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Klipfolio is getting a new look and feel! Try it and let us know what you think.

Peter Matthews

February 19, 2016 15:07

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Hi all,

The team is thrilled to announce that the new look and feel for Klipfolio is now live (in beta) and ready for you to play with!

 

Not only does Klipfolio get a shiny new coat of paint, but we've added a few new features and made some usability improvements, too. 

New and noteworthy:

• Klip titles are now larger, and can be hidden via the Klip Editor
• Dashboard names are no longer cut off within tabs and remain visible while scrolling
• Full screen mode is now simpler with an auto-hiding control bar at the top
• Dashboards now use the full width of your browser
• Improved support for 4K and Retina displays
• And lots more...

 

By default, the new look and feel is off for your account. There are 2 ways to turn it on:

  A. To turn on the new look and feel for your entire account, use the switch in Account -> Settings -> General.

  B. To turn on the new look and feel for just you, temporarily, use this link: app.klipfolio.com/dashboard?newlook=true .

 

Want to know more? Check out these articles:

The New Look and Feel

Working with Your Custom Theme

 

We're looking for feedback! Tell us what you think, right here in this forum.

-Peter

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33 comments

• 1
  
  Frank Scaglioso February 19, 2016 16:30

  Hello Klipfolio Team,

  just tried the new look & feel - to be honest , I didn't like it at all. All our Klips and Dashboards don't fit any more in our layout. The Klip titles are too large and have line breaks. Our Company logo is in the wrong scale and looks strechted. Hope you'll keep also the old look&feel.

  Regards,

  Frank

   

   

• 0
  
  Peter Matthews February 19, 2016 16:41

  Thanks for the feedback Frank! Would you mind posting a screenshot or having someone from our staff reached out to you to get a little more detail? 

  These are exactly the things we'd like to hear about so that we can fix them during the beta.

  Regards,

  Peter

• 2
  
  Chris Moyer February 19, 2016 18:08

  I LOVE the new design. It looks a lot cleaner and less cluttered. Works really great on large screens, which are pretty common now.

• 3
  
  Alexandre Lamoureux February 19, 2016 18:22

  Hi Team,
  
  After a quick review, the new header includes some interesting improvement, users with MANY Dashboards will enjoy it, sticky header/nav is nice (when scrolling), our Dashboards look ok with new styles (except some new extra spaces here and there - which will give us few hours of work!) but PLEASE, PLEASE make sure BOLD is bolder, this is VERY important so key metrics currently bold still stand out (not the case with new font).
  
  Keep up the good work guys!
  
  Alex,
  COO, Acquisio

• 2
  
  Peter Matthews February 19, 2016 19:01

  Thanks folks!

  Alex; here's a pic of the new font:

  
  Gotta say, I agree with you regarding bold being too subtle. We'll see what we can do!

  P

• 6
  
  Travis Gertz February 19, 2016 19:09

  Overall, it's a good move forward, congrats, guys!

  Typographically, the UI could use a bit of polishing work. It feels like much of the hierarchy and whitespace has been lost and there's quite a bit of noise in many of the cards. The headlines could use some tightening, and the numbers often get mixed in with the supporting microcopy. It just needs a bit more nuance throughout.

  Additionally, I would consider moving away from Open Sans for the UI typeface. Technically it works, but it really doesn't lend itself very well to data visualization or to the tight quarters of dashboard panels (far too wide, and loosey goosey). You could probably get much more mileage out of licensing a stronger family with a wider variety of widths and weights, and with much better geometry.

  On the whole, font licensing is not expensive, and the additional bonuses of licensing a proper family:

  • It gives your product a unique identity (even with a neutral face) … BTW Open Sans is literally the most used font-face on the planet
  • It can automatically add a much more polished feel to the UI
  • You can have way more design and layout flexibility if you use something designed for data vis
  • It's an opportunity to support type design industry (especially if you go through an indie foundry like Villg, Commercial, Klim, or Process)

  Klipfolio is not a cheap product in terms of dollars, but I have to admit, it looks really cheap as it is. A big part of that can be fixed simply by not shoehorning the most common Google font available into a product that should be gorgeous and feel valuable.

  If I'm 100% honest, I have my trusty user styles to adjust to a more legible UI, but I'd rather use the defaults as you've set them (sorry can't justify $79/mo for custom CSS just to make your otherwise great product more legible).

  Sorry to rag on the design, I just want to love the product. You guys are awesome.

• 2
  
  Bryan Decker February 19, 2016 20:00

  I actually love the changes.  I never used the Klip Titles so I could customize my look so I always had the light grey bars on top of my klips.  Now, I can hide them!

  We use Klipfolio primarily on TV's, so I do a lot of work in TV mode to make sure everything fits correctly.  When in TV mode there are three small issues:

  1. The dashboard navigation drop down is now in the middle at the top.  When you edit a klip and save and return to the dashboard, the notification that a klip has been updated appears right over the drop down list.  So if I am making some quick changes, I have to wait for that notification to go away before moving on.

  2. I use Chrome, and when doing layout work in TV mode at full screen, the Chrome "You Have Gone Fullscreen - To Exit Fullscreen . . . " drop message appears over the dashboard drop down list when I quickly move the mouse up to the middle top to switch dashboards.

  3. I wish there was a way to pin the top bar hidden like before.  I do like that the "hide" tab is gone, but the auto-hide on the TV Mode toolbar means while stretching klips to fill the screen properly, I have to then pause until the toolbar hides to see if I guessed right.

  So I would like to see the dashboard navigation moved to the right, by the Play/Pause button, to get it out of the way of notifications.  The auto-hide issue I don't have a good solution for, but both of these are just inconveniences. 

• 2
  
  Mirian Alves February 19, 2016 20:11

  Thank you very much for the comments! Your feedback/critique is much appreciated :)

  Travis, one of the reasons we choose Open Sans is to match the style of our webpage, but maybe it works well just on www and not on the product...

  We are taking in consideration your suggestions (please, keep sharing your thoughts) and we will be continuously improving the UI. This new look and feel is just the beginning :)

• 0
  
  Scott Mikos February 19, 2016 23:31

  If the size of the font in the title bar is going to be changing so drastically, it would be nice to have some control.  At least old vs new size or small/medium/large.

  We're new customers and only have a few dashboards built, but the larger size -- while nice -- makes some klips look pretty terrible.

• 0
  
  Sidda Eraiah February 20, 2016 03:52

  The first thing I noticed was the YUGE titles in bright white. A bit overwhelming and of course everything is out of place now because of all the extra space allocated to titles. I'll echo @travis' comment that the typography needs work. 

• 0
  
  Andy Lapeta February 20, 2016 08:44

  First impression is good.

  You have said that there is better support for 4K/Retina - It would be nice to see also these changes on clips (Gauge, Sparkling)

  Main issue for me is the sticky nav bar - it is unpleasantly erratic on my Safari browser on 5K iMac and iPad. See example screenshot from iPad.

  IMO this sticky bar is completely unnecessary also. It is so easy to scroll up to get it, even if it is not sticky. I can imagine also that at least 50% of dashboards are designed not to be scrolled at all...  

  Andy

   

   

   

  

• 0
  
  Frank Scaglioso February 20, 2016 11:20

  @Peter - I already sent some screens to Zack - I think the Klip title should be editable regarding size - otherwise everything looks to overloaded...we have a lot of internal Dashboards - with the opcoming new CSS I guess there will be a lot of time needed to adjust everything...Viele Grüße!

• 0
  
  Anu Gupta February 20, 2016 15:48

  Wow ! Love the new layout and fresh look. 

• -1
  
  Mihai Aperghis February 20, 2016 16:18

  New interface looks good so far, but I was hoping it would come with some improvements to the PDF exports, such as being able to select text and click links within the PDF (as in, do HTML -> PDF rather than HTML -> JPG -> PDF).

• 0
  
  Peter Matthews February 20, 2016 17:51

  Thanks again all!

  The Klip titles are kind of a big deal so I'm starting a new thread where we can discuss their evolution.

  Fonts/type too!

  Regarding fullscreen/tv mode; we'll spend some time seeing if we can make the edit-then-check experience better. FYI; you can cycle through dashboards with Alt+> and Alt+<.

  Andy: Updates to gauges, charts and other visualizations to support 4K/Retina are lagging a bit behind the new look. And we're still debugging the iPad experience; expect improvements soon.

  Mihai: I've documented your PDF request, ty!

  -Peter

• 1
  
  Sidda Eraiah February 20, 2016 22:15

  "Add a Klip" and "layout" are in a sub-nav bar, why not move them into the main nav (over with the + "add a dashboard") to give more area to the actual canvas?

• 1
  
  Antti Koski February 21, 2016 11:13

  The new look and feel of the tool feels somehow bit strange (as everything new in this life), but I’m sure I and many others will get use to it very quickly. I think I already did after 15 minutes. :) Anyway, many good features that I have been waiting for, great job Klipfolio team! Oh the joy, I can now hide klip titles. Those were just so awful, I mean I want our dashboards to show only meaningful stuff and small klip titles were just klip names for us and we do always our own bigger headlines what the data is for. Of course great that now you can do some adjustments to klip titles. I will give few more comments to the new thread just for klip titles.

• 0
  
  Jackie Potts February 23, 2016 17:41

  I like the new look and feel. So far, it is working well fo rus.

• 0
  
  Laura Parsons February 24, 2016 09:43

  I echo some of the above comments, where I've got klips that are only 1 segment wide the large title doesn't look slick and gets truncated. it's also thrown out my wonderful tessellation! The tabs bar also feels a little dated to me, and I can see colleagues who aren't as tech / data savvy telling me they can't find dashboards as they won't think to scroll.

  I've yet to delve in properly but those are my initial feelings. I'm sure the functionality changes will be a big help.

• 0
  
  Expand Online February 25, 2016 09:53

  Looks great! So far one thing: it is less easy to click on the buttons. 

• 1
  
  Jörg Schütz March 01, 2016 06:14

  I took the new look up from the first day. Its great and a modern style. 

• 1
  
  Knowit Experience Admin March 01, 2016 09:15

  One small UX issue: I suggest that "Add a Klip" and "Layout" should be moved into the dashboard/tab menu:

  

   

   

  Or move "Layout" to the dashboard menu and "Add a Klip" as an option under the + menu:

  

   

• 1
  
  Knowit Experience Admin March 01, 2016 11:34

  Another issue from an UX point of view - to low color contrast between active/selected dashboard and all the other dashboards.

  

• 0
  
  Scott Lawrence March 01, 2016 13:58

  Great inputs.  Please keep them coming.

• 1
  
  Hans Morild March 01, 2016 22:37

  I like the new layout.

  Quick feedback on the data source warnings. We get some of our data from an FTP folder and it seems to fail every 2-4 hour. It usually recovers during the next scheduled download. Would it be possible to have a gradual warning system:

  yellow: failed 1 - 3 times

  red: failed more than 3 times

  For a data source that is updated every 1 - 5 minute this will give a good indication that the data is delayed - but not critical.

• 0
  
  Scott Lawrence March 02, 2016 23:03

  Thanks for your inputs, Hans.  

  A great addition to the things to consider when we look at data source refreshing.  Will add to the list for evaluation.

   

  Cheers,

   

  Scott.

• 0
  
  Jarrad Hill March 04, 2016 10:04

  Hi Guys, I love the changes.

  One thing that would be nice would be a drop-down, like there is to access Account, Help and Sign Out. I feel like every time I go to the library I want a data source or a dashboard and as the default is widgets there is always a second click and it is always on the other side of the screen.

  Just putting it out there....

  Jarrad.

• 0
  
  Jörg Schütz March 04, 2016 14:03

  Jarrad, that is a great idea and it would be very helpful.

  BR

  Jörg

   

   

• 0
  
  Olivier Vermeersch March 04, 2016 16:09

  I don't like the header menu, when scrolling down it resize itself for very few difference but it does it in a way of javascript (I guess, or CSS3 or html5) that makes it very disturbing and unprofessional look.

  I am speaking about the animation of it..

• 0
  
  Scott Lawrence March 09, 2016 12:43

  Hi Jarrad,  Jörg, Olivier,

  Thanks for your inputs.  Will share with the UX team.

  Cheers,

  Scott.