22Slides

The most unique feature of 22Slides has always been its boldly-streamlined user experience. It's simple, straightforward, and free of unnecessary complications.

With the release of V2, we doubled down on our minimalistic approach, fundamentally changing almost everything, both to better match people's expectations of how a website editor should work, and to provide a solid platform to support new features for years to come.

Now, roughly a year after V2's debut, we've just introduced a significant user interface update. This release greatly refines many of those decisions that make V2 great, and reimagines some others that were holding things back.

Improved page management

Now, you can easily see all the pages on your site at once, and drag them around to exactly where you need them to be, moving them between the main navigation and subpages. Jumping between sections and control panels to move pages around is no longer required.

A new, yet more familiar-feeling design

We redesigned many elements of the admin area to both better utilize negative space and adhere to common design patterns. Our tabs, form inputs, and other elements now look more refined, more familiar, and allow for more space for actual content.

Smoother workflows

Aesthetics aside, we also made major improvements to overall usability. Now you can select elements, make changes, and move on to the next task without losing your place.

Previously, the single sidebar had to constantly change with the current task. This was disorienting at times, making it easy to get lost.

We introduced a second sidebar on the right side, which allows for more familiar workflows with navigation on the left, the canvas in the center, and details on the right, similar to Adobe Lightroom, Sketch, or most popular photography and design applications.

Our new 'Strata' theme is now available. Designed to be a more traditional-style option used for simple sites without a lot of photo content, such as events or invitations, it features a compact design that can help a website look "finished" even if its content may be lacking.

You can try it out by creating a new website and choosing "Strata" from the options, or by switching to it from the "Theme" tab in an existing website's settings.

We're thrilled to announce the launch of our new image handling system! The new setup is a leap forward in our continuous effort to provide the best-possible platform for photographers.

Historically, we've partnered with some great third parties to handle our image processing and delivery. But, while placing an almost obsessive emphasis on image quality, it became apparent that bringing this functionality in-house would be the best way to provide the standard of quality and features that are important to our clients.

Improved reliability

We've built our delivery system on the back of Amazon's AWS services, which runs much of the modern-day internet and is unrivaled in the realm of reliability.

Faster download speeds

Having more control over exactly how images are handled means we can utilize cutting edge compression tech to find more preferable compromises between image quality and speed.

Even better-quality images

Bringing things in-house means being able to free up resources to spend on things that improve the value of our service, like faster servers, higher image quality, and more performant/expensive file encoding.

More flexibility

The new system provides an extremely flexible platform that will allow us to introduce many new features in the future!

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The new image handling system is already in use by all V2 websites. We'll be rolling it out to all V1 websites soon.