Beta access to redesigned doc header & toolbar

[EvanBrooks]

Hey everyone!

tl;dr: We’ve been working on redesigning the doc header & toolbar in Coda and want to give the community an early chance to try it. Just head to the Labs section of your Account Settings to enable or disable this beta and use this form to share feedback.

Redesigned doc header

Over the years, we have worked on making Coda feel simpler and a key principle as part of that has been “more of your work, less of ours.”

To push that goal even further, we’re testing a redesigned doc header to make docs look more presentable and welcoming for collaborators. As one example, your cover photos now expand edge to edge. In our own testing, this small change has made a big difference in how it feels to use Coda every day.

Contextual toolbar

Over the last year, we have introduced a number of new ways to insert and format content in Coda including slash commands and the Explore panel. In looking at our data, we noticed that the vast majority of people editing in Coda rarely use the toolbar, even though it is always at the top of the screen.

We have been working on a contextual toolbar that shows up only when you need it, and is right next to your selection. This also makes it easier to format text in comments and row detail.

The toolbar now appears any time you select some text, and disappears when you deselect. For tables, it shows up only if you select more than one cell, row, or column. If you need to use the toolbar at any other time, just press the Command key once (Ctrl on Windows) .

Beta instructions

We believe this change sets the right direction for modern writing surfaces overall, and it opens the door for some of the bigger investments we have coming up. However, we realize it takes a bit of adjustment coming from the previous model, which is why we want to give our valued community early access to the feature.

You can enable or disable this beta from the Labs section found at the bottom of the page on your Account Settings, as shown below:

Note that this setting is on a user-by-user basis, so if you opt in and a colleague does not, you may see slightly different experiences in Coda as a result.

We are still improving and refining the details of this feature, and would appreciate if you can use this form to share your feedback. Some questions we’re interested in:

• Does the toolbar appear at the right times? Does it ever appear when you don’t need it, or are there times you wished it would appear when it didn’t?
• Is there anything you like or dislike about the header changes? We want to make sure the header works for any cover photo and doc name you choose.

We can’t wait to hear what you all think, and appreciate your help making this feature the best it can be.

[Marko_Petrovic]

One quick question: As I understood there is no way to “force” this update to whole Workspace? I would kind of want to avoid having difference since colleague and me are building and “maintaining” most of the docs while other people are just using them, and I would still want to try and test this new feature

[joost_mineur]

Hello @Marko_Petrovic ,

The only think you activate in your own account is beta testing the floating toolbare - all the options are the same. So it really doesn’t matter which editor has or hasn’t turned it on, this is only about how you use your layout and formatting options.

Greetings,
Joost

[Marko_Petrovic]

You are right, played a bit with it. Since other people are using locked versions of documents either way it doesn’t really matter. For a second I thought there would be some more distinct differences between beta and Live version (apart from formatting of header).

[Stefan_Stoyanov]

Nice update, @EvanBrooks!

I would love to be able to remove this header and footer completely for Published docs with View settings. And also removing it for embedded documents with Play and View only access.

Makes sense, if you don’t want anyone to login or see more about the publisher of the doc, doesn’t it?

PS: The sharing button could stay

[Franck_Genissel]

I like it a lot but I liked to be able to click on the icons undo and redo.

[Marko_Petrovic]

That’s something that I kinda missed also. Granted you can use keyboard shortcuts which are faster, but its sometimes just “easier” to click icons

[Mathew_Georghiou]

Header idea is very good, but ideally I would like the option to include a header that is only half as tall as your example above. Large headers are good for marketing/presentation but get in the way of quickly accessing the content, so the option to have the header be tall or short would be a great way to solve this issue.

To clarify, you don’t have to allow a custom size, just two size options: tall or short (or large or small).

[anon1211000]

I love the update @EvanBrooks

I missed that from Notion. It is much quicker to format this way instead of moving all the way to the top to click something. Of course, I also use keyboard shortcuts for many things. But less so, since the popup toolbar is in place

Two things, that could be improved:

1. The popup can get in the way. I would like it to disappear on pressing ESC.
2. If I want to drag and drop selected text, the popup also obscures potential drop locations. Please make the popup disappear on initiating a drag operation.

[nate_hurst]

is this where we sign up for beta?

[lars_hofstetter_10TIMES_io]

This update is really awesome news. Being able to make more custom designs is so great.
I think Coda can make it possible to build web platforms if it will bring more options with customized design in the future. Really hope you guys will make more like this!

Even just custom fonts for example would be great.

[Pascal_A_Miserez]

Nice update, @EvanBrooks!

Three things to consider:

1. Undo/ Redo buttons are missing
2. Right-clicking on the canvas should bring up the toolbar as well
3. A long, wrapped document title can take up a lot of space. Offer a non-wrapped, shortened document title as an option

[Angad]

@nate_hurst no signup needed! anyone can turn on or off the beta from the Labs section of Account Settings!

[Marko_Petrovic]

Undo and Redo buttons are now here:

You can also use keyboard shortcuts for it. Not sure if that is best solution. As you mentioned it would be nice to get menu on right click. but I would also like Undo and Redo added to it

[Johg_Ananda]

Yeah I’ve noticed that sometimes the shortcuts don’t have the same ‘purchase’ that the actual buttons do +1

[Camille_Nussbaum]

Pretty happy so far with the beta! But I do have a few notes…

• +1 to what folks have said about having the Undo+Redo as part of the bar. It’s a BIG change to have it fold into the “…” of the doc itself.
• I can’t find where to insert a code block? Am I crazy?

Oh… it only appeared as an option when I highlighted at least one word first. Don’t like that.

[Ryan_Lehman]

Totally agree, the undo and redo icons really set Coda apart from other similar apps such as ClickUp.

[Ryan_Lehman]

It’s cleaner but for pages with images the Share, Explore, Doc Settings etc. disrupt the image. I suggest having them appear only when you hover over them.

[Guilherme_Salles]

If the intention is to add more emphasis to the cover, you should easy down the compression rate on the image. I have a 2k monitor and it looks really really bad.

[APIS_design]

The doc looks more polished.
But I’m afraid new users will feel lost without those familiar buttons. But of course you know better!

One annoying thing is the tooltips get in the way.

It happens to me quite often. I usually double click or triple click on words to rewrite them, and the mouse cursor falls over the floating toolbar. Maybe it should appear on top of the bar?