Dreadknux

At the very least, is it possible to consider the ability to re-organise Emoji groups in the drawer? I have some custom Emoji that I want to be the first thing users see in the drawer, but users have to scroll all the way down past the default ones just to find them and they get forgotten about as a result (I want to keep the default emoji, but bottom of the list - it doesn't make sense for these to be the first thing users see in a community emoji drawer if there are other categories/groups available, as users can easily access the same emoji using their mobile keyboard).

You can see them on the "My Purchases" page.
https://invisioncommunity.com/marketplace/previous-purchases/

At the very least, is it possible to consider the ability to re-organise Emoji groups in the drawer? I have some custom Emoji that I want to be the first thing users see in the drawer, but users have to scroll all the way down past the default ones just to find them and they get forgotten about as a result (I want to keep the default emoji, but bottom of the list - it doesn't make sense for these to be the first thing users see in a community emoji drawer if there are other categories/groups available, as users can easily access the same emoji using their mobile keyboard).

Thanks Ehren - yeah it won't be an issue for me to just add this via custom CSS. 🙂 
With gradients I can definitely work those in manually, but would I be able to reference any CSS colour swatch variables from the settings, or will I need to set those colours myself (i.e. "--lightmode-basecontrast1" or something)? It's no problem either way, just curious - but it would definitely save some effort if there's some dynamic colour swatch CSS variables out of the box 😄
Thanks again for the fantastic effort!

You sure can:
body{ background: linear-gradient(to bottom, var(--i-base_3), var(--i-base-contrast_3)); }  
Designers Mode has been revamped for version 5. Matt gives a brief overview here, but with the addition of "template hooks" in favour of the template editor, you won't have that issue anymore 🙂

Thanks Ehren - yeah it won't be an issue for me to just add this via custom CSS. 🙂 
With gradients I can definitely work those in manually, but would I be able to reference any CSS colour swatch variables from the settings, or will I need to set those colours myself (i.e. "--lightmode-basecontrast1" or something)? It's no problem either way, just curious - but it would definitely save some effort if there's some dynamic colour swatch CSS variables out of the box 😄
Thanks again for the fantastic effort!

Thanks for the feedback everyone!
Thanks mate! Third party designers will be able to release themes which take advantage of all of these features, which almost makes "premade themes" much closer to "custom themes". If you find a theme for sale, but the header positions aren't quite right for example, you'll be able to customize it without asking the designer for custom changes. Win win for both the designer and the customer!
 
The web developer tools built into your browser are likely the best solution here. I'll write up documentation for all of the new components (grid, buttons, etc), but as for the custom CSS editor, there are no plans at this stage to expand it beyond a regular code editor.
 
Yeah, the swatches will come in really handy. It's a much easier system instead of manually trying to allocate light/dark shades manually.
The header background in the intro was added via Custom CSS. I've been thinking of the best way to add an image feature for the header, but making a simple UI for something like that is ironically a very complex task since you also need to cater for the multiple header/nav bars as you mentioned. It's very simple to add using CSS, so at least there's a simple fallback if nothing else comes to mind before the release date 🙂
There are no plans for gradients, but since you seem pretty confident with CSS, you'll have no problems adding them using the code editor 🙂
 
Thanks David!
There certainly is. Snippets are truncated to a maximum of 680 characters for memory - but you can trim that down using CSS line-clamp. One line of CSS can do that for you. 👍

🤯 🤯 🤯
I thought this was going to be something along the lines of Wordpress' theme editor (which is okay, but... I really did have to hack a lot of CSS in there when I was using it), something nice for newbies to play around with... but after watching that video I think it honestly touches 99% of all the colour scheme-related theme tweaks I've ever needed to work with! What an amazing feature! Fantastic work Ehren and team!
I've made some 17 colour variants of the same core custom theme on my community (+ dynamic dark modes for each), and although I took advantage of loads of CSS tricks (variables out the wazoo) it was a significant amount of effort - I can imagine that time being cut down so dramatically with this Theme Editor. Even the content box colours, wtf. 😄 The swatches are a really really nice touch as well, thank you for that thoughtful inclusion!
The only thing I didn't see that was teased in the intro was the use of background image in the header... I wonder how that works (will there be opacity options so that any image you add doesn't complicate the nav links etc)..? 
Also, is there scope in a future release/update to support gradients for some of the colour options? I tend to use gradients for the content box headers rather than block colours, but if not it's definitely something I can just work in using the Custom CSS as I have been doing before.
I love it, I love this. Great stuff! 👏
PS. I had a feeling this was going to be a good update when it didn't arrive on Wednesday like the last two blogs! 😆
EDIT: 
I second this! One of the biggest issues in custom theming V4 is the lack of documentation/guides on what existing structural properties exist in the codebase... meaning that I ended up adding custom CSS to achieve things (like grids etc) that most likely already exist out of the box. I just know that, for as much as I've tried my best, there are elements of my custom code which is just wasteful because of it.

That's very encouraging to see, thanks Matt (and thanks for giving us a tiny peek at V5 wiki pages too? 🤔😛)

That's very encouraging to see, thanks Matt (and thanks for giving us a tiny peek at V5 wiki pages too? 🤔😛)

🤯 🤯 🤯
I thought this was going to be something along the lines of Wordpress' theme editor (which is okay, but... I really did have to hack a lot of CSS in there when I was using it), something nice for newbies to play around with... but after watching that video I think it honestly touches 99% of all the colour scheme-related theme tweaks I've ever needed to work with! What an amazing feature! Fantastic work Ehren and team!
I've made some 17 colour variants of the same core custom theme on my community (+ dynamic dark modes for each), and although I took advantage of loads of CSS tricks (variables out the wazoo) it was a significant amount of effort - I can imagine that time being cut down so dramatically with this Theme Editor. Even the content box colours, wtf. 😄 The swatches are a really really nice touch as well, thank you for that thoughtful inclusion!
The only thing I didn't see that was teased in the intro was the use of background image in the header... I wonder how that works (will there be opacity options so that any image you add doesn't complicate the nav links etc)..? 
Also, is there scope in a future release/update to support gradients for some of the colour options? I tend to use gradients for the content box headers rather than block colours, but if not it's definitely something I can just work in using the Custom CSS as I have been doing before.
I love it, I love this. Great stuff! 👏
PS. I had a feeling this was going to be a good update when it didn't arrive on Wednesday like the last two blogs! 😆
EDIT: 
I second this! One of the biggest issues in custom theming V4 is the lack of documentation/guides on what existing structural properties exist in the codebase... meaning that I ended up adding custom CSS to achieve things (like grids etc) that most likely already exist out of the box. I just know that, for as much as I've tried my best, there are elements of my custom code which is just wasteful because of it.

We have an internal wiki that is quite basic, but we'll eventually get an improved version out to the public (this is a little out of date but you get the idea).

🤯 🤯 🤯
I thought this was going to be something along the lines of Wordpress' theme editor (which is okay, but... I really did have to hack a lot of CSS in there when I was using it), something nice for newbies to play around with... but after watching that video I think it honestly touches 99% of all the colour scheme-related theme tweaks I've ever needed to work with! What an amazing feature! Fantastic work Ehren and team!
I've made some 17 colour variants of the same core custom theme on my community (+ dynamic dark modes for each), and although I took advantage of loads of CSS tricks (variables out the wazoo) it was a significant amount of effort - I can imagine that time being cut down so dramatically with this Theme Editor. Even the content box colours, wtf. 😄 The swatches are a really really nice touch as well, thank you for that thoughtful inclusion!
The only thing I didn't see that was teased in the intro was the use of background image in the header... I wonder how that works (will there be opacity options so that any image you add doesn't complicate the nav links etc)..? 
Also, is there scope in a future release/update to support gradients for some of the colour options? I tend to use gradients for the content box headers rather than block colours, but if not it's definitely something I can just work in using the Custom CSS as I have been doing before.
I love it, I love this. Great stuff! 👏
PS. I had a feeling this was going to be a good update when it didn't arrive on Wednesday like the last two blogs! 😆
EDIT: 
I second this! One of the biggest issues in custom theming V4 is the lack of documentation/guides on what existing structural properties exist in the codebase... meaning that I ended up adding custom CSS to achieve things (like grids etc) that most likely already exist out of the box. I just know that, for as much as I've tried my best, there are elements of my custom code which is just wasteful because of it.

🤯 🤯 🤯
I thought this was going to be something along the lines of Wordpress' theme editor (which is okay, but... I really did have to hack a lot of CSS in there when I was using it), something nice for newbies to play around with... but after watching that video I think it honestly touches 99% of all the colour scheme-related theme tweaks I've ever needed to work with! What an amazing feature! Fantastic work Ehren and team!
I've made some 17 colour variants of the same core custom theme on my community (+ dynamic dark modes for each), and although I took advantage of loads of CSS tricks (variables out the wazoo) it was a significant amount of effort - I can imagine that time being cut down so dramatically with this Theme Editor. Even the content box colours, wtf. 😄 The swatches are a really really nice touch as well, thank you for that thoughtful inclusion!
The only thing I didn't see that was teased in the intro was the use of background image in the header... I wonder how that works (will there be opacity options so that any image you add doesn't complicate the nav links etc)..? 
Also, is there scope in a future release/update to support gradients for some of the colour options? I tend to use gradients for the content box headers rather than block colours, but if not it's definitely something I can just work in using the Custom CSS as I have been doing before.
I love it, I love this. Great stuff! 👏
PS. I had a feeling this was going to be a good update when it didn't arrive on Wednesday like the last two blogs! 😆
EDIT: 
I second this! One of the biggest issues in custom theming V4 is the lack of documentation/guides on what existing structural properties exist in the codebase... meaning that I ended up adding custom CSS to achieve things (like grids etc) that most likely already exist out of the box. I just know that, for as much as I've tried my best, there are elements of my custom code which is just wasteful because of it.

🤯 🤯 🤯
I thought this was going to be something along the lines of Wordpress' theme editor (which is okay, but... I really did have to hack a lot of CSS in there when I was using it), something nice for newbies to play around with... but after watching that video I think it honestly touches 99% of all the colour scheme-related theme tweaks I've ever needed to work with! What an amazing feature! Fantastic work Ehren and team!
I've made some 17 colour variants of the same core custom theme on my community (+ dynamic dark modes for each), and although I took advantage of loads of CSS tricks (variables out the wazoo) it was a significant amount of effort - I can imagine that time being cut down so dramatically with this Theme Editor. Even the content box colours, wtf. 😄 The swatches are a really really nice touch as well, thank you for that thoughtful inclusion!
The only thing I didn't see that was teased in the intro was the use of background image in the header... I wonder how that works (will there be opacity options so that any image you add doesn't complicate the nav links etc)..? 
Also, is there scope in a future release/update to support gradients for some of the colour options? I tend to use gradients for the content box headers rather than block colours, but if not it's definitely something I can just work in using the Custom CSS as I have been doing before.
I love it, I love this. Great stuff! 👏
PS. I had a feeling this was going to be a good update when it didn't arrive on Wednesday like the last two blogs! 😆
EDIT: 
I second this! One of the biggest issues in custom theming V4 is the lack of documentation/guides on what existing structural properties exist in the codebase... meaning that I ended up adding custom CSS to achieve things (like grids etc) that most likely already exist out of the box. I just know that, for as much as I've tried my best, there are elements of my custom code which is just wasteful because of it.

A list of CSS properties in a guide is a great idea!

I can recommend the use of Pages as a news/blog application as well. I had a Wordpress blog for many years (since around 2008) running alongside an Invision Community for forums, and started studying bringing it all into the same platform in my existing IPS install.
It does take some knowledge of HTML coding/site design right now, as the Pages application out of the box in V4 is very generic and standard, with no real templates to help set a news portal up (hopefully this changes in V5). But if you know what you're doing and are happy to tinker with custom form fields and templates, you can make something very cool and native-looking.
I'll share my results as an example:
Homepage (with widgets for pulling latest news records and pinned/featured news records):
https://www.sonicstadium.org
News Story:
https://www.sonicstadium.org/news/games/sega-teases-eggmobile-in-new-picture-of-frozen-base-zone-from-sonic-superstars-r1639/
Sync'd Forum Topic (an option in IPS is to automatically create a forum topic when a Pages record is posted, meaning you can sync Page comments and Forum Discussion about the same topic together):
https://www.sonicstadium.org/forums/topic/33334-sega-teases-eggmobile-in-new-picture-of-frozen-base-zone-from-sonic-superstars/
I'm currently in the process of migrating all of my legacy Wordpress content over to this unified IPS platform, and while I really did like Wordpress and how it worked with images/media/post editing, having a single platform and leveraging my existing forum community for news comments etc has been incredibly valuable to me.
You can try the free demo on the IPS site as Mark said, but if you're an existing customer and you don't mind changing your client terms and conditions to meet the new self-hosted pricing structure, you will get all of the IPS apps right away - so if you want more time to play with it you can have 'free' access to Pages immediately to explore your options.

I have Google Adsense with the Auto Ads on and I don't think the bottom-positioned auto ads are going to play nicely with V5's new mobile navigation bar... it's annoying because I really want that bottom navigation bar!!! 😆 But I've never liked having auto ad banners appear at the top of a page either.
I suppose it'll all come out in the wash when it launches and I road test it for public deployment on my community.

Actually this has made me think.
On my community, I have one 'core' custom theme and several 'child' themes where the only differences are in the colour scheming (header gradients, dark modes etc) and header images.
Jumping on this thought, it would be great to be able to offer user-selectable "alt" colour schemes/CSS as part of one theme, as opposed to having one key custom theme and ten children as mentioned above.
I'm thinking of a version of the Theme Select drop down where a user can select a "Colour Name" (i.e. "Sonic", "Tails", "Knuckles") and the theme's colours dynamically change to pre-set colours I define (i.e. blue colour version of the theme, orange colour version of the theme, red colour version of the theme). Colour schemes that I set as an admin, not a swatch that users can select for themselves.
Hopefully that either sounds like a doable thing to include in future post-V5.0 updates, or something that will be addressed in next week's theme blog (in which case ignore me!). 😄

I see. So it works essentially the same way as 'Theme Resources' but for Pages. Perhaps that could be renamed then as the term 'media library' implies something more akin to Wordpress' own integrated media library (that works as @Maxxius mentions). Page Resources, perhaps? Thanks for the explanation @opentype, that makes a lot of sense now.
I feel like my suggestion, then, is even more useful:
This is something IPB lacks and is a severe drawback compared to other solutions such as Wordpress, which has an integrated media library where users can upload an image/audio/video to a sandboxed depository, to be re-used/searchable by other editors for multiple pages/articles.
 

I'd prefer not to share my site links openly, but I'll give you an idea here.  I use Activity Stream as my landing page and customize it to show what I want from a site content perspective.  Members can still create custom streams if they'd like but that seems like a high bar for most.  My members want maximum convenience and quick browsing experiences to get to what they are interested in (don't we all).  However that means they rarely use menus unless they must and whatever they're looking for is important enough to force them to open and use menus (i.e. you aren't really driving them to any content via the current v4 menus especially with a mobile hamburger icon).  This is another reason the v5 sidebar menu is good for desktop, as it will open the visibility up for members to see what's available vs hidden under submenus.  However for mobile, this still could be a problem as I assume that sidebar is a desktop only view otherwise you'd be stacking menu items in your most valued ATF content.
Regarding the actual "feature menu" I use, I put something simple together with font awesome icons that resemble the purpose of the link and created a simple Pages block to display these in a flex container.  As mentioned earlier, because it's inserted as a block at the top of the page content, it allows me to have these targeted links at the top whether on desktop or mobile.
Maybe there's other or better ways to do this but it's helped me focus and drive members to places of interest in a given moment of time while also allowing me to have "popular" links there when there aren't specific content links commanding that space. 
For example a similar niche Facebook group owner was complaining about Facebook taking down members ads to sell certain items, so I reached out to him to ask to post my site's Classified link.  He agreed, so I quickly added a Classified "feature menu" item to that site as I anticipated members from that group checking out the site to look for that right after I posted about it on the Facebook group.
Another example is I had a merchandise release for members, which they were chomping at the bit for, so I added that as a "feature menu" item to give it proper exposure and drive the sales.
Here's a sample screenshot of what it looks like at the top of an Activity Stream.  I just mix things in and out as needed based on whatever is going on at the moment or where I anticipate interest or want to drive traffic. 👍

Do you happen to have a link to your community so you can illustrate the solution you've described here? Sounds super interesting!
I do like what you're saying about user interests and responding to that via menu navigation, and the challenges surrounding that. I've been thinking about this in relation to my community's actual homepage. At present, I have custom blocks focusing on the three major pillars of my community (News, Wiki, Forum/Activity Feed) which is fine for what I need it to do but I'm keen to explore more of a curated activity feed tailored dynamically to user activity/interest, with maybe featured/pinned content 'anchored' to the feed to ensure many/all visitors see important items. I'll be interested to see what V5 may bring in terms of 'Our Picks'/'Activity Feed' enhancements in that area. 🙂

Hm, I can see why IPS made this change but to be honest, asking clients to seek custom app/plugin development is going to be a lot more expensive than finding an app on a marketplace that many customers will be able to purchase. I guess it will make me a lot more hesitant to spend my money on third party apps.

Very excited to see this preview and definitely looking forward to some of the new features. It looks great!
I'd second the idea of being able to use the feed view in some forums and leave others in compact. That would be really great, since we could use feed view for some specific areas, without having to expand some of the lesser ones.

I absolutely LOVE these new design ideas. Thanks a lot for all your hard work @Ehren and team! I've been playing around with the idea of a sidebar navigation purely because I can see my current topbar nav getting a bit chaotic once I start adding the other core IPS apps (and things in dropdown menus tend to be ignored/forgotten about). It's great to see this will be part of the core design as an option!
It'd be good to get an idea of just how customisable it is in terms of organising sections/content (although the part about placing 'sticky' nodes at the top gives me very exciting hints) and how it appears for mobile users, so I definitely can't wait to play around with it.
Being able to pin the OP to a topic is a brilliant feature as well. Can this be applied on a per-forum basis? I can see this being most useful in a 'News' forum scenario... I'm using Pages >< Forum integration a lot, so having a News forum design and News Pages database record design look more consistent with one another is something that really appeals to me (you guys just need to be able to fully integrate Page and Sync'd Topic Metrics and Reactions together and I'm fully sold!).
Also very intrigued with the new Forum View, I have been using the standard table format ever since I first picked up Invision some 15 years ago, and I'm feeling like it's getting a little stale..! 😆 Looking forward to trying this out.
One thing I'm very interested in knowing more about, design wise, is how sidebar content (the right hand sidebar, not the new nav menu on the left) will be displayed/respond to different device sizes. In the past all of that content just gets dumped underneath the main content, I wonder if that will be the case with V5?
I'm also interested in learning more about that "Feed" button that I've seen on the Mobile drawer in that video, when you're ready to start talking about it... 👀 
Well done guys, and can't wait to hear more!
I imagine this would be a toggle in AdminCP to offer communities the option of displaying the minimized user info or not. Personally, I'd like to try it out, it seems interesting (and the minimized view here seems to keep the design consistent with the mobile view, which already displays user info above the post content in V4). But it'd be good to confirm if it's an option.