Yesterday, we had the live webinar in which our team introduced Fonto 8.0. Fonto 8.0 is packed with new features and functionality, that will make both integration and usage even easier. Not even from the technical perspective, but also from a user experience point of view. The latest version has been received with big enthusiasm by our partners and customers!
Relive the webinar
If you haven’t been able to watch the webinar, watch it again via the player below.
During the webinar, we touched upon the following topics:
UI improvements
The outline has moved to the left side of the screen. This makes the natural flow of editing and reviewing documents more intuitive, and allows users to make use of the outline along with other functionality such as the sidebars. See also the blog post on more intuitive navigation in Fonto 8.0.
Balloons, a new UI pattern, have been introduced to replace the traditional sidebars with cards in them. As a result, cards are now aligned with their related piece of content, making it much easier to see what a comment is about. This will contribute to a richer collaboration.
Fonto Document History revamp
Fonto Document History has been restyled to use similar concepts as Fonto Editor and Fonto Review. The big blue revision selector that came sliding out of the masthead has been replaced with a sidebar tab, which allows for easier access to quickly jump between revisions. The representation of revisions does now match our design system. See the post on revamping Fonto Document History.
Technical improvements
Besides the user interface and user experience, a lot of technical improvements have been made in this new release. Even if you don’t want to use TypeScript, the new update instantly provides a wealth of code intelligence that you would otherwise have to find in our API docs. If you do upgrade your files to TypeScript, one by one if you choose, you will get even better squiggles and warnings in case you’re about to make a bug. We expect velocity gains and reduced bugs for all our partners.
Ease of upgrading to Fonto 8.0
How do you get your hands on all these new and improved features? It’s just a matter of upgrading your Fonto Development Tools (FDT) to Fonto 8.0. Upgrading like a minor version, there is no revision of code required. See the full upgrade instructions.
Questions and answers on Fonto 8.0
During the Q&A, a lot of questions have been asked by the attendants of the webinar and answered by the team. Find a selection of questions and answers below:
Q: Do I have to upgrade to Fonto 8.0?
A: No, but we of course recommend using the latest and greatest. The upgrade effort is similar to upgrading to a minor release.
Q: How big will the upgrade be for me?
A: While Fonto 8.0 is certainly a major release in look and feel, it is much more like a minor regarding upgrading. We used the same approach as we do for minors regarding upcoming deprecations and removals, and as such expect the same required effort.
Q: Will Fonto 7.x continue to be supported?
A: Yes, our general policy is to provide one full year of support after the release of any version. Please consult your license agreement for details. Support for versions older than 1 year is on a best effort basis.
Q: Icons in the outline are required in Fonto 8.0? Why? How can we set this up?
A: Icons are indeed required because we only show icons for documents when the outline is collapsed. We use a simple circle by default, and we highly recommend configuring icons using the configureAsStructureViewItem API for different kinds of structure view items.
Q: Certain parameters are marked as required while they previously were not, did this change?
A: During the conversion to TypeScript of our code base some parameters were wrongfully marked as required. If you encounter one of these parameters you are still able to omit them as you did previously. Of course, we would be interested to hear about any such case you find through a ticket in our support desk.
Q: Do you have any plans to typescriptify the dita-example-editor?
A: Yes, the DITA example editor will be migrated to TypeScript in the coming weeks.
Q: Will the TypeScript files be compiled if there are type errors?
A: They will still be compiled, though we recommend fixing those errors: they usually point out bugs. You can consider using the // @ts-expect-error pragma if there are errors that you cannot fix at this moment.
Q: Will “Accept & Reject all” be available?
A: Yes, all systems have a dedicated navigator, the Track Changes features are available there.
Q: Does the upgrade to Fonto 8.0 affect the connection to other systems?
A: No, the integration with other systems haven’t been affected by this release. Integrating Fonto in external applications and (C)CMSes is working exactly the same as in previous versions.
Q: What is the roadmap for Fonto 8?
A: The full roadmap for Fonto 8 will be announced in the upcoming weeks.
Do you have other questions? Feel free to contact our team directly. We are more than happy to answer your questions!
Experience Fonto 8.0 yourself
Do you want to see all the features that are part of Fonto 8.0 yourself? Our Fonto Editor trial has been upgraded to the latest version. Experience it yourself!
Customer Success Manager at Fonto – Passionate runner and Dad