InstantCard changelog instantcard.co.uk

New

I'm very excited to announce two big changes to InstantCard today: referrals and a new integration with Unsplash.

Referrals

Every subscriber now has a unique, shareable link accessible from instantcard.co.uk/refer-a-friend. By sharing that link and getting your friends to sign up to InstantCard, you can earn 50% from their subscriptions for its lifetime.

You can read the full terms and conditions here.

Unsplash

You can also now use images from the brilliant Unsplash library to set as the background of your InstantCard. If you're looking for a high quality image that makes your card pop, just click the new "Search Unsplash" button and start typing to find the perfect image.

Fix

After we added support for more Google Fonts last week, badges lost their boldness.

Well, we’ve added that back in.

Fix

Some users were experiencing a bug on iOS where their downloaded image had black bars on either side. No more!

We fixed an issue with our image renderer which was causing the black bars, so they'll never appear again 🙏

Improvement

You asked, we delivered: we now offer more fonts!

InstantCard integrates directly with the Google Fonts API to fetch the top 50 most popular fonts, so your InstantCards can be more personalised than ever.

Improvement

We've changed the way we handle images!

Rather than restricting you to left, right and centre aligning, we're taking a leaf out of social media's book by giving you the ability to drag your image to align it, just as you do when selecting a new profile picture or header image. It's much easier to use and gives you greater flexibility over how your final card looks.

We're handling image processing in the browser now, too, which means images will load more quickly, too, especially those you select from your computer.

We've also made it easier to edit the text on your card. You can update the headline by simply clicking on it, or tapping on it on a touchscreen, and typing! It's that simple.

New

On Monday, we launched InstantCard on ProductHunt. We had a great deal of feedback from across the world, and set about making improvements to our tool straight away.

One of the key pieces of feedback we received regarded the use of transparent images as a background to your card, which always defaulted to black when the image was cropped.

Well, now we've extended the background colour feature so you can use it all the time.

We've also extended the colours to include black, white, auto (the average colour of your image) and a custom selector so you can choose any colour you like. And we'll automatically change the colour of the headline for you depending on whether your background is light or dark.

Neat, huh?

New

Over the past few months we’ve been working hard on some new features that we’ve just released and we’re really excited about them!

Auto-save

Starting today, changes you make to your InstantCard in the sidebar show up on your image…instantly!

You no longer need to press the “Create” button to generate the card, which means our tool feels more responsive and takes you less time to use.

We’ve also placed a message underneath the “Reset” button in the inspector to let you know the last time a change was made. This should help you keep track of any changes you’re making while you’re generating your card.

More font sizes

Starting today, you can now choose from two more font sizes with which to display your headline.

To reflect this choice, we‘ve also switched the font size selector to a slider control, to make it easier to change the size of your headline and try out different looks.

Improved quality on iOS

We have improved the quality of images downloaded on iOS, so they now match the same high quality of images downloaded elsewhere!

Improved error handling

Sometimes, something goes wrong and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. When that happens, it’s nice to be told so you can react accordingly.

That’s why we’ve added some messages that appear on our site when things don’t quite go as planned. For example, should you try to generate a card with an image greater than 25MB (the limit on our image processing system), we’ll tell you!

Improvement

New year, new InstantCard

Happy new year! To mark the occasion, we've moved away from server-side generation of images to creating them in the browser.

This results in faster and more consistent image creation across a number of browsers and networks of different quality. It also means we rely on fewer external dependencies which is always good.

Profile picture? What profile picture?

We've also added the ability to hide the profile picture from your generated card.

We know not everyone wants to emblazon their images with their profile picture, so now you have that option.

Simply select hidden from the profile picture location dropdown and – boom – the picture's gone.

New

A few weeks ago we added the ability to crop your images to "fit". Well, now you can change the background colour of the image so your text and images blend together better.

You can choose between the standard black or opt for an "automatic" background. We detect the average colour of the image and fade to that colour underneath your headline, which automatically switches from light to dark depending on the background.

It's a small change that'll help to improve the look and feel of your new cards.

New

We've made some really big changes over the last few days which are live on the site right now.

New, improved layout

If you're a desktop user, you'll now be greeted by an improved layout on our Create page. We've moved all the important settings into an inspector area on the left of the screen, to give more space to your preview in the centre.

Image uploads

As well as loading images from a URL to serve as the background to your card, you can now upload local images, too! These images are instantly uploaded to our image processing system, so you can take advantage of the same automatic cropping service as images from a URL.

Badge suggestions

To make it easier to use badges, we've added some suggestions that you can click underneath the input. If you have a breaking news story you'd like to share, preparing the card for your post should now be quicker and easier.