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Muut 1.1 – Mail notifications and image embedding

Muut Inc • 2013-04-16

Muut 1.1 is the first major Muut update. Just 2 weeks after the launch this release marks the first in a series of big updates that are about to come.

Having been in development for over 3,5 years, we felt launching the Muut public beta, testing it in the wild, and seeing community’s response were essential before being able to prioritize tasks and commence work on yet another six months’ worth of features.

Included in this update are two oft-requested features — Mail notifications and Image embedding.

Mail notifications

Watch this thread

When you click “like” at the end of a post, a small pink heart icon appears above it and after that the thread is at the top of your “My feed” every time there is a new reply.

In Muut v1.1, there is also an option to watch the thread. This means you will also receive a mail notification every time new replies start to arrive to that thread while you are away. A small eye icon above the trhead title turns pink when clicked marking that you are watching the moot, and after you leave the site, a reply to that thread will trigger a mail notification to be sent:

Mail notification

No further mails about that particular discussion will be sent until you revisit the forum/commenting area and view it. You can unwatch the thread at any time by clicking the pink eye; you can also globally unwatch all watched moots from your user profile popup window.

Watch icon design

The design for the "watch" icon received no less attention than any other element on Muut UI.

Unintrusive image embedding

Note As of v1.2 image embedding is part of the core.

Image embedding was meant to be left for 3rd party plugin developers, but then we realized we need to tackle this ourselves — we had to come up with a working solution for sharing images that wouldn’t be too intrusive and the text is still playing the main role, like our manifesto states. There is no playing second fiddle to images for discussion in our mind — we are obsessed with these things.

Muut thread with embedded images "In Muut text will always have main role"

The plugin detects images from the file name; it must end with “.jpg”, “.png” or “.gif” (case does not matter). The file path must be an absolute URL so there is no, and won’t be, uploading images to Muut servers. Once the URL is there it is automatically converted into inline thumbnail.

Image preview

Thumbs are generated as you type.

When you click the thumbnails, the pictures get displayed in a gallery view. The gallery shows all pictures in the post, even if there is text in-between.

Gallery view

The gallery view

Image embedding is disabled by default and can be enabled by including a CSS file and a JavaScript file on your page as follows:

<!-- Thumbs and gallery view styling. Documented. -->
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="//cdn.muut.com/1/plugin/moot.image.css">

<!-- Muut image embedding plugin. Documented. -->
<script src="//cdn.muut.com/1/plugin/moot.image.js"></script>

Image embedding is meant for sites that are heavily dependent on screenshots. Sites about design, games and art for example. We do not encourage the use of this plugin just for the fun of it; textual content should always be the King.

View image embedding demo.

Installing v1.1

You need the latest CSS and JS files included on your page. The complete list of changes in v1.1 can be found on the Muut updates page.


Thank you.

The Muut Team

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