What's New at Novlr?
April 2024
🚀 Big Releases
- Progress emails — started to send out emails showing your writing progress each week
- Weekly streaks — started tracking weekly streaks as it fits the writing patterns of our users better
🪡 Improvements
- Links to nowhere — fixed a redundant analytics link
- AI policy — updated Privacy Policy to include an AI statement
- More focused focus mode — changed focus mode on touchscreen devices to fade headers back in on touch
- Overwriting email addresses — fixed email and password fields being auto-filled by password managers
- Better emails — switched email providers from MailChimp to Mailerlite to improve the quality of our emails
- Lost page error — implemented a temporary fix for Novlr pages displaying a lost page error
- More blogs for all — added infinite display to Reading Room categories instead of limiting the view to only thirteen articles
🪲 Bug Fixes
- Incorrect word counts — resolved analytics errors that were resulting in incorrect word counts
- No proofreader correction — fixed an error with our ProWritingAid integration that blocked corrections from appearing when the proofreader was toggled on
- Duplicate commits — fixed some inconsistencies with saving that caused duplicate commits
March 2024
🚀 Big Releases
- Author websites — released a new author websites features so writers can easily build their online presence, portfolio
- Made all courses free — we made the Tim Clare Couch to 80k Creative Writing Bootcamp, the Non-Fiction Book Proposal Course, and Carl Burkitt's Write to Play completely free!
🪡 Improvements
- Analytics code clean up — made backend changes to the analytics code to more easily diagnose bugs and issues
- Speedier site — found a caching configuration that dramatically improved site speeds
🪲 Bug Fixes
- Author website link — fixed a link at the bottom of the Author Websites to link to Novlr rather than incorrectly refreshing the current page
February 2024
🪡 Improvements
- Better search descriptions — updated metadata on some Novlr.org pages to improve Google descriptions
🪲 Bug Fixes
- Failed backup syncs — fixed the Dropbox and Google Drive integrations that were causing backup syncs to fail
- Only one co-owner — fixed an error where all co-owners were showing the same assigned number
January 2024
🪡 Improvements
- Words Added Card - changed the words added card on the dashboard to show the total number of words added, rather than as a percentage value
🪲 Bug Fixes
- Analytics improvements — fixed an error that was causing analytics to gradually stray from the truth over time
- Split chapter fix — fixed an error that caused splitting chapters to count the words in the chapter twice
November 2023
🪡 Improvements
- Offline improvement - offline functionality now allows for the creation and reordering of chapters while offline
- Improved focus mode — on touchscreens, typing will now fade out the header completely, with a three-second delay when you pause in typing, before fading the headers back in for normal navigation
- Improved ebook metadata — added extra editable fields to ebook metadata
- Shareable co-owner cards — made co-owner membership cards on the co-owner dashboard shareable
- Course export — courses no longer show as exportable projects
- NaNoWriMo integration — improved our NaNoWriMo integration with clearer instructions and automatically added it to the assigned Project Homepage for easy access during the event
- More inclusive project language — improved wording around goals and subscriptions to focus less on novels and more on projects to make our language more inclusive for a variety of creative writers
- Improved accessibility — improved some text contrast that was too difficult to read in dark mode
- More padding on the writing screen — added extra space to the bottom of the writing screen to allow for additional scrolling
🪲 Bug Fixes
- Improved analytics — fixed an error that caused words from a split chapter to be counted twice and offline merges sometimes showing a starting count of zero, which was affecting the correct display of words written vs words deleted
- Failing export — fixed a bug where special characters used in the title when exporting to .odt caused the export to fail
- Export formatting — fixed an error where our .docx export squished line heights in titles and headings when opened in LibreOffice.
- Ebook publishing errors — fixed an error on ebook export which automatically labelled the title page and cover image as “fallen”. Also, fixed additional .epub validation errors, which affected upload to some platforms
June 2023
🚀 Big Releases
- More projects for free users — improved our Standard plan to offer up to five projects, completely free!
- New subscription tier — introduced a new Plus plan which allows unlimited project creation for only $5 a month, or $48 a year
- More font choices — added a font option selector to the writing settings, which lets you choose a Sans Serif and Monospace font in addition to our default Serif font
- More project types — added project types to the project creation flow. You can now choose between a Novel, Novella, Short Story, Poetry, Non-Fiction, or General project type
- New writing courses — fully integrated courses are now live! The Tim Clare Couch to 80k Creative Writing Bootcamp is completely free for all users. We also have two paid courses live, Write to Play: Rediscover the Joy of Writing by Carl Burkitt and Write a Non-Fiction Book Proposal by Lydia Yadi. Novlr Pro subscribers get 10% off all course purchases
🪡 Improvements
- Better offline notifications — you’ll now see less prominent offline notifications. We replaced offline popups with a less obtrusive offline notification in the top writing bar that works with focus mode
- Estimated page counts — introduced a project comparison card to the project view in Analytics. You can now compare your project’s estimated page count compared with famous literary works like Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and the average Dr Seuss book
- Better backups — improved Google Drive and Dropbox backups for Novlr Pro users. The sync now creates individual, adaptively updated documents per chapter rather than creating multiple PDFs on each sync
- More accurate analytics — removed pasted words from the words written totals to give writers a more accurate overview of your writing analytics. Pasted words will still count toward word count totals, but only words written in Novlr will count toward words written totals, and, therefore, writing pace statistics
- Account deletion — added an account deletion button that automates account deletion requests
- Better design — improved the design of the dashboards to include illustrated banners
- Move visible goals — added active goals to the main dashboard
- System adaptive — made Novlr’s favicon adaptable. It will show as lighter if your device or browser is in dark mode, and darker if in light mode
- Better formatting on touchscreens — the formatting bar on touchscreen-enabled devices remains sticky and centred at the top of the page
🪲 Bug Fixes
- Offline toast spam — improved database optimisation to stop offline prompts and toasts from incorrectly showing when lots of users saved projects at the same time
- Import error — fixed an import bug where long titles overlapped the import container on selection
- Better mobile menu — improved menu flow for users on mobile when accessing their settings
- Indent formatting — shared links now preserve the indent formatting set by the writer
- Better version history — improved offline versioning makes it less likely that a live version will replace the offline version as “newer,” saving writers from having to restore offline writing from their version history manually
- Lost project synopsis — fixed an error where writing a chapter synopsis was overriding the project synopsis
- Incorrect chapter length — fixed an error where notes were counting toward the average chapter length. Average length will now only be calculated based on chapters or docs in your project, and exclude notes from these totals
March 2023
🚀 Big Releases
- A brand new Novlr! — Novlr got a brand new design, from the logo to the fonts, and colours; the app and homepage now have a fresh look and feel
🪡 Improvements
- Better dark mode — made dark mode softer and easier on the eyes
- More free options — writers on our free Standard plan can archive and delete projects
February 2023
🚀 Big Releases
- More export options — added both .pdf and .odt export options and improved export settings for .docx and .pdf
- Cover art — you can now upload cover art to any of your projects from the project homepage
🪡 Improvements
- Better import — you can now import projects from anywhere in the app and split chapters based on formatting heading tags
- Optimised app speed — optimised the entire app to reduce lag when individual chapters reached a certain word length. We still recommend splitting chapters that are over 50,000 words long, however.
- Better blockquotes — the blockquote feature no longer automatically applies quotation marks. We also changed the icon to make its formatting function clearer
- Better ebooks — ebooks can now be exported with a cover, and also support paragraph indents both from the global setting and from local overrides
- Better chapter creation — added nesting to chapters and improved the reliability of the drag-and-drop feature
- Out of beta — removed the beta tag from the dashboard with the official release of the new app
- Onboarding — added the first stage of onboarding for new users
🪲 Bug Fixes
- Docx export — fixed an issue where a formatting error stopped users from being able to open exported .docx file into Word if it contained words pasted from an outside source
- Chapter loading — fixed an error where a deleted or archived chapter created a dead link that stopped new chapters from loading
- Epub export — some users reported older versions of a project being exported to ebook. We no longer include archived and removed chapters and notes in the export, which resolved this issue
- App crash — fixed an error in the proofreader that caused the app to crash when reordering chapters
- Firefox incompatibility — fixed an issue where Firefox users were unable to use the export or archive functions from the chapter menu
January 2023
🚀 Big Releases
- Coaching with The Plottery — we partnered with The Plottery to bring our writers group coaching as a more accessible and affordable way to access a professional writing coach
- Lifetime subscriptions — instead of only offering monthly or annual subscriptions, we have introduced a lifetime pricing option that allows you to pay for Novlr Pro once
- Publish to ebook — you can now publish to .epub directly from your project homepage and access and delete all previously published versions of your ebook from the Publishing page
- Focus mode — we introduced a “proactive focus” UI that fades out automatically and reappears on click
- Split chapter — reintroduced the split chapter function to allow you to create new documents easily from a single, imported document
- Switchable word count tracking — you now choose which word count you want to track from chapter word count, your total words written today, and the total word count for your project
🪡 Improvements
- Saving and version — upgraded our system to provide more reliable saving and version management to reduce duplicate commits or timeouts
- Better performance — vastly improved app performance by avoiding unnecessary re-renders on each keystroke
- Better explanations for version — we have improved the way we show different types of versions in your version history. You’ll find text that explains if a version is an alternate to a simultaneous save, if it’s an offline version, if it is an imported version, or if it was created with a chapter split
- Comment totals — you will now see how many comments are contained in your document via a small number that appears next to the comment icon in the header bar
- Improved UI text — we fixed some minor spelling errors and clarified some of our modal text in our notifications panel, our pricing grid, and success nudges
- Better import — for ease of use, we have added an import button directly to the dashboard. We have also greyed out the import button when no document is selected
🪲 Bug Fixes
- Offline issues and toast popups — some users reported sporadic chapter reordering, uncontrolled toast nudges, and multiple offline popups. You should now be able to drop offline, reorder chapters, come back online with no unexpected changes, and notifications will only show when appropriate
- Fullscreen button on Safari — while this issue is fixed, it will still require some monitoring due to how Safari functions. The fullscreen button is hidden on mobile. To write in full screen on mobile, you will need to add Novlr as an app to your device’s home screen (see this helpdesk article for more info)
- Hidden chapter menus — some users had the chapter menu hidden behind the writing screen when clicking on the three dots next to the chapter title. This issue was isolated to Safari and Firefox users and has now been resolved
- Exporting nested chapter — fixed an issue that prevented nested chapters from being exported
- Sharing lag — Adjusted sharing modal so the UI doesn’t have to wait for the server to change in order to cut down on lag when toggling multiple chapters for sharing
- Timezone issues — resolved a timezone issue that meant analytics and streaks were incorrect for some users
- Imported title — chapter titles including the “&” symbol were converting the symbol to “&” on import. All titles, including a symbol will now import correctly
December 2022
🚀 Big Releases
- ProWritingAid integrated proofreader — Novlr Pro subscribers now have access to the new and improved ProWritingAid-powered proofreader that has vastly improved stability and usability from our original integration
- Price changes — writers can still write a single novel in Novlr for free, but Novlr Pro subscriptions had a price rise. All subscribers with active Pro subscriptions before December 1st had their prices frozen, meaning they will pay their original subscription price for the time that the subscription remains active
🪡 Improvements
- Wider margins — margins are now 30% wider than previously and will remain the same width no matter what text size you choose
- More useful analytics on the dashboard — changed the analytics that show on the dashboard to words written today, this month, and this year as these are the most viewed writing stats
- Clearer offline mode — created a popup that notifies you when your device goes offline to make it more obvious when this occurs
- Improved pricing cards — changed the visual display of our pricing cards to make our pricing structure clearer
- Offline sync optimisation — optimised how offline sync works to avoid potential bugs caused by browser capacity and device speed
🪲 Bug Fixes
- Version flashing — when your project is saving, but words have been added while that process is ongoing, words will no longer flash on and off the screen as our servers try to determine which is the most up-to-date version to show
- Project homepage — the project homepage will now load with the correct width and margins
- App crashing — The proofreader with no longer crash the app when writers navigate away from the page after turning it on
November 2022
🚀 Big Releases
- NaNoWriMo integration — added a brand new integration to sync your Novlr projects directly with NaNoWriMo. It updates your word count with every save and tracks your goal in Novlr, showing you the percentage achieved and your target daily word count
🪡 Improvements
- Formatting on touch devices — touchscreen and mobile device users will now see their formatting options at the top of the screen instead of being obscured by the touch functions native to their OS
- Better commenting — inline comments now show a gentle highlight by default whenever they are applied and can be turned on and off. If you select a comment in the text, or select a comment in the sidebar, your screen will scroll to the selected comment. For screens larger than mobile, the comment sidebar now opens when an inline comment is clicked
- Share feature — removed sharing from the chapter section of the writing sidebar to unclutter the chapter menus. You will now find the share button next to “Export” on your project home page
- Archive button — because archiving is only available to Novlr Pro users, the option was not showing for users on Novlr’s standard tier. To clarify this function, the archive button is now visible to all users
- Loading icon — when a chapter is loading, you will now see a loading symbol showing that the app is still working in the background
- Sidebar animation — improved the design of the right sidebar, so it now opens with a slide animation
🪲 Bug Fixes
- Highlighting text — highlighting text via click and drag from the bottom to the top no longer prevents scrolling when it reaches the formatting bar
- Logo flashing — the Novlr logo in the sidebar menu will no longer flash and shift when switching pages
- Correct analytics — Over NaNoWriMo, the increased number of users we saw visiting the site, mixed with the NaNoWriMo integration, highlighted issues with how we captured word count data to update our analytics. These issues have now been corrected, and analytics will display the correct word counts. We have force-recalculated everyone’s analytics to ensure all users now have accurate statistics
- Offline commits counting twice — analytics will no longer show inflated numbers due to offline commits counting twice toward their totals
- NaNoWriMo integration error — when we first set up the integration with NaNoWriMo, the API calls counted commits multiple times resulting in inflated word counts. we have streamlined this so all future syncs will show the correct word count, and will reactively correct any incorrect number previously sent to NaNo’s servers
- Deleting curly quotes — curly quotation marks will now delete after one backspace instead of requiring two
- Correct timezones — goals and analytics will now update for the correct time zones based on user location