Add "What's new" menu item in top navigation
Problem to solve
Currently, we rarely highlight new features within GitLab. There is no inline link to our monthly release post that matches the version of the GitLab instance.
Thoughts
- Promote our release post or something similar cc: @tauriedavis
- Make sure people actually update the instance whenever a new release is out
- Better place to show version info than on the help page
- Notify of new version
Proposal
-
For the first iteration, we add a "What's new?" item to the Help dropdown as depicted in the design below.
-
Tell instances about new things that have been added in their current version by adding static release notes that live locally on the instance.
- For a first iteration, we can just generate these from
CHANGELOG.md
.
- For a first iteration, we can just generate these from
-
Tell instances about new things that have been added in future versions:
- I think that the boring/most straightforward approach here is to just always link to the latest major release post. For a first iteration, we can link to the latest major release by linking to a static URL on
about.gitlab.com
that redirects to the most recent release post.
- I think that the boring/most straightforward approach here is to just always link to the latest major release post. For a first iteration, we can link to the latest major release by linking to a static URL on
Future iterations:
- In the future, we can make this approach fancier and more friendly to read. Maybe by writing specific release notes from the release post.
- Create an endpoint on
about.gitlab.com
which receives a url param of the instance version. This would let us create a cool diff between your instance version and latest.
Previous Proposal
- For the first iteration, we add a "What's new?" item to the Help dropdown as depicted in the design below.
- This new item will be placed between
Help
andContribute to GitLab
. - The "What's new?" row should link to the release post for the installed version.
- For patch releases, the row will link to the blog post for the corresponding major or minor release (e.g. an
11.6.3
installation links to11.6
) - For release candidates, the row will link to the blog post for the previous major or minor release (e.g. a
11.6-RC3
installation links to11.5
)
- For patch releases, the row will link to the blog post for the corresponding major or minor release (e.g. an
Links / references
Edited by Jeremy Watson (ex-GitLab)