Hello, dear Telescope users! Today’s update fixes and improves one of the essential parts of Telescope — the signup process. It also changes the way session management works and makes it more predictable and stable.
Let’s now dive into the details.
E-mails
Well, you got it right — since now you need an e-mail to register on Telescope. But, as previously, you can still use Telescope without any registration — creating and publishing stories works for anonymous users as well.
What’s the reason behind this decision?
When Telescope appeared, I thought that the Bitcoin-inspired backup phrase mechanism is something cool and something people will like — but it caused a lot of problems instead. Too many users lost their backup phrases, and some of them didn’t even understand how this mechanism works — that’s why I decided to replace it with something straightforward and familiar. Of course, I mean e-mails and passwords, and the ability to restore access to your account using e-mail.
It doesn’t mean Telescope is going to collect your e-mails to send spam and ads — I promise that we’re not going to use your e-mail for anything else except the registration and the account recovery.
Updated landing page
An updated landing page is another important thing this update introduces. Why is it that important? We’re going to start promoting Telescope soon, and it means there are certain things we need to do to make the web application nicer, more accessible and better in every aspect. The landing page is a perfect place to start and also the ideal place to demonstrate the intentions, and that’s why it needs to be awesome.
New icons and improved visual style
We started working on it about three weeks ago and moved even further with this update — since now, we use custom and gorgeous icons for both landing page and Telescope editor. Also, the control bar (the one on the top of an editor page) became nicer and now looks much better on small devices.
Of course, we also tweaked animations and different small styles here and there. And yes, the dark theme works fine again.
What’s next?
The next update will introduce you Topics — something that was in progress for a couple of weeks already, and something that will help to promote your content and get more readers. Another important thing that’s in progress now is improved navigation — we will introduce breadcrumbs and make Telescope Editor even easier to navigate.
As always, subscribe to Telescope News and stay tuned!