recently released a ton of updates, improvements, and bug fixes. The list of changes is too long to list, but here are some of the more important changes. 

First, we added some brand new things

And they're very exciting:

• Details/Summary blocks within articles allow you to add collapsable/expandable blocks of content directly in your articles. 
• Inline styling lets you add computer code, keyboard inputs, or ^{other styling} to your content within the same sentence.
• In-article Find & Replace lets you easily locate words within the article you're working on and replace them. 

These and other improvements led us to revamp the toolbar, removing a number of icons and adding dropdown menus:

This is to ease icon overwhelm and hopefully make it much easier to find the action you want to take. A lot of common actions are now under the Insert dropdown.

Next, the improvements

We also made a number of improvements and changes based on feedback from authors like you trying out the editor and telling us what you loved, merely liked, or actively disliked. Here are some of the most notable improvements.

Fewer triple dot menus/More discoverable actions

We had two triple dot menus in our first iteration of the new editor: One for copying or editing the permalink, and another to add fields that weren't displayed immediately in the editor, like tags, search phrases, and pages to recommend on. Based on your feedback, we've made changes to both these menus.

The actions related to the permalink now surface as icons to the right of the permalink when you hover over it, instead of having to select the triple dot menu:

We've removed tags, search phrases, and other metadata from the far upper right triple dot menu. Instead, we added an + Add field... option directly above the editor toolbar to add tags, search phrases, and various titles:

In the Add field dropdown, you can also Edit default field settings, which allows you to set which fields will always (or never) display above your article by default. These settings are stored in KB settings > Article editor and will apply to all articles and all authors. This was a trending request from the feedback we received.

More editor, less fields when you want

For Authors that use a lot of tags and search phrases, we also truncated the number of search phrases and tags that display initially so they don't take up so much room in the editor. You can now select an option to expand them all, but they won't take up so much space initially.

We also made that top area collapse-able and expandable, so don't have to scroll down to get to the editor.

Small odds and ends improvements

When we created the collapsed lefthand nav for the new editor, we removed the View knowledge base option. Turns out a lot of you missed that option, so we've added an icon for this action into the collapsed navigation:

The View knowledge base icon in the collapsed lefthand nav

We also made the right sidebar a slightly darker grey to reduce the overwhelm of white space. 

A very big overhaul of Versions

A lot of the feedback we received related to Versions and how we could improve the new editor's interactions for them. We received so much feedback here that we rebuilt this section completely. The main issues seemed to revolve around the number of clicks it took to complete simple actions, like adding a version note or creating a new version. (Again, this list isn't exhaustive but covers the most important changes.) Here's an overview of the key highlights:

• We've killed the versions modal that you had to open to complete most actions, moving the actions directly into the righthand column itself.
• We moved the callout warning you that you're viewing an inactive version to the top of the righthand column, rather than nestled into the Versions section.
• You can view, add, and edit Version notes right under the version title/number/name without having to open a modal. Just hover over the version and select the speech bubble icon to add a note.
• Active versions now have a green badge next to them so it's easy to make sure you're in the right version. 
• We've made all versions accessible through that righthand column, but we default to a small number and add a Show xx older versions option so you can see the whole story without opening a modal or overwhelming your righthand panel. 

Here's a sample of the updated layout:

Sample version layout

Squashed editor bugs

With any major redesign, pesky little bugs are bound to show up. Here is a quick summary of some we've fixed: 

• There were a number of whacky behaviors related to image captions in the new editor. We have fixed those, so you should see your caption adding experience be smooth from here.
• Similarly, combining bulleted and numbered lists was a little buggy. They should be functioning as you'd expect now.
• The automated flow for adding old links only allowed you to redirect to other articles, not categories. We've updated this so categories are allowed again, as they used to be.
• That Automatic old link flow was only running when you changed the URL or status of an article, not a category (oops!). We fixed this so you can also set automatic old links for categories.
• We also had a bug that was removing the domain when you set up a URL redirect article to a file within the secure file library, which basically broke the URL redirect. That's been fixed, though you may need to edit any existing URL redirect articles to re-select that file to see the fix in action.
• The option to Set your default save action wasn't working in the new editor. It will now properly save your changes:
  

Want to see what all the fuss is about?

We would love more folks to give the new editor a try and continue giving us feedback. As you can see, we're taking all that feedback to heart and really using it to build the best editor we can.

We know that learning a new layout isn't always easy and we so deeply appreciate those of you who have taken that leap.

At the top of the old editor, you'll see an option to try out the new one:

We'll continue making improvements based on what our customers want to see, so please contact us and let us know what you think!