Changelog 2

Note: Even though we are in closed beta now, we are willing to open up Kitemaker to anyone affected by COVID-19 and in need of a better tool to handle issues. If you know anyone, please feel free to ping us any time. If the team is in your organization, feel free to invite them in and set up their own space.

New things in Kitemaker

Figma integration

By pasting in links to Figma files or frames and pressing enter, we will now fetch a thumbnail from the link and show that in descriptions and comments. The first time you do this, we will need to authenticate you to access the data from Figma:

Simply copy/paste a link from Figma to use the integration

Note that this works both for your public and private boards.

If you click a Figma thumbnail or press cmd+enter when the thumbnail has keyboard focus, we will take you to where the links are pointing.

Github integration

Users that have used Github Issues a lot are familiar with using the ‘fixes/closes # 123’ way of closing issues. We now have a Github integration where you can set up automation steps depending on where an issue is mentioned.

Press cmd+k and enter ‘Manage integrations’ to set it all up:

Follow the steps in the wizard to configure the Github integration

Tip: on any issue (both onboard and when you have it open), press cmd+i on mac, or ctrl+i on Linux and Windows, and Kitemaker will copy the issue number (the ABC-123) to the clipboard.

Note: You can also make Github automatically create links to Kitemaker issue mentions. To do this, follow the directions here. You will be able to find the correct links and reference prefix to your space by visiting Kitemaker in your browser. Ping us at hi@kitemaker.co if you have any questions about this.

Dark Mode

If we detect that your computer is set to dark mode, then we’ll give you a new dark mode of the UI. You can also switch between the two modes using the Kitemaker Command (cmd+k):

Color mentions

Designers love colors. We notice because they keep talking about them all the time ;) To support our designers in the quest to make a more living color world, we now support color mentions using hex codes in issue descriptions and comments.

Designer ❤️

And much more…

We have a long list of other changes at the end of this changelog.

Next steps

Progress on structure

Progress on structure

On the structure functionality, we have gone with themes in a roadmap view. You can learn more about thematic roadmaps from Bruce McCarthy, who wrote the book on roadmaps, in his excellent talk.

A goal for us has been to make themes as easy and functional as issues, while at the same time make them easily visually distinguishable. Here is an example where the themes have ‘portrait’ dimensions and ordered in a simple roadmap.

A simple thematic roadmap

If you want to help us, feel free to drop us a line on your experiences or ideas on ‘Epics’ and ‘Themes’ to hi@kitemaker.co

Imports

A lot of teams ask us for imports. Specifically, importing existing Trello boards, Github Issues or Jira projects. The reason is quite apparent - you have your entire history and current issues in a tool, and it can be hard to switch over. That is why we are currently experimenting with imports. Our imports will import existing issues, your archive, and the users (if applicable). Currently we have a prototype of a Github Issues import, and will probably do a Trello one as the next step. If you have any ideas, wishes or input on importing and integrations, feel free to share them with us at hi@kitemaker.co

Feedback

Feedback, bug reports and suggestions for improvements is always welcome, we read and respond to all of them. Ping us at hi@kitemaker.co and we’ll look into it ASAP.

Also, if you want a quicker way of giving feedback ans ask questions, you can sign-up to our community Slack channel. Ping us at hi@kitemaker.co to get access!

Other changes

We don’t remember everything we did (because it was a lot), but here is a list of some of the other changes we have done:

• Support for Portuguese and Brazilian mac keyboards
• Fixed crash when copy/pasting conversations from Slack
• Improved fuzzy searching of issues
• You can now mention issues, and we’ll link to the issue mentioned
• Added icons on status columns describing the ‘type’
• Minor improvements to the onboarding tutorial
• Fixed a missing space on remove assignee activities
• Fixed a bug where comments appeared on the wrong issue (!)
• Ensured that the activity feed scrolls to the top with keyboard navigation
• Now there is a placeholder while images are being uploaded
• Fixed an edge-case bug where labels wasn’t stored on issues
• Fixed a bug where you seemingly could edit other peoples comments
• Fixed scrolling when hitting d and t keys on long issue descriptions
• Fixed a bug where the issue description would be automatically copied between issues
• Fixed a very-very edge case bug, where you couldn’t move an issue horizontally without moving it vertically first
• Fixed activity list items being rendered over tooltips and menus
• Fixed a bug where deleting statuses could break updates
• Alt+c now creates a status column next to the status column that has keyboard focus
• Fixed a few bugs where you could end up getting a blank screen
• Made certain error messages easier to spot
• Change some tones of grey to increase contrast
• Fixed various bugs when someone else archives the issue or status column you are currently working on
• Fixed ‘Manage team" not being mouse-friendly (oops! Sorry!)
• You can now press 'u’ anywhere and see the updates and notification
• Updates view now has a ‘Mark all read’ button (Also, option/alt+r)
• We now store the last space you visited, so whenever you log back into Kitemaker, we’ll show that space by default
• Fixed escape not canceling issue title edits on Safari
• Made everything more multi-player friendly
• Fixed broken wrapping on issue titles
• Fixed that links wouldn’t wrap in comments
• Fixed weird problems while writing a description while an image is uploading