Release Notes for Zettlr 1.0.0
Zettlr 1.0.0 is finally here!
Today marks a special date for Zettlr. First, exactly one year ago, on December 26, 2017, the first official release of Zettlr — 0.5.0 — came into existence. Back then, Zettlr was merely a crude Markdown editor with limited exporting capabilities and no benefits for users. This first release is now 365 days old. But more importantly, today marks the release of the first official and stable version of Zettlr! After a year of constant development, committing patches nearly every day, we are proud to announce to you the first full version of Zettlr!
Before we celebrate, we wanted to thank some very special people who helped us in realising this huge project. Although still very small, there is a growing community around Zettlr and some people stick out.
First and foremost, we would like to thank Jaifroid, who has helped a lot with independent research of solutions to several problems we encountered. We are thankful that Jaifroid has helped during the past months!
Second, we would like to thank my friend Chris, who not only helped debug the final beta releases of the app and ensure its stability, but who also provides our build server on which we build the Linux releases. Thank you very much!
Finally, I would like to thank Sam, without whom Zettlr may never have seen the light of the world. He was the one, who was constantly in search for the best Zettelkasten app there is and tried out a lot of the apps that are around and convinced me to do the same. While he has been on a journey to find the best app, at some point I decided to take matters into my own hand — and began development of Zettlr. Also during various stages of development, Sam has had serious critique of how we approached the problems and therefore had a constructive influence on the accessibility and usability of the app.
We would like to thank these three and all others who have contributed issues both via GitHub and via the contact form on our website and look forward to continuing development in the next year, albeit not with as much time and intensity as up until now!
Zettlr 1.0 — What's new?
Apart from many stability fixes, Zettlr 1.0 also comes with a lot of improvements. As always, you can see the full list of improvements in our Changelog, but as always here's a small roundup of the most important changes we've made!
New Looks!
Were you as annoyed by the overly complex old icon as we were, because it was barely readable on Windows and had a strange colour? We finally replaced that one! The new one is not as greenish as the old one and truly respects Zettlr's brand colour. This was an idea we've been having for a very long time now, but only with version 1.0 it seemed fitting to actually replace the icon.
Smooth start of the app
The first thing you may notice when you launch 1.0 for the first time is that the startup overlay is gone. We've increased the efficiency during startup and so there shouldn't be any crazy delays during startup (except, of course, if you load in too many dictionaries, which may introduce initial lag). So now the overlay is gone! In line with this novelty, we also enabled the possibility to switch dictionaries during runtime, so there's no need to restart the app anymore after you've changed your dictionary languages!
What You Cite Is What You Get
The most important new feature is the citeproc integration! We've told Zettlr how to deal with your citations. If you need to cite something, you can now make use of your existing literature database, be it stored in Zotero, Mendeley, JabRef, or anything else. The only thing you need to do is to export your citations as CSL JSON and tell Zettlr where to look for the file. Then, you'll be able to search through your database and select all works that you would like to cite! To get started, simply head over to our new guide on how to cite with Zettlr.
Native Looks
Another feature we've perfected in the past months was the looks of Zettlr. macOS users were already able to enjoy a frameless window, but Windows and Linux users until now had to wait. But we've implemented a custom styling, so the menu bar on Windows and Linux is now gone and the window is extremely minimal. To open the application menu, simply use the "sandwich" menu button to the left of the toolbar.
Additionally, you can now uncouple Quicklook windows (which have also been revamped!) from the main window, i.e. make them into truly independent windows. This will be a welcoming change especially for windows users, as this enables you to, for instance, have two Quicklook windows open on the left side of your screen while having the full app window on the right (or, you may now drag them onto completely different screens).
Wrap Up
So you see, we've put a lot of effort into the new version, and as you can see in Zettlr's GitHub Issue List, there are a lot of wishes for new functionality that we will be integrating in the next months. Our work is finished and has only begun at the same time. Therefore stay tuned, you will be hearing from us again very soon!
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the team of Zettlr!