If you have not opened SKØØLSKILL in a few weeks, it looks different. The new look came with a new homepage, and once the homepage had it, the app had to catch up.
The homepage
The homepage now leads with the thing itself: the try-it card, where you drop in a page and get cards, a quiz and a tutor back. It is written in all eleven languages we support, with a proper right-to-left layout for Arabic. The Google Play badge sits under the hero, because the Android app is a second way in.
Paper and ink
The app now uses what we call the paper-and-ink style: a cream page, dark ink outlines, hard shadows that collapse when you press a button, and a set of icons drawn to stay readable at sixteen pixels. Contrast comes from the outline, not from making everything white.
A few places got more than a coat of paint:
- Quiz answers are laid out as a two-by-two of coloured blocks, the way the try-it card shows them, so the four options read as one set to scan rather than a list to work down.
- The course pickers on Cards, Quiz and Learn use the same flat tile as the Notes screen, and a course shows its own colour and icon everywhere, not pink on one screen and lime on the next.
- The tutor chat has the same ink outlines as the rest of the app, so a message on the cream page no longer disappears into it.
- The course screen gained a Learn shortcut, so you can open a lesson on a course without leaving it and picking the course again.
Notes, rebuilt
The old three-pane workspace is gone. Notes is now folders beside pages with one search box, and a page opens on its own with nothing around it but the page. Your links and bookmarks still work: the address did not change, only what is behind it.
The site in your language
Open a SKØØLSKILL page in a language that is not the one your browser prefers, say a German link a classmate sent, and a small bar offers you the same page in yours. Opening that link no longer changes your language setting. Only picking a language in the footer, or in your account, does.
A cookie bar that keeps its word
The homepage asks whether you accept cookies, and Only essential now means it. Nothing is counted until you say yes, and if you do, the page counts itself from that moment on, not before.
That is the visible half of the last few weeks. The other half, school years and a smoother first day, is what you meet once you sign in.