Today, Friday the 13th, is your lucky day! I'm excited to announce that we have wrapped up development on version 0.3.0 of Manifold Scholarship. This version has been four months in the making, and includes a number of new features and bug fixes. As we move toward a stable 1.0.0 release, our focus has been on improving Manifold's performance and stability, and to that end we've managed to pack 85 documented bug fixes into this version.

Today, Friday the 13th, is your lucky day! I'm excited to announce that we have wrapped up development on version 0.3.0 of Manifold Scholarship. This version has been four months in the making, and includes a number of new features and bug fixes. As we move toward a stable 1.0.0 release, our focus has been on improving Manifold's performance and stability, and to that end we've managed to pack 85 documented bug fixes into this version. Our work on this release was heavily influenced by the university presses and academic centers who have expressed interest in Manifold, and for whom we've set up instances of Manifold on Google's cloud infrastructure. The feedback we've received from these groups around what they're looking for in a platform like Manifold has been invaluable, and has guided many of our development choices. Many of the new features—making project pages more customizable, providing content management functionality, improvements to our EPUB ingestion process, draft projects, and improved open graph tagging—are intended to speak to other presses' need to customize Manifold and make it their own.

In addition to the 230 commitswe've made since v0.2.0, we've also been working behind the scenes on making it easier for interested groups to try out Manifold. We're close to completion on a MacOS package installer (.pkg) for Manifold that will allow developers, scholars, and presses to run a Manifold instance locally on their Mac desktop or laptop (primarily for evaluation purposes). Soon thereafter, we'll be releasing Ubuntu packages (.deb), which will make installing Manifold as simple as setting up a VM (on Google Cloud, Digital Ocean, etc) and running a few apt-get commands. We expect to release these installers by the end of October. Before the end of 2017, we plan on providing docker images for those of you who prefer containers. While Manifold is a complex application, with a number of distinct services and underlying dependencies, we're committed to finding a reasonably straight-forward way for people to install Manifold.

We've also been making headway on a Manifold informational site, which will soon be live at manifoldapp.org. This site will incorporate high-level information about Manifold, feature lists, community resources, installation instructions, documentation, and more. Keep an eye on manifoldapp.org, and check back in early November.

In preparation for this release, we've reorganized things a bit. For a live demo of the manifold frontend and reading experience, please visit demo.manifoldapp.org. We've loaded up a number of public domain EPUBs from the Standard Ebooks project to serve as examples. To see how an university press is using Manifold, I'd encourage you to visit the University of Minnesota Press' Manifold instance at manifold.umn.edu. If you're interested in learning more about Manifold or having access to a private demo instance for your press, please reach out to us through our contact form.

Finally, if you're interested in Manifold and would like to support its development, please star our project on Github. It only takes a minute, and it really helps raise our profile and attract attention. The more people watching, contributing, and talking about Manifold, the easier it is to maintain our momentum and continue building this tool.

Without further ado, here is an somewhat truncated list of changes for version 0.3.0 of Manifold Scholarship. For the complete list, please consult our changelog.

Features​

• Manifold supports SSL #631
• Users can remove their highlights from a text #618
• Admins can create simple content pages in Manifold #586
• Admin can manage the home page hero and text. #574
• Update reader header to match new comps #567
• Update TOC design to match latest comps #566
• Update hero layout with draft button, streamlined makers list #501
• Improve copy and style of transactional account emails #474
• Admins can name their Manifold installation #472
• Manifold settings model has sensible default settings #471
• Manifold supports the EPUB3 epub:type namespaced attribute #460
• Preliminary work allowing a user to see all their annotations of a text #450
• Admins can specify email delivery method and settings #440
• Manifold can ingest an EPUB from a URL #420
• Activity can be hidden on a project-by-project basis. #419
• React is updated to version 15.5 #417
• Backend users can create a new user #411
• Zoom is enabled for image resources #407
• Resource notations are usable on mobile devices #406
• Admins can add resource collection annotations #405
• Every annotation has a permalink #404
• Webpack is upgraded to v3. Babel is upgraded. #402
• Improve GDoc Ingestion Styles #388
• Include draft/live toggle for projects. Only admins can see projects in draft mode. #371
• Manifold has correct page titles, open graph tags; social metadata is more robust #345

Bugs​

• If no OAUTH providers are configured, don't show the external auth message on the login screen #633
• Firefox shows router error (on all pages?) #630
• Prevent letter spacing CSS in reader #623
• Manifold can fail when cookie is missing. #621
• Ingestion uploader is not responding to files #609
• Only the SSR checks the cookie for an authenticated session. #605
• Regression in backend lists #599
• Reader text title and section title no longer appears in header #598
• Tighten up spacing on mobile person overlay #595
• Add spacing to the end of backend horizontal secondary menu #594
• iOS style needs to be removed from login overlay #593
• Update Texts button and table #592
• Reduce person picker UI on mobile #591
• Cover picker is a bit too crowded on iPhone 4/5 size #590
• Update backend form styles to be slightly lighter on mobile #589
• Padding issue on tablet sizes #585
• Group notation titles are not formatted #577
• Back link text wraps incorrectly on mobile #573
• Reader nav text too large on mobile #570
• Vertical alignment off on text count icons #564
• rake development:load crashes #562
• Add comment icon and header missing from resource detail comments #560
• Add "purchase version label" to backend project form. #559
• Resource collection notations are missing thumbnail if none is set. #558
• Display error in backend select inputs #556
• Backend header links should have a hover state #555
• Null date values show as Dec 31, 1969 in the backend #554
• Manifold Footer / Copyright Dates #553
• UX for ingestion is confusing #551
• Searching for projects before projects exist triggers error #547
• Correct hard coded reply count in view. #546
• Draft projects shouldn't show updated timestamp on frontend. #541
• Warning with the file upload form component #540
• Long title in resource list should be wrapped or cropped #539
• Reader footer is stacked above overlays #533
• Improve usability of backend projects list #531
• Remove "chapter" from next and previous links in reader #530
• Removing a maker's avatar in the backend does not work. #527
• Correct category footer display issues in reader. #526
• Ingestion does not correctly identify EPUB2 titles #523
• Backend project list doesn't always show correct thumbnail #522
• Malformed URIs in ingested texts breaks ingestion #519
• If no results are found, backend project search breaks #518
• Nav button redundancy on mobile layout #512
• Error on user creation #509
• Remove normal font-weight declarations from ingested texts #507
• In production, Manifold sometimes erroneously returns an auth error message #504
• Stylesheet create/edit views in backend do not show errors #502
• The path to resources from project activity cards is incorrect. #498
• When annotation drawer opens, the textarea should have focus. #495
• Webpack config not extracting CSS in production build #492
• Prevent padding on text section pagination when not showing #490
• Remove placeholder features container from settings #488
• New User form throws an error in production #487
• Resource slideshow controls don't match comps for mobile #482
• Hero BG gray on projects is incorrect #480
• EPUB ingestion not recognizing start section in V2 and V3 due to path changes #479
• Footer subject bar in reader isn't positioned correctly #478
• Ingestion strategies are not detecting table of contents #477
• Pressing return in any text field on the new user form in the backend reveals the password #476
• Edit profile view is briefly flashed after login, which shouldn't happen #473
• Start reading event link opens in new tab. It shouldn't. #468
• Ingestor spec is failing #465
• EPUB ingestion fails if text section doesn't have a name #464
• HP Projects list should be paginated #454
• When typekit is disabled, read button wraps #453
• HP Featured projects block shouldn't appear if there are no featured projects #452
• Overlap on see more projects button #444
• Checkboxes in user (and maker?) lists don't do anything. #441
• Frontend dropdown styles aren't right in Firefox. #439
• Saving settings clears all but changed fields #438
• Commenting on a resource requires a reload before the comment is visible #435
• Render error in SlideshowCaption #433
• Dropdown arrows are misaligned; Browser dropdown shows #432
• Text ingestion cancel doesn't work #415
• Unfollowing a project throws an exception. #412
• GDoc Encoding Error #409
• Long titles break event layout #401
• Viewing a resource in the reader resets the scroll position. #381
• The user should be notified when there is a failed websocket connection. #351
• Highlighting near the reader fade highlights entire top portion #255