Hi everyone - we are back with one of our biggest-ever updates. Below is the full changelog with preview videos where appropriate.  If you have any issues or feedback please get in touch with us on Intercom or at contact at metroretro dot io.  In other news we've also recently joined TinySeed! Their accelerator program will help us grow so we can keep improving Metro Retro.

Frames

We've added a Frame element for containing large layout areas or activities.  Frames are now under the Zones & Frames drawer which replaces the Zone icon in the toolbar.  Frames currently come in 3 flavours:

• Activity Frames - for containing meeting activities and enables hosts to temporarily hide areas of the board from participants.
• Grid Frames - for creating matrix, column or row layouts.
• Timeline Frames - for creating timelines or roadmaps.  These work great with the new Roadmap Card element (see below).

Frame Layouts (beta)

Grid Frames and Timeline Frames support "Layout Modes"; a new way to automatically organize stickies and cards within frames.  Currently there are two layout modes:

• Stack Layout - organize elements in stacks either by row or column and with full alignment support.
• Bar Layout - align elements to either row, column or both.  This is most useful for using with swimlanes via the Timeline Frame.

Tags (beta)

Tags are a new method of annotating Stickies and Cards with extra structured information:

• Tags can either be just a label or a label & value.
• Tags can be customized with color and symbol.
• Tags can be added by right clicking and choosing Add Tag, or...
• Tags can be quickly added by typing a #hashtag or wrapping a label/value in square brackets like this: [valueTag=50].
• Tags are currently in "beta" - we'll be expanding their use and application in 2024.

Roadmap Cards

The Roadmap Card is an element for building roadmaps and swimlanes:

• Synergizes with the Timeline Frame to capture/display dates based on the timelime.
• Customizeable with a wide variety of colours.
• Taggable for extra metadata on each card.
• Works best with a Timeline Frame set to Bar Layout oriented by row.
• Roadmap Cards are available from the Stickies & Cards drawer.

Shapes

This release includes a bunch of new shapes for creating designs:

• Added Banners.
• Added Stars.
• Added Badges.

Zones

• Zones now come in a variety of styles to make more interesting layouts.
• Zones of the same width/height placed next to each other will react with a different corner rounding and join style.

Other Improvements:

• Copy & Paste Styles now available from context menu or with SHIFT+C / SHIFT+V.
• Template Browser interface improved.
• Color Picker now has brightness slider for more color options.
• Colors now auto-preview.
• Shape types now auto-preview.
• Background grid now has a single size and fades out at > 75% zoom.
• Marker Tool UI improved.
• Arrows can be repositioned via ends.
• Ordering (send back, bring forward) behavior changed to be based on "what you see" and not overall zIndex to make ordering feel more natural.
• Overlay colours lightened to be less aggressive.

Bug Fixes:

• When creating Shapes/Frames/Zones by dragging area, elements within the drag area are now correctly contained within the new element.
• Mouse Wheel now works over toolbars and other widgets (for zooming).
• Fixed bug where mouse would get trapped clicking on the toolbar.

That's your lot!

Cheers all,
Steve & Jamie