28th January 2008

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Wait, Tumblr Has New Features?

You may or may not have noticed that Tumblr pushed a few updates live today. Since they don’t publish updates on their blog, and someone in #tumblrs asked, I’ll post a list. (It’s much more fun to discover them yourself though, so consider skipping this.)

The immediate change you’ll notice is a cog next to your following count on the dashboard. Let’s go there.

Tumblelog Customization

This is the customization panel you’re used to seeing on the left of your screen. It has moved to the top now. Aside from that, and the obvious UI change about that comes with it, there’s not much new here, apart from:

  • You can change your avatar — which is now a portrait photo — from here.
  • You can force the theme preview to update.

Also related to customization is the introduction of a lot of new theme variables.

Theme Variables

They moved the list of variables to here, for a start. As well as adding lots of new variables, which I’ll come to in a minute, they added a few more examples, and explains a few terms that were perhaps ambiguous before (variables and blocks).

I’m not going to list all the variables, but things you can now do include:

  • Specify a block on your tumblelog to only render on the index (homepage).
  • Include your portrait photo on your tumblelog.
  • Insert content — ads, as an example — at a specific point on the index; after the 5th post, for example.
  • Reblog variables. You can specify certain bits to display on reblogged posts. The URL and name of the original author, for example. (An example of this in action here.)
  • Group theming variables. These allow you to insert author information on group tumblelogs. (Excited? I’ll get to that in a minute.)
  • Put a list of the people you follow on your tumblelog.

Now, what was that about group tumblelogs?

Groups

Tumblr’s channels have been renamed to groups and improved immeasurably. The first and most notable change is that you can now make them public, so anyone can see them. (If you’re not au fait, they’re essentially group tumblelogs.) Which means there are now officially multi-author tumblelogs. No more of this sharing logins nonsense. You can still have your channel private if you want, though.

You can invite authors in the same way as before, and you can theme them just like regular tumblelogs. You can see an example of one here — not the multiple post authors and custom theme.

Reblogging

Reblogging has undergone a slight change too. Instead of just inserting an em-dash and link to the source at the end, it’s formatted a little differently now. The source link is now at the top, and the context placed inside blockquotes. (Which makes me happy.)

Cosmetics

There is now an unfollow button on the tumblelog of everyone you follow. And the maximum size of audio uploads has been increased to 10mb.

Oh, and Radar is making a return.

Spotted anything I haven’t? Let me know and I’ll update this. Now go play!

And seriously, I really am sorry about all the meta-posts recently!