Scrimba release notes — October
Better UX, comments, NPM support and a lot more.
We’ve just deployed a new version of Scrimba that includes a bunch of improvements for both creators and students. In this article we’ll walk through each one of them.
Note: this article also appears at Scrimba, along with a screencast which explains some of the features in practice.
1. Better UX and design
First of all, the website has been redesigned, making the page more consistent and the UX better. Here’s how the front page looks now:
The thumbnails display code from the cast and an image of the creator. This makes it easier to skim through the front page. Also, notice the left and right buttons. Click these to discover more casts in the given playlist.
2. Comments
Ever wanted to ask the creator of a Scrimba screencast a question? Well now you can! Just click discussion below the cast and leave your comment.
3. Live streaming for lectures
This feature allows instructors to live stream their code to a classroom/audience. Students can edit their own versions of the code, and the instructor can jump into any students code and help out or display it on the canvas.
This is perfect for making code lectures more interactive.
Learn how to use Scrimba in classrooms here.
4. Full NPM support
The title says it all. You can now use any npm package that works in the browser. You can read more about how we’ve technically solved this here.
5. Richer metadata / description
Several users have requested the ability to add richer metadata to their casts (i.e. links to other resources and social profiles), so we’ve added support for markdown. This means you can add whatever you want to the description.
6. Cursor tracking reimplemented
We had to remove the cursor tracking when we created the post processing tools for editing screencasts. This has been a bit frustrating for some creators, as they use the cursor actively for explaining. But now it’s been reimplemented again.
7. Use the full HTML-skeleton
Scrimba projects are now much more similar to how you’d work locally, as you can work with the entire HTML skeleton and use <script> and <link> tags.
8. Support for routes
You can add routes by simply creating multiple HTML files. This feature will need more work in order to support i.e. React Router. However, this lays the groundwork for a future update.
9. Create your own templates
A lot of users have requested the ability to create templates. Now you can. Just hit create and choose template. It’ll be listed on your profile as a template and you’ll be able to choose it from the creation dialog next time you open it.
If you want your template to be available to everybody, let us know!
What’s to come?
I’d recommend you to check out our community repo if you’re interested in following the product development. All new features will be added as issues when we work on them, meaning you can give input if you have any.
Going forward we’re going to work on the following:
1. Channels
Channels will be the underlying way we solve teams and courses in Scrimba.
2. Search
The most upvoted feature request on the community repo is search. This makes a lot of sense, so we’re going to add it to our next update. Here’s the issue for this task.
