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Tumblr Hack Week, January 2024 Edition
engineering
Summary
Tumblr engineers and designers paused regular development during their January 2024 Hack Week to build experimental features and user-facing improvements. Katie developed formatting tools to create spoiler text hidden behind black bars revealed by tapping, entire spoiler blocks, and centered text. Paul from the Tumblr Design team created dozens of updated default blog avatar variations aligned with the platform's current color palette. Additionally, Daniel and the Feeds & Machine Learning team drafted engagement notifications and emails detailing post view counts and unique visitor metrics. Kelly and Paul implemented a Command or Control plus K keyboard shortcut command palette enabling rapid navigation to blogs, Activity pages, conversations, and search.
Context
Tumblr hosts Hack Week multiple times per year to slow down normal work and allow team members to address personal requests or develop desired user features.
Approach / What changed
During the January 2024 Hack Week, contributors built text formatting additions including spoiler text and blocks, updated default avatar designs, post engagement notifications and emails, and a keyboard-driven command palette accessible via Command or Control plus K.
Takeaways
- A new text formatting hack introduces paragraph spoiler text hidden under black covers that reveal on tap, spoiler blocks, and centered text alignment.
- Tumblr explored notifications and emails from the Feeds & Machine Learning team to inform users about post performance metrics, including total views and reach.
- The command palette experiment introduces a Command/Control + K shortcut allowing users to navigate directly to their blog, Activity, conversations, and search.
Related reading
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