What’s New

This page records notable changes in Spleen over time. It is meant as a readable summary, not a full technical changelog.

Not every small fix needs to appear here. Use this page for changes that users are likely to notice: new workspace features, changed navigation, improved export behaviour, new preferences, or important fixes.

v1.0.0-alpha.24

Every public page asked search engines to stay away, a setting left over from before launch. The site, the blog and the guide are now open to them, and every guide page is listed so it is found sooner. Your projects, documents and share links stay out of search results, as they always have.
Each guide page told search engines that its real address was on spleen.page, which only sends visitors back to the guide. Search engines tend to drop pages like that. Each page now gives its own address. This had been wrong since the site went live on 5 September, but it cost nothing, because search engines were kept out until this release.

v1.0.0-alpha.23

Pages name their icon, but some programs skip the page and ask for a file called favicon.ico by convention: feed readers, bookmarking tools, and a browser tab showing something that is not a web page. Spleen had no such file, so they showed a blank square. It now has one, drawn from the same mark as the rest. It had been missing since the site went live on 5 September.
The day and month headings in the Snapshots tab were as tall as the cards around them, so a few days of history filled a phone screen before you reached a single snapshot. They are now slimmer, and more of the list fits in view.
The list of versions beside the changelog grew with every release and pushed the page down with it. It now sits in a box of its own height that scrolls, so the newest releases stay at hand.
The email address, the town and the opening hours now carry the weight, with their labels quieter beside them, and the two cards sit the same distance apart as everything else on the page.

v1.0.0-alpha.22

On an Android phone the on-screen keyboard slid over the page instead of making room for itself, so a panel that filled the screen kept its full height underneath it. The field you had just tapped could end up behind the keys, along with the buttons for saving what you wrote. The page now shrinks to the space the keyboard leaves. It has been this way for as long as Spleen has had an editor, and it affected anyone writing on an Android phone. An iPhone behaves as it did before.
In a dark theme, choosing Edit on a note or annotation drew a filled panel behind the text that did not match the card around it, and the text sat tight against its edge. The field is now invisible until you type in it, as it always was in a light theme. It arrived with the contrast work on 29 July and showed only in the dark themes.
The panel holding Notes, Annotations and Snapshots opened at the width it uses beside the editor on a desktop, which left a narrow column to read and write in. On a phone it now takes nearly the whole screen, keeping a strip of the page beside it to tap on to close.
Choosing Edit now places the cursor after what you have already written and brings the whole card into view, instead of leaving you to tap into the field yourself. Save and Delete read as they do everywhere else in Spleen.
A post with no image of its own shows the frame that stood in for one, now with a small icon in the middle chosen to suit the post. It is a quieter way to tell the posts apart at a glance than a stock photograph would be.

v1.0.0-alpha.21

Subscribing to Folio or Library can now be paid with iDEAL/Wero, alongside cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Link. The first payment goes through your own bank the way any iDEAL/Wero payment does, and the renewals that follow are collected from the same account by direct debit, which your bank tells you about beforehand. The pricing page names the accepted methods so you can see them before you start.
If you opened the payment page and then changed your mind, say to pick yearly instead of monthly, starting again was refused with a message telling you to close the checkout first. Closing it released nothing, so the only thing that helped was waiting five minutes. The hold is now released the moment you come back without paying, and the message no longer suggests something that never worked. It has been this way since the guard against paying twice arrived on 5 September, and it could catch anyone who left the payment page without finishing.
The page now reads as a list of questions, with the first answer open and the rest a click away, so you can see everything that is answered without scrolling past it. The list beside it marks the question you have open, and a link to a question opens it when you arrive.
While places are left, a single line above the site header says so and links to the form, instead of the offer living only in the home page heading. It is not shown once the places are gone, or to someone already signed in.

v1.0.0-alpha.20

There is somewhere to read about what is being built and why, at the Blog in the Resources menu. Posts are listed newest first, each saying who wrote it, when, and roughly how long it takes to read. The first one is an account of the fortnight since Spleen went public on 5 September, including the parts that broke and what it took to put them right.
A new page collects the short answers: whether your writing is private, what happens to your work if you stop paying, how to get it out of Spleen, what deleting something actually does, and how to cancel. Each one points into the guide for the longer version, so nothing is answered twice in two places that could drift apart.
Blog, FAQ, Changelog and the help centre are together under Resources in the site header, instead of Help center sitting on its own at the end of the row. On a phone the same four appear as one group in the menu, where the help centre used to be pinned by itself above Close, and whichever page you are on is marked.
On a phone, a project card spells out the month, and in the narrow column beside the cover a long one such as September pushed the date onto a second line. It is shortened there now, and stays spelled out on a wider screen. It has looked that way since the projects list was translated on 13 July, and only on a narrow screen.

v1.0.0-alpha.19

If you signed up but never confirmed your email address, then forgot your password and chose a new one through the reset link, Spleen still refused to sign you in because the address was unconfirmed. The reset link had just proved the address was yours, since it only ever reaches that inbox. It now counts as confirming it, so choosing a new password lets you straight in. It has worked the old way since sign-in first asked for a confirmed address, on 16 May, and it only caught someone who had never confirmed.

v1.0.0-alpha.18

The sign-up form said places were limited, then took you to the same page as everyone else, with nothing to say whether you had asked in time. The form no longer claims anything about places. Once you have signed up, the page that asks you to confirm your address tells you the application landed and that an email will follow, and it says so only when a place was actually still open, so a full cohort no longer implies a promise it cannot keep. Applying has worked this way since self-service applications arrived on 11 July.
An invitation that had been sent but not yet accepted did not count against the six founding places, so the application form could have given away a place that already belonged to someone, and the invited person would have arrived to find the cohort full. Nobody was caught by this: it needed the places to run out between an invitation being sent and accepted, and that never happened. It has been possible since applications arrived on 11 July.
Visitors without an account now see a short note under the main button: the first project is free, with no end date. The founding tester link beside it is underlined, so it reads as a link on a touch screen, where the underline only appeared on hover and so never appeared at all.

v1.0.0-alpha.17

If you joined through a founding beta invite, deleting your account removed everything the page named except one thing: the invite itself, which still held the address the invitation was sent to. Your seat was released properly, so nobody was kept out by it, but that address should have gone with the account and did not. It does now. Invites that were never accepted are untouched, so an invitation still waiting to be claimed outlives the person who sent it. Invites have worked this way since they arrived on 26 June, and any left over from an account already deleted are being cleared separately.

v1.0.0-alpha.16

Spleen keeps the public site and the writing app on separate addresses, and only the writing side is meant to know who you are. The page that turns a founding beta invite into an account sat on the public side, so that is where the account was made, and the public site was left holding a sign-in it should never have had. You would see your own initials in the header on spleen.page, and the log out in that menu took you to your projects rather than signing you out. Nothing you wrote was ever involved and nobody else could see anything of yours. Invites now open on the writing side, where every other sign-up already happened, and links already sent still work and simply move you across. Everyone who has joined the beta so far came in this way, and the stray sign-in on the public site stops counting for them from this release.

v1.0.0-alpha.15

That checkbox works by setting your browser a small puzzle to solve, which is how Spleen keeps bots off the sign-up form without asking you to read wobbly letters. The puzzle was set far harder than intended, so the box sat there spinning: around seven seconds on a fast desktop, and close to a minute on an ordinary laptop. It has been that way since bot protection arrived on 17 May, on every sign-in, sign-up, password reset and message through the contact form, which means everyone in the beta has sat through it at least once. It now takes about a second.
If you asked for a founding beta seat and it was granted, nothing was sent to you. The seat was yours and waiting, and the only way to find out was to try signing in again. Approval now sends you an email.

v1.0.0-alpha.14

The header still showed your name and a Projects link, as though nothing had happened. You were signed out, and the app itself knew it; only the public site's display was stale, and it could stay that way for days. It clears the moment you sign out now. Deleting an account had the same fault, which is where it was noticed.
It now matches the sign-in and sign-up pages it sits alongside.

v1.0.0-alpha.13

The link in a founding beta invite named an internal address instead of spleen.page. It worked, because it sent you on to the right page, but the mail looked wrong and should never have named that address at all. It now reads spleen.page, and the line under the button names the same address the button opens. Both invites sent since the alpha went live on 5 September carried the wrong one.
No copying it across from the email. You can still change it, though the beta is tied to the address that was invited.
It sat a short way past its footer for no reason.

v1.0.0-alpha.12

It sits at the end of the header, the same button the project header has always had, and opens the form over the page you are on instead of taking you somewhere else to fill it in. Reporting has left the public pages and the account menu in a project sidebar, where it sat among links to other places. Inside a project on a phone there is no bug button, so reporting from a phone means stepping out to your projects list or Account first.
Report a problem now sits below the places you can go rather than among them, and Help center has moved up into the list under Account.
The menu behind your avatar checks the page you already have open, as the phone menu has always done.

v1.0.0-alpha.11

The icon opened the public homepage instead. You are only signed in on the writing side of Spleen, so arriving on the marketing side looked exactly like being logged out, which is what several people reported. Nobody was ever signed out. An icon already on a phone may keep the old start for a while; removing it and adding it again fixes it immediately.

v1.0.0-alpha.10

A bug button sits at the end of the project header, with the same thing in the account menu and a page at /report for everywhere else. It asks one question: what happened.
The report carries the page you were on, your app version and your browser, so a problem can be found without a conversation first. Nothing you have written is sent, and the form says so before you send it.

v1.0.0-alpha.9

If a payment did not go through, your account said your paid plan was free and had no end date, at the moment you most needed to fix your card. It now says the plan is on hold until the payment clears, and points you at the billing portal.
An account whose subscription named a plan Spleen no longer recognises showed the free plan with a billing cycle and a renewal date beside it. The free plan never claims either now.
The Manage billing button sat on top of the sentence below the end date.
Custom templates saved on Library used to disappear from your account when you moved to a smaller plan. They were never deleted, only hidden, which is the worst way round. They stay visible now, with a line saying they need Library to start a project from, and you can still delete any you no longer want.

v1.0.0-alpha.8

On the project overview and the research page, closing the sidebar left no way to open it again unless you knew the keyboard shortcut. Every page inside a project now carries the same button the editor has. The Project structure card on the overview has gone with it, since it opened the same panel a few rows below that button.
The upgrade item in the account menu no longer names a single plan or fills itself with green. It reads Upgrade plan and opens your billing page, where every paid plan is one step away. The project limit notice and the snapshot prompts stop naming a plan for the same reason.
On the projects, account and research pages they were set a size smaller and spaced wider than the same paragraph elsewhere on the site. They now match.
The paragraph describing a free plan was set larger than every card beside it. It and six others now share one line spacing.

v1.0.0-alpha.7

A download of everything you have written now sits in its own section. It existed before, but only inside the delete-account dialog, so the only way to reach it was to begin deleting your account.
It arrives as a zip holding one Spleen Archive per project, which Spleen can import again. Before, it was a single file you could only read. Your templates and account details travel with it as a record.
The warning listed less than it should. It now names templates, shared links and uploaded images too, and says plainly that Stripe keeps payment records for as long as tax law requires.
They sit side by side rather than down one long column, and two-step verification says what it will actually ask you for, and that you get backup codes.
On the projects screen a title like Life of Bogdan had the tails of its letters cut off. It had been that way since the grid view arrived.
It ran off the left of a phone screen. The last release fixed it opening off the top; this one fixes where it sits.

v1.0.0-alpha.6

The title and the line beneath it sat in a narrow column with space either side. They now use the width of the screen, and the button below them is larger.
On an iPhone it opened off the top of the screen, so Later and Reload now could not be reached. It had been that way since the first alpha. It now opens below the button that summons it.
An open tab checks every five minutes rather than every fifteen, so it spends less time on a version that has been replaced.
Cancelling changed one word on the account page. It now says that your paid access runs to the date, and that the account returns to the free plan afterwards.
It used to leave you on the homepage with nothing to say the change had worked.

v1.0.0-alpha.5

Picking Folio or Library ended in an error rather than opening the checkout page. It had been that way since the first alpha went live, so no one could start a subscription at all. It now works.
On a wide screen the pages scroll beneath the header, so the scrollbar starts under it instead of running the full height of the window.

v1.0.0-alpha.4

Menu items, text areas, the sign-up verification widget, and the pricing cards were each rounded to their own radius. They now share one.
The projects icon is the one the desktop uses, and the update button sits first among the buttons beside it.
On a small screen the credit line is centred and keeps the version on one line rather than breaking it in half.
The screenshots on the homepage were reshot, so they show the app as it looks now.

v1.0.0-alpha.3

Headings now step down in one ladder across the site, the guide, and your own documents, instead of the lightest weight the typeface has.
Eight panels, delete account and two-step verification among them, showed a centred title where every other one is left aligned. The new project panel also ran its description into the first field.
Page introductions read better on a phone, where their line spacing had been tuned for a larger screen.
The home and folder icons at the top of a project now respond to a tap, and line up with the button below them.
The free plan comes first on every screen size, each plan says what support it gets, and the VAT note sits beside the billing choice.
The shared links page now says what a link is for before you have made one: someone can read your work without an account.
The contact buttons on the terms and cookie pages opened an address we never used, and now go to the contact page.

v1.0.0-alpha.2

Spleen sets headings, body text, and the editor in different typefaces, and every page used to fetch all of them. Each page now asks only for the ones it puts on screen, which shows most on a slow connection.

v1.0.0-alpha.1

Projects hold a book of writing and research, split into sections and documents, with a resizable split, folding, project search, and a switcher for moving between projects.
Bold, italic, highlight, inline code, and alignment, on desktop and touch, with a floating toolbar, autosave, focus mode, and Zen mode for writing against a blank page.
Start from a built-in template or one you saved yourself, or import from Markdown or a Spleen Archive.
Table and grid layouts, title filtering, First, Previous, Next, and Last page controls, bulk project actions, and archived projects.
A dedicated reorder workspace with dragging and keyboard controls, for both writing and research.
Archive and Trash inside each project, with restorable section and document trees under Out of the project.
Clearer Projects, Account, and Help Center navigation across screen sizes.
Project types, subtitles, author or pen names, synopses, statuses, per-project paragraph indentation, and book covers.
A dedicated reorder workspace with dragging and a keyboard path, plus Archive and Trash inside every project, where sections and documents stay editable and restorable.
Keep research beside the draft in the context panel, annotate a selection, and take snapshots of a document as it changes.
PDF, EPUB, HTML, Markdown, and Spleen Archive, with an optional table of contents for PDF and HTML.
Share one document or all the writing in a project with a reader, and manage every link you have handed out from your account.
Zen, Retro, Nature, and Cobalt, each in light, dark, or system, with Atmosphere controls in the project header, editor settings, and optional browser spellcheck.
Quill is free, Folio and Library add more room and more tools, monthly or yearly, with VAT included in the price and your invoices and plan changes in your account.
A full guide with search, troubleshooting, and reference material.