Sun Jun 14 2020

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FastComments Redesign - With a Toolbar!

We've recently made an effort to give our core commenting widget experience a facelift.

Over the past few months, we've received a lot of feedback regarding the initial experience of using FastComments to leave a comment. One of the common points was that the initial widget experience felt cluttered, with too much text. We initially included this text to clarify why the user needed to leave their email (unless anonymous commenting is enabled, or they're already logged in).

We've managed to keep that message while simplifying the UI. Additionally, for the initial page load, there’s no need to display anything other than the comment box itself, whether the user is signed in or not. If they choose to interact with FastComments, we can smoothly and quickly load the rest of the widget, such as the toolbar and submit button.

At the bottom of this page is a demo of the new widget. You'll notice that by default, the widget is sleek and unobtrusive, and if you start typing a comment, the toolbar and the rest of the UI will elegantly appear.

We've done our due diligence and confirmed that all of our existing customers with customizations applied to the widget should have their installations continue to function as intended.

Cheers!