ImpressKit: 2022 Changelog

I realized that having a publicly available changelog might be a good idea. Anyone could see what was new, and I would have an easily accessible reference.

Since I started this changelog in mid-July, the previous items aren’t 100% accurate regarding their release dates.

May 30 2022

I have moved public guides to their dedicated page. Mainly because the homepage started to feel too crowded, and I wanted an uncluttered page with guides I could link to.

June 18 2022

Media contacts

Added a new section to management that lists journalists who cover Apple platform apps along with short notes and contact info email/twitter.

The motivation was to push ImpressKit towards a more “all-in-one” solution for getting apps featured in the press. With this update, you can create a press kit, publish a press release, and immediately have journalist contacts to send the press release to.

July 9 2022

Typography improvements

I decided to utilize the design skills of the developers behind TailwindCSS and use their typography for the primary press kit texts and press releases.

(I have spent way too much time staring at the differences side-by-side to ensure there aren’t any regressions).

July 11 2022

Management sidebar

Navigation in the management section was something that always seemed too confusing. I decided to re-design it and utilize a sidebar for navigating within individual press kits. This groups the press kit content (like text, images, videos and more) and separates press releases.

Along with the sidebar, there are more minor changes to the individual admin pages to harmonize the design. Stuff like the same headers, just a couple of standard widths, centering etc.

July 14 2022

This version brought the option to create Fact Sheets in a highly structured format. In the “Text” part of the press kit management, there is now an option to create and edit fact sheet.

Each “fact” consists of a label and value. All facts are displayed at the end of the textual part for each press kit.

The fact sheet supports re-ordering.

July 18 2022

Added preview to GIFs in the "Files" section. Also tweaked the preview size for the images based on the aspect ratio to show most sensible sizes.

July 30 2022

Support for YouTube Shorts.

Shorts are now created by default when you upload short video to YouTube, so I have added support in the Videos section. Shorts now correctly display preview and embed code for websites.

Latest press releases page for journalists

New publicly available page lists all published press releases for journalists to quickly and easily check out. My hope is to convince the press it makes sense to follow.

August 2 2022

New and detailed Press Kits cards on the main management page. The previous one were very basic and did not provide quick way to start editing particular sections of the press kit.

These offer all the same shortcuts as the previously introduced sidebar and also a quick way to copy public press kit link.

August 17 2022

Support to correctly detect "Apple.co" URLs when used as download links. ImpressKit now correctly displays the official App Store badges for these.

Increased limits for Short Links to accommodate apps with longer names.

Tweaked Heading 1 styles in Press Kit descriptions so it looks better in kits that use these headings thorought the description.

 August 28 2022

Added "Copy" button to the form that creates Short Link for convenience. Also made the "Create Short Link" button in sidebar more prominent.

Renamed CSS classes for parts of the management sidebar because some ad blockers were removing it. Probably because it had "share" as part of the CSS definition.

September 11 2022

Improved contrast algorithm that picks either black or white foreground color for elements that use the accent color which users can customize per press kit.

Draft Press Releases can be shared via direct link - previously it would show 404. Since the URL contains random UUID, this approach is perfectly safe.