Rikki

Agreed - we avoid making large changes to the frontend on the whole (save for new features, which necessitate updates by their nature). The downside of that of course is running the risk of appearing outdated, or not being able to employ newer techniques/technologies. It's a balance between competing concerns as always. 4.3 and 4.4 didn't have any substantial changes, so we feel 4.5 is the right time for a moderate refresh, saving a much bigger update for a future (major) version.

Agreed - we avoid making large changes to the frontend on the whole (save for new features, which necessitate updates by their nature). The downside of that of course is running the risk of appearing outdated, or not being able to employ newer techniques/technologies. It's a balance between competing concerns as always. 4.3 and 4.4 didn't have any substantial changes, so we feel 4.5 is the right time for a moderate refresh, saving a much bigger update for a future (major) version.

Agreed - we avoid making large changes to the frontend on the whole (save for new features, which necessitate updates by their nature). The downside of that of course is running the risk of appearing outdated, or not being able to employ newer techniques/technologies. It's a balance between competing concerns as always. 4.3 and 4.4 didn't have any substantial changes, so we feel 4.5 is the right time for a moderate refresh, saving a much bigger update for a future (major) version.

I outlined the justification for moving links out of that top area in the entry - it allows us to display comment states much more effectively and simplifies the comment area.
No ad slots have disappeared, and our last substantial design improvement was ~3 years ago - it's well overdue.

Good spot - that happens because on the invisible widget container above the main content. We’ll figure out a solution 🤞

Perfect.

Good spot - that happens because on the invisible widget container above the main content. We’ll figure out a solution 🤞

That's a fair comment, but ipsPadding seems unnecessarily wordy when ipsPad gets the same idea across (and continues using the same term we've always used). There's not really a shorter version of ipsMargin that makes sense.

That's a fair comment, but ipsPadding seems unnecessarily wordy when ipsPad gets the same idea across (and continues using the same term we've always used). There's not really a shorter version of ipsMargin that makes sense.

We’ve moved our default links, but there’s no reason why plugins can’t continue to add links to the bar as before 😊

Good spot - that happens because on the invisible widget container above the main content. We’ll figure out a solution 🤞

Good spot - that happens because on the invisible widget container above the main content. We’ll figure out a solution 🤞

ipsPad_all is regular padding (like the old ipsPad). So this is doing double padding at desktop size (no prefix), regular padding at tablet size (md: prefix) and half padding at phone size (sm: prefix).

Good spot - that happens because on the invisible widget container above the main content. We’ll figure out a solution 🤞

Good spot - that happens because on the invisible widget container above the main content. We’ll figure out a solution 🤞

Good spot - that happens because on the invisible widget container above the main content. We’ll figure out a solution 🤞

Good spot - that happens because on the invisible widget container above the main content. We’ll figure out a solution 🤞

We’ve moved our default links, but there’s no reason why plugins can’t continue to add links to the bar as before 😊

Great work guys!

I am severely in love 😍

We didn't have theme settings specific to the editor, but the button hover colors now use the area_background settings - so yes, they are easily customizable now 🙂

We didn't have theme settings specific to the editor, but the button hover colors now use the area_background settings - so yes, they are easily customizable now 🙂

You can use new CSS features to do this in (literally) four lines of code 🙂 
#ipsLayout_sidebar { position: sticky; top: 0; }  

We didn't have theme settings specific to the editor, but the button hover colors now use the area_background settings - so yes, they are easily customizable now 🙂

They are on our radar but aren't particularly viable right now. We still need to allow for CSS editing via the AdminCP, and so we would need to compile LESS or SCSS on the server. While some libraries appear to be available to do that, integrating them and updating our own CSS is simply too big of a change for a point release.
Depending on the scope of our next major version, it may be something we're able to contemplate then 🙂