Starting today, we’ll be rolling out a HipChat that looks a whole lot different. At first you’ll notice it’s lighter and cleaner, but there’s a lot more going on (and sets us up for more big changes to come). We’re starting with the Mac app first, then we’ll be rolling out the changes to the rest of the apps.
HipChat for Mac 3.0
Over the past few years, the Atlassian design team created the Atlassian Design Guidelines. ADG is a public guide of the best practices when designing Atlassian products, services, and add-ons. We followed the spirit of these guidelines in the new Mac app, so some of it may feel familiar if you currently use existing Atlassian products.
More than a coat of paint
Along with a new design, you’ll also find the app has some new features and fixes mixed in.
Emoticon autocomplete
Does your team have more emoticons than you can remember? It may sound like a (firstworldproblem) but once you use emoticon autocomplete, you’ll wonder how you lived without it. Simply type the open parentheses, and the autocomplete window will pop up.
Local time in 1-to-1 chats
Now when you’re in a chat with someone, you’ll see the local date and time of where they are. As a company that’s spread across a dozen time zones, we’ve been wanting this for a long time. Now I’ll know if I’m about to message someone in the middle of the night. I’m still going to do it, but at least I’ll know.
To make sure you don’t get woken up, you can set your timezone in your account settings.
Unread message counts
We recently added unread message counts to our Android app. Our Android users loved it, so we’re releasing it on all of our desktop apps (starting with Mac). HipChat will also indicate when you have new messages for tabs hidden off of your screen. You won’t miss a message again.
New presence icons
Our old icons were the classic red, orange, and green orbs that made it somewhat difficult to tell them apart (nearly impossible for colorblind folks). We’ve kept the color scheme, but changed the shapes to make it easier for everyone to know whether someone is available.
One last change: search.
As HipChat has grown, our search took on the brunt of the growing pains. We’ve made a lot of infrastructure changes and now search speed should be noticeably faster. There’s also a search bar in the header now so you can search from anywhere. Best yet, since version 2.6, search results now show up within the app.
There’s a lot more in this latest version, so update your Mac app and check it out. If you don’t have the app yet, download it for free at hipchat.com/downloads
As always, we want to hear your unfiltered feedback. If you have questions or got something to say, please let us know.