All images in your live online manuals are being served by a dedicated server that scales images on demand, then delivers them through the AWS Cloudfront CDN.
However, that image scaling server has been having problems in the last few weeks, especially during peak hours. Which has caused some short downtimes already.
So we have now upgraded that server, basically doubling its processing power.
Enjoy!
The generated PDF versions of your manuals now use the full resolution of the images that you uploaded. This will improve the quality of the images in your PDFs.
(Previously, the generated PDFs used the scaled down versions of the images that the online manuals use, for size and performance reasons)
To enjoy the new image quality, you do need to re-generated your PDF version from the menu.
BTW: of course, using the full res images will increase the size of the PDF files!
A few weeks ago, Manula user Joe asked:
Is there a way that you can access the library of images, videos and files etc…….. rather than having to access from a topic when inserting?
I would like to upload all the files, videos etc in advance so that I can use them across all the different topics if required. Or, if I need to replace an image, I don’t want to have to go back into the topic editor to do so.
Excellent point, Joe!
So as of today, there is new Media Manager item in the menu, even at the account level, that lets you go straight to the Image, Video and Document managers:
We’re always looking to improve the loading speed of the online manuals, to make navigating them as “snappy” as possible.
The next step we made in this area is the “lazy loading” of all included images. Images are now only loaded as they come into view. In other words, images at the top of the image (and in view) and loaded instantly, but others further down the page are only loaded “as needed”, when they are scrolled into view.
This makes the navigating between topics even snappier than before, especially on mobile devices and on slower connections.
All images in your Manula manuals are delivered through a separate image delivery server, that also resizes images “on demand”.
With more or more clients using Manula, this server was getting busier and busier. So to ensure speed and stability of your manuals and their images, we have just upgraded this image delivery server.
Another performance improvement for the live manuals.
We found that topics including images experienced a slight delay before they started loading. I won’t bother you with the details, but it was related to fetching the image sizes.
Our system now caches this information, making the loading of image-heavy topics much faster.
We know most of you spend a lot of time with the Image Manager, so it’s an area we keep improving, for maximum clarity and usability.
Read more →
Two small tweaks to the Image Manager today, fixing three user interface annoyances:
Enjoy!
As promised earlier, we have now taken the next step in improving our manual content delivery.
As of today, all manual images are delivered through Manula’s upcoming sister product:
SizR.io, a high performance image resizing and delivery system.
SizR.io is now used for images included in manual topics, side bar images and top bar images, resulting in faster loading of your live manuals. The thumbnails versions of images in your Image Managers are served through SizR.io too, making the Image Manager load faster too.
Also new today:
PDF files are now delivered through a world-wide content delivery network, resulting in faster downloads.
You may have been wondering about the lack of feature updates for well over a month. Well, this is why. We have been working on a complete rewrite and redesign of the Image and Video Managers, making them clearer, easier-to-use and adding a few features.
Read more →
