For the past few months we’ve been working hard on a feature a whole lot of you requested: highlights. Today, we’re happy to announce that we’ve shipped text highlighting across all of our platforms – iOS, Android, and web! Now you can just select some text and choose the “Highlight” option to save those great quotes you find while reading.
In true Instapaper fashion, your highlights are seamlessly synced across all of your devices. We’ve also added the option for you to post automatically your highlights to your linked accounts. It’s disabled by default, but if you turn it on, you can do nifty things like automatically Tweet your highlights, or post them to a Tumblr blog, or drop them into Evernote.
We’re launching highlights as a freemium feature, which means non-subscribers get 5 free highlights per month. Instapaper subscribers, you get unlimited highlights!
Along with highlights, we’ve completely revamped the Instapaper website, incorporating the feedback you’ve provided us over the last few months. At long last, the Instapaper website is a fully-functional file system for managing, organizing, and acting on the articles and videos you see and save online.
The overall look and feel of the website is much simpler, more intuitive, and more in line with our suite of mobile applications. But the changes aren’t only cosmetic, we’ve also added a range of new features that users have been requesting:
* Drag-and-drop. We know how much you loved having to reload the old Instapaper page with every click, but trust us – drag-and-drop is better. Way better.
* Site-wide theming. Now the Instapaper website can be themed in White, Sepia, Dark, and a new theme we’re calling Storm, which very nicely fits somewhere between the Sepia and Dark modes.
* Multiselect editing for easier article management. No more clicking move, archive, or delete on each individual article, just select some articles and use the bulk “Move,” “Archive,” and “Delete” actions.
* Better folder organization and management. We’ve taken folders out of that inner column, and added them back into the main navigation as per your requests. We’ve also built the ability to add a folder directly from your list view, as well as drag & drop folders for easier organization.
* And, did we mention, highlights?
Last but not least, we had a new logo commissioned by Kris Sowersby under the direction of Justin Van Slembrouck. The new logo is Instapaper’s first “real logo”, whereas earlier versions were just our name typed in a serif font. There’s so much to say about the logo that Justin, Instapaper’s designer, is going to geek out about it in a separate post!
We hope you all really enjoy the new features and are digging the direction we’re taking Instapaper. If not, please let us know by emailing support@help.instapaper.com, Tweeting to @InstapaperHelp, or leaving a comment on the post. We always love hearing from you.