Our latest visual updates

While much of the Coda team is hard at work at some game changing features we can’t wait to tell you more about in the coming weeks, we’re also taking time to clean up our overall interface. Today, we’re making some small tweaks to colors in Coda to help your content stand out more—whether in light mode or dark mode.

The most noticeable change is that the teal color previously used to indicate links is being updated to a richer blue. This updated hue more closely resembles the default color for links on the web, and should help your collaborators more immediately recognize links as such. Buttons will be higher contrast as well, beckoning your teammates to click them and contribute to your doc.

Because you can combine embedded web content, file attachments, Figma Boards, and more with other Coda building blocks in an all-in-one doc, we want to make sure your content feels integrated throughout your pages. As a designer, I’m also excited to update this shade to one that doesn’t clash with other elements in the Coda interface.

We’ll continue sharing the thinking behind design updates in Coda at regular intervals. If you’re interested in learning more about the Design Team at Coda check out this doc.

36 Likes

This is great … but are you also updating the color of the triangles used for collapsing content? The black color of those triangles causes the most problems for me and my users because it does not look clickable. That simple triangle is one of the best features of Coda, but it needs more colour :slight_smile:

I posted about this previously …

Adding a simple colored circle in behind would help (not just on rollover as it does now).

Or make them a hot color and larger.
image

Or do both.

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This is great! And to @Mathew_Georghiou’s point, no one seems to know that collapsed content can be uncollapsed, I have to add instructions to every doc I use them in.

So some more explicit way to indicate what they are would be great!

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Oh, the sweet sound of “game changers”…

Love the new blue! But I’m going to echo @Connor_McCormick1 too!

My users get so confused by them I’ve just stopped using those collapsing triangles entirely.

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Lets do better than that next time…

Thanks for the feedback! I was not aware of this issue and will discuss it with the team. I’d love to learn more about your scenario. Are you sharing docs through public links for the doc gallery? Or is this with friends and/or colleagues?

1 Like

@Jasmine_Jones1 thanks for asking … I share docs internally but mostly externally with customers. I’m happy to explain our use case …

We sell educational games and simulations and our user guides, instructor guides, etc. have been html pages or Google docs (publicly shared). These are very detailed documents with text, screenshots, and videos.

The coda collapse feature is amazingly helpful as it makes our very detailed documents look and feel much more readable and easy to navigate — less intimidating … since no one wants to read any more and video can only do so much :slight_smile: And it makes it easy for us to update the docs on the fly.

I have since started moving all of our customer docs to Coda, here is an example — Instructor Guide — GoVenture Entrepreneur

… and you can compare that nice Coda doc to our old and ugly Google doc — GoVenture Entrepreneur Instructor Guide - Google Docs

You may also find this helpful to know …

I’ve been a tech entrepreneur/engineer for 25 years … I’ve seen it all. I discovered Coda several years ago and have been following your progress because I recognized the value you were building, but I could never find a use-case to make the jump away from other solutions … until you launched the collapse feature.

Yes, that simple little feature was the killer feature for me, despite all the other complex software features that Coda offers.

Your little triangle made me a customer and now I have also built a CRM app for our team to supplement our off-the-shelf CRM system, which was missing some features we needed for our workflow.

So, I encourage you to upgrade that little triangle because the more you can do to make Coda a better solution for shared documents (over Google, Microsoft, HTML, etc.) the more customers you will win simply for the basic documentation features (with or without all the amazing spreadsheet and database features).

Thanks for listening :slight_smile:

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@Connor_McCormick1, I find myself doing the same.

@Jasmine_Jones1 To me it would make sense to have the collapsed content’s “headline” operate as a link, or an extension of the arrow, sort of like a website dropdown menu item. Of course, this means that anytime a section is made collapsible the first line would subsequently be made to function as a link.

And no, I am obviously not a programmer… :sunglasses:

Edit: I just realized that the app and the phone browser work the way I described…