changelog

Newer, nicer, archives and landing pages

January 19, 2024

Hot (does two months' of delta count as hot?) on the heels of the newer, prettier, email template comes the first significant update to your newsletters' landing pages and archives in a long time.

Rather than deluge you with a handful of screenshots, I'd like to share an example of the real thing: Buttondown's official newsletter, now powered by what we're calling the "modern" theme.

What makes this thing "modern"? Well, it's got a few things going for it:

  1. It is faster. Around 30% faster, in fact, thanks to a bunch of optimizations and a new, more efficient, design.
  2. It is more responsive. It looks great on mobile, and it looks great on desktop, and it looks great on tablets, and it looks great on, uh, your smart fridge.
  3. It is more accessible. We've made sure that the site is navigable by keyboard, and that the contrast is high enough to be legible by folks with visual impairments.
  4. It is modular, paving the way for not just more customization and theming down the line but also web-first features like comments (yes, comments are coming!) and related emails that were harder to shoe-horn into the classic webface design.
  5. You know, this is subjective and unquantifiable, but it just looks better. (Or, at the very least, I think so!)

We're not getting rid of the old design, but all new newsletters are defaulting to the new design, and you can switch over to it by going to your newsletter's settings page and heading down to the "Design (web)" section. Give it a spin and let us know what you think!

Updated on

January 19, 2024

Written by

Justin Duke

Justin Duke is a software engineer, lover of words, and the creator of Buttondown.

No credit card required. Only pay for what you use. Cancel anytime.