New Home Art, and Room for Everyone
A week after the last planner update, the Home page has new art again, and the planner got better at trips with more than one person on them. Here’s what changed.
New art on the Home page
The five phase cards have new, hand-made illustrations: someone at a computer dreaming up a day of rides for Plan, a family mapping out a route for Preview, a suitcase being packed for Prepare, a family out in the park taking photos for Play, and an “Our Day” photo collage for Publish. Each one still plays a short animation when the page opens and again when you hover over it. The thought bubble fills with rides one at a time, the route draws itself stop by stop, the clothes drop into the suitcase while a packing list ticks itself off, the cameras flash, and the photos pop onto the screen. If your device is set to reduce motion, they sit still.
The banner was redrawn to go with them: a little skyline where a train glides in along an elevated track, a coaster car teeters at the top of a wooden roller coaster, and a Ferris wheel turns slowly behind the train, its cars staying level as it goes. Its colors come from the cards, so the banner’s sky is the same sky. In dark mode it becomes a blue-hour evening with stars, fireworks, and the wheel’s lights on.
Trips with more than one person
If you plan for a group, three things work better now.
- Two people can want the same thing. Before, once someone in your group added a ride from the catalog, it showed as already added for everyone, and nobody else could pick it. Now each person adds their own wishes. The catalog says who else wants something (“Also wanted by Sam”), and the Plan list shows a badge for each person. Checking it off as done still counts for everyone.
- The same goes for packing. On Prepare, two people can each pack sunscreen, and the catalog shows “Also packing: Dana”.
- Everyone’s GPS trail, side by side. When more than one person records a trail on the same day, Publish used to join them into a single line that zigzagged between wherever each person was. Each person now gets their own line, in their group color. The Trip Map has a row of names to show or hide each person’s trail, and playback shows where everyone was at the same moment. The “Where You Walked” cards give each person their own card, miles, and time range, and the PDF recap lists each person’s stats on its map pages.
Smaller fixes
- Catalog categories. The sub-category filters in the catalog only listed the ones you already had items in, so Shopping in particular looked like it was missing categories. Every tab now lists them all, with a count beside each.
- Editing on a phone. The buttons along the bottom of the Edit Wish window ran off the screen on phones, hiding Save. They wrap onto a second line now.
- Map times. The popups on Preview’s map showed 24-hour times. They use AM and PM like the rest of the planner.
- Names with symbols. A trip, item, or hotel name with characters like &, < or > in it now always prints exactly as typed in the PDF recap and the printable itinerary.
What’s next
ParQwish Pal 1.0 is back with Apple for review. The version we sent on October 8 already includes the shared categories and the option to change an outfit’s, gear item’s, or sundry’s category in the app, so there won’t be a separate 1.0.1 for those. The update after 1.0 brings the shared wishes and packing above to the phone, so badges and the Ready list there show everyone who wants each thing.