Hello Tanglers!

Early Access 3 brings a frankly huge number of enhancements and upgrades to Tangle. New UI, UX, features and stability are all included in this release. To update your current Tangle, go to our downloads page. And without further ado, let’s jump right into it!

New Features

• URL Embedding
  • There’s a new tool in town! URL Embedding is accessed from the Toolbar on the right side of your screen via the “Link” icon.
  • As per the name, this feature allows users to put URLs in Tangle so they can share Google Docs, websites, videos, images, and more. Basically, this feature gives you the means to collaborate more efficiently by using Tangle as your one-stop virtual hub. For instance, if you wanted to embed a welcome video for new users below your lobby or collecting your Google Docs around a feature meeting room. 
  • When sharing a website, we do our best to parse the correct page title, URL and Icon, but all of these parameters are editable by clicking the “Edit” icon when hovering over the embed. 
  • YouTube Videos are our first demonstration of special formatting- When sharing a YouTube URL, we’ll format it as a playable video right in your Tangle! We hope to bring this kind of functionality to a wide array of services in the future. 
    • Video plays are local and will only be heard by you, not everyone on the server.
  • URL Embedding has also allows us to implement a number of QoL upgrades to Tangle:
    • URLS can be copy/pasted from your clipboard straight into Tangle
    • If that URL is an image, it’ll appear in Tangle just like an Image object
  • For a more in depth overview of all things URL Embedding, check out this Zendesk article.

• Directory
  • In the upper-left corner of the UI is a “People” icon. Click it to open the Directory.
  • The Directory will show you a list of People & Rooms in your Tangle. Clicking on the person or the room will center your camera on them.
  • This is super helpful for busy Tangles or when you’re in a rush, so you can quickly find your way around without having to scroll!

• Tooltips
  • Most icons and UI in Tangle now have Tooltips. 
  • Tooltips indicate the function of a UI element, but also provide helpful reminders for shortcuts!
  • Expect all new features in the future to come with Tooltips.

Updates to Existing Features

Updated Stability for Screensharing & General Connectivity

• Screen Sharing Improvements
  • We made a boatload of small improvements to help screenshare video feeds appear as high def as possible. In general, you should have a more reliable experience with screensharing.
  • Many of you have asked for the ability to full-screen a screenshare- This feature is coming back soon!
• Connectivity & Disconnect Improvements
  • We did a lot of under-the-hood networking investigation to provide a more stable & reliable connection to Tangle. We’re continuing to investigate issues here, so please keep reporting them!
  • You’ll also get better error reports when you are disconnected. These can help Support narrow down the issue. 

Updates to Closed Door conversations

• We made 2 significant changes to the way Closed Door conversations are handled to make them more secure and quicker to start:
  • All Closed Door conversations now take place in completely private channels, eliminating the ability for audio or video to “leak” from a Closed Door room. 
  • Closing a door is now instantaneous and no longer has a small wait period. You will see a 2-3 second load when the door is first closed to move any users into the Closed Door channel. 
• Please note that the shortcut for closing a door has changed from “D” to “Ctrl+D” to help prevent accidental door opening/closings.

New UI & UX

• A big push in this Release was to deliver most of Tangle to its more complete look and feel. We have 2 major features to complete but have delivered a lot of new UI and UX in this build, hopefully giving you a cleaner and more consistent experience!

• Rooms
  • Rooms got a big UI overhaul. They do all the same stuff, but now have distinctive looks to better help better answer “What kind of room and what state is it in?” at a glance. 
    • Lobbies, Home and Public rooms all now have unique frames
    • Closed Door rooms will have “Dashed Line” versions of that frame
    • Lobbies no longer have a door on them when you’re inside to reflect the fact that they’re un-closable
    • New color palettes!

• Stickies
  • Stickies also got a big overhaul! Functionally, they remain the same that you have come to love, but now come in colors other than Pepto-Pink!
  • Stickies will also show the name of the person who last edited them in the lower left hand corner.

• Avatars
  • Avatar customization got a lot of small upgrades to enable more granular customization (we separated big categories into several smaller ones), sub-category navigation, and snappier interaction. 
  • We also added a handful of new customization options and moved some between categories. 
• Local times
  • Hover over someone’s name to see their local time zone. This is really helpful for distributed remote teams, so you can get an answer from someone before they head out for Happy Hour.

Updated Error Reporting & Comms

• More Toasties! 
  • Audio Quality
    • You’ll be notified if our A/V providers thinks your bandwidth is low enough that it needs to throttle your overall audio quality. 
  • Better Error Reporting
    • You’ll see more toasties related to errors and disconnects that’ll provide you with a clearer issue to report back to us and provide more understanding about what broke and how to fix it. 
  • Easier logs
    • We added a “Find Logs” button to Settings so that you don’t have to go spelunking in the depths of your computer to help us find out what’s wrong!

Common bug fixes

This release sees more than 50 major bug fixes, especially around common actions. Rather than relate all of them to you, here are the headlines:

• The input/output device you select in Tangle should now be reflected in your OS
  • This should resolve the common issue of having to go to your OS-level device selector to fix webcam & mic issues in Tangle. 

• Fixed issues with Closed Doors sometimes opening on their own
  • This was a very rare, low-repro bug that caused every closed door on a server to simultaneously open. 
  • Due to the low repro nature of this bug, we believe we’ve fixed it, but please keep your eyes peeled!

• Fixed many issues relating to users being unable to interact with Tangle objects
• Tangle invites now display the correct expiration date
• Tangle will no longer automatically turn on a webcam that has just been plugged in
• Changing your selected webcam will no longer automatically turn on the newly selected device
• Sharing a secondary display no longer crashes Tangle on macOS

Known Issues

• Tangle looks like it’s checking for updates at startup, but currently is not. We hope to ship the Automatic Updater very soon! 
• Links to FTP URLs will prevent URL Objects from being moved, updated or deleted.
• Any 10 digit number will be parsed by the URL Object as an IP Address
• URL Objects will grab text off of your clipboard to pre-fill the text entry even if that text is not a valid URL
  • This will be hotfixed soon!
• In Tangles that have objects in their outer extremes, the ‘F’ to focus hotkey may not always behave as expected. 
• There is an upper limit to the number of objects multi-select can grab at one time. 
• In some instances, an internet disconnection will result in Tangle showing you the “Loading” wiggle animation until you quit and restart.
• Pasting text that exceeds the character limit of a Sticky will cause the text to vanish.
• In some instances, disconnecting Bluetooth audio devices will cause Tangle to crash on macOS.
• UI in the User Panel can be activated while dragging/moving your Avatar.
• Tangle Objects currently cannot be created on top of a room, but can be dragged there.
• When “puppeting” your avatar it is possible to accidentally raise your hand.
• Tangle can occasionally experience a brief freeze when the window is re-focused.
• If a Room is moved and then it’s title is edited, shortcuts may be active while typing. 
• Images can be difficult to resize due to a hitbox issue.

Upcoming

• After Early Access 3, the Tangle team will go heads down on some Polish & Performance Optimization tasks. Tangle is finally getting trim!
• We are hoping to ship an interim release that will bring the automatic updater to Tangle!
• We expect our next release to be sometime in May, but that’s TBD. 
• We do have a few new features for the next release
  • Screensharing UX + UI
  • Settings UX + UI
  • Self-Serve Access to Tangle. No more invites or waitlists!
  • Automatic Updater

Be sure to check out our new and improved Support Page that’s filled with a ton of new content, including articles, how-to guides, and tutorial videos.