Beyond the innovative design: here’s what to expect next!
Last week, we introduced a major redesign of our service. We consider it the next step towards the best possible bookmarking experience. Fortunately, many of our users love our redesign, as you can see in the comments. But we didn’t stop there. Are you ready for the next steps?
Improvements of last week
Since the go-live, we’ve made several improvements. They include a few issues that some of our users didn’t like. Here’s the complete list:
- The header now displays at least as many pages as before. We eliminated the start.me logo for users with more than one page.
- For some users, all widgets were collapsed by default. This was a bit confusing, so now they will appear as usual. If you decide to collapse them, we will save your preference for the next opening.
- Reduced footer dimensions.
- Updated layout of the inline bookmark editor. We’ve also reduced the size of the Done button.
- When you search a bookmark, you can now right-click it to Edit it.
- Updated the support section to reflect the new app design
- Eliminated several other minor layout issues and bugs.
What we’ll do next: here’s a teaser!
As you’re using start.me, we’re also migrating some of the lesser-used parts of the app to the new design. We hope you won’t notice too much. They’re mostly minor changes.
Besides this, there are several new features we plan to add this year.
One of them is a much-requested feature: a Duplicate Link checker. We’ve started working on this, as you can see in the image above. Keep reading our blog, to stay in the loop!
Other features, like a Table of Contents widget, are also high on our priority list.
That’s it for now!
What do you think? Please leave a comment in the section below, and we’ll read and answer you. And who knows, maybe you’ll discover your suggestion in the app!
20 Replies to “Beyond the innovative design: here’s what to expect next!”
Have you ever considered letting users change the font used in the app?
Great question, Gunnar! Yes, we’re talked about it extensively. The main problem with adding other fonts to the app, is that they all have to be loaded in the browser, which inevitably slows down the app. In the past, the main feedback for users to stop using start.me was the loading time. So we optimized for speed. Hope you understand!
I’m very happy with my purchase, the only suggestion I would make is to be able to open a link in a new background window.
Hi Shane, We’re glad to hear you’re happy with our service! We also appreciate your suggestion, even though it’s not entirely clear to me. What’s a background window? In my mind, it’s always been possible to open links in a new window or tab, see this support article: https://support.start.me/hc/en-us/articles/202239991 Please let me know what I’ve missed. Cheers, Stefan
I used papaly before switching to Start.Me and I was a big advocate of having their inbox feature built into your service, but considering how easy I have found it to sort my bookmarks in start.me, my startpage is more organised than it ever was in papaly (a lot of links got lost in the inbox).
Wonderful to hear this, Dan! And we’re still working on the Inbox feature too, so prepare to be even more organized!
Hi,
I’ve been a long-time (PRO) fan of start.me, but some of the recent changes have irked me somewhat.
Not that they are not good (they are … and I really appreciate your ongoing work), but if they are “popped” on customers from one second to the next, they sometimes cost me time to
a) try out what changed and/or
b) research what was actually changed (and change my setup accordingly).
!!! Advance notification (in good time) would really, really (!) help. !!!
Today’s example: I have 11 pages that follow a certain workflow. That means I have arranged groups of bookmarks in columns on each page from left to right (first sort order) and then top to bottom (second sort order).
Today, when I opened my start.me page, I was totally (!) thrown when that one, the most important one, suddenly rearranged my sort order(s).
No matter what I do, the columns flow according to some weird algorithm from left to right, row by row.
Example: I drag a bookmark group from the 2nd place in the right 4th column to the 2nd place in the first column and everything reflows weirdly and does not end up where I would expect it to end up. I cannot make rhyme or reason of it.
I suspect that logging-out and then logging in again might fix that problem, but I’m afraid to so because then, perhaps, the other pages might also suddenly look different? See, it’s that insecurity in regard to missing advance notification that makes me weary about trying things out and hoping they will work as they used to/are supposed to.
Did you change anything there? Drag and drop does not (!) function the same way on that (!) page as it did before. Now I suddenly have to search for bookmark groups on the page which I had in my “muscle memory” for ages.
Frustrating.
BTW: I have not touched the other 10 pages (which all still look the same as I have arranged them) because I am afraid that once I move groups, things will not follow my intended layout anymore.
Hi Volkher, thanks for letting us know what you think about the recent changes we’ve made. We totally understand that you were surprised about the introduction of our new design. In fact, internally we talked about announcing our upcoming changes in a blogpost and offering all our users the chance to give feedback. We used this method for our previous redesign (back in 2018), but eventually we decided not to postpone publication. We were just so happy with the new options, that we couldn’t resist. We’d love to have you onboard with our beta-testers, though. So, if you appreciate the chance to give feedback, please let me know. I’ll add you to the list. And then for the sorting problem: this shouldn’t happen. We haven’t touched the sorting of columns at all. It might be a problem with your cache, so we recommend trying this first. Here are some of the other steps you could consider: https://support.start.me/hc/en-us/articles/208436695-General-troubleshooting-tips If this doesn’t help, please contact our support team, as we need a bit more personal information like the device or browser you’re using, a screenshot or screencast demonstrating the problem, et cetera. We’d love to find the underlying cause of this issue. You can reach my colleagues at: support@start.me
Really great improvements indeed! Again!
Thanks, Bart!
The improvements are great. I just used Bill’s tip about turning off the search bar and putting it in a separate widget. Good idea. Thanks Bill.
I hope one day you will include the ability for me to bookmark files on my computer. I am not sure why the current version can’t use my files. I can upload files from my computer and download files to my computer with my file structure showing the standard Windows Explorer pane. It seems that you can get access to my files so why not let me bookmark them? Of course security is probably a major issue with that, but another option might be to let me download a stand alone version of Start.me to use on my PC or Cell phone. That would be nice.
Hi Morris, thanks for asking. A standalone version of start.me isn’t in the planning for now. Linking to a local file is possible after installing the extension. You must add “file:///” as a suffix to the local path, and you’re good to go. Here’s the support article with detailed instructions: https://support.start.me/hc/en-us/articles/115003643609 I hope this works for you!
are Pro Users able to gain cached version of webpages saved?
Hi Eric, thanks for asking. For now, we’re just in the bookmarking business. Caching and saving entire pages require a lot more resources, and we’re not sure we want to go that way. You could create deep links to other websites who offer this, like the Internet Archive (Wayback Machine: https://archive.org/). PRO users do get a lot of other added features, as you can see in this page: https://blog.start.me/en/pricing
hi stefan, thanks for your reply but this is possible: https://getpocket.com/premium?ep=1
Hi Eric, thanks for mentioning this. And you’re correct: with Pocket you can save entire pages. That’s also possible with other services, like Evernote, Google Keep or Microsoft Notes. Stiff competition. But these companies usually charge a lot more, or you must pay with your privacy. With our bookmarking solution, you get a lightweight, much more affordable solution to the same problem. And did I mention the broken link checker? You don’t get this kind of feedback from Pocket!
Great improvements! I love them. And thanks for listening to us, the users.
You’re very welcome, Martina. We’re in this together!
Looking forward to it, Stefan. Hey, here’s a tip that I’m sure many other users have tried out: You can widen your screen real estate by turning off the Search bar and putting the Search link in with other bookmarks. Also, when you open a new tab, you’ll see the Search box for the engine you’ve specified. I liked recovering over an inch of screen at the top.
Cheers!
A great solution, Bill! I’m sure many of our users will love the extra space (and I’m one of them!).