Recap: February 2019 (Patreon)

Heya, everyone!

February is almost over, so it's time for another recap! We haven't done these in a while, but I'm planning on making this a monthly thing from now on. This particular one is going to be packed, so strap in for the ride!

Funding goal hit!

First of all: I'm overjoyed to announce that we've just hit our second major funding goal of this campaign! That is simply incredible. I just want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart – both those of you who have been here for a while and those of you who've just recently joined! Ever since starting this campaign it has always been my hope to fully channel my free time towards working on Anki, and it feels like this might actually be on the horizon now. Thank you for that!

Contributions to Anki

Because we managed to hit our funding goal I was able to spend more time contributing to Anki over this month than ever before. Before I go into all of the exciting stuff I've been working on, let me just quickly explain Anki's development process for those of you unfamiliar with it:

Anki is an open-source project, so anyone with the right skills can help out by contributing their code, designs, or translations to the project. Headlined by Anki's main developer, Damien Elmes, more than 72 people from all across the world have worked on Anki's codebase so far. Each year sees new contributors joining the mix, some contributing one or two patches, others sticking around for longer. Everyone works together towards making Anki the best app it can be, which I think is beautiful.

My main goal with my contributions this month was to iron out some of the remaining kinks of the add-on system:

Installing add-ons with a flick of your mouse

As add-on enthusiasts you've likely downloaded your fair share of add-ons as zip files. We all know how convoluted that installation process can be, and how much more convenient installing add-ons from AnkiWeb is.

Well, I'm happy to announce that your installation woes are finally a thing of the past! Meet .ankiaddon, the new package format for Anki add-ons that I implemented this month:

Drag and drop an .ankiaddon file onto your add-on window, and your done. Quick, simple, and elegant.

I managed to get a lot of other add-on devs on board with this as well, so expect an abundance of .ankiaddon files in the wild soon, be it for beta tests or whatever other purpose!

.ankiaddon files should also pave the way for many improvements to the add-on system as a whole, e.g. proper resolution of add-on conflicts, better versioning, and more. Keep an eye out for updates on that over the next few months!

Seeing more than sliver of config docs

This is what the add-on config window used to look like:

Now it looks and works like this:

That's pretty neat, right?

Grey's Addonry

Disabling add-ons now actually greys them out, and also keeps the selection on the highlighted add-ons:

"Bug reports were never as fun as this!"

As add-on authors we try to do our best to squash out every possible bug we can, but sometimes they still manage to squeeze their way through to users. When things do go south, it's important that you guys actually know which add-on might be at fault – which is why error messages now tell you who the culprit is:

Error messages and the About screen now also allow you to conveniently copy the debug info to your clipboard:

The text copied in the About screen even packs a list of all your installed add-ons! Gone are the days of having to screenshot our add-on list.

The most boring useful change you will ever see

Aaand finally we have some changes to the debug console, which while utterly boring to anyone else, should make the lives of add-on developers and particularly curious end users a lot easier:

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This just covers the shinier changes. I also submitted a lot of smaller contributions that affect under-the-hood systems which are not as easy to demonstrate. Things like improvements to font rendering, giving add-on authors more options to add icons to their buttons, fixing some packaging issues and more.

All of this would not have been possible without you! As far I'm concerned all of you now have bragging rights to point to any of these features and say that you helped bring them to Anki :)

Eager to give all of these changes a try? Some of them have already been merged into Anki 2.1.9, but most of them will arive with Anki 2.1.10, so keep your eyes peeled on the release log for that!

Add-on Updates

Not too much to mention here, as my main focus has been on contributing to Anki and one additional super-secret project (keep reading!).

For now I can say that I will be releasing a new version of BetterTags over next couple of days which will pack a series of bug fixes to things you guys reported. Thanks for that!

Super Secret Project

I left one change out from my contributions to Anki. This is both because I love cliffhangers, but also because it's an ongoing effort that will stretch far into March. I don't want to overhype this feature too much, but I think you will love it. Tune back in tomorrow for an exclusive sneak peek!

tl;dr:

• 1.) Funding goal hit!
• 2.) Worked on major improvements to the add-on system + more
• 3.) BetterTags v0.1.4 over the next few days
• 4.) Super-secret sneak peek on new project tomorrow

<3,

–  Glutanimate

P.S.: To those of you who sent me messages and who I haven't replied to, yet. Sorry about that! Please give me a day or two to catch up.