In November 2024, Scholarly rolled out a series of significant updates and bug fixes aimed at improving your study experience and optimizing your workflow. From enhanced PDF analysis to streamlined onboarding processes, these improvements reflect our commitment to providing the best AI-powered educational tools for students. Let's delve into all the exciting changes we've introduced over the past two months.

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New Features

Improved PDF Analysis

We've greatly enhanced our PDF analysis capabilities to provide a more comprehensive understanding of your documents. Scholarly now reads the entire PDF, including charts, tables, images, and more, in addition to the text content. This holistic approach ensures that summaries and highlights are more accurate and relevant. Currently, this feature is available for Plus and Ultimate users.

New Assistant Sources System

Introducing the Assistant Sources System, a major upgrade to Scholarly Assistant's functionality. You can now view all the sources that Scholarly Assistant references in its responses, including components, pages, and PDFs you've uploaded. This transparency allows for better context and understanding of the assistant's suggestions. Additionally, you can disable each source individually for more control over the assistant's responses.

Archiving Features

Managing your content has never been easier with our enhanced archiving capabilities. You can now archive PDFs and flashcards via the sidebar or editor. Archived content is organized in a dedicated container, ensuring better organization. Public pages shared via URL will now redirect appropriately. Additionally, you can share flashcard decks directly via the 'Share' button.

Simplifying the Experience

We've streamlined the Scholarly experience to make it more intuitive and user-friendly. This includes improved PDF caching, full-width exported images, and overall UI enhancements to reduce complexity and enhance ease of use across various features.

Delete Content

Responding to user feedback, you can now completely delete content such as pages, flashcards, and PDFs. Previously, only archiving was available. Please note that once content is deleted, it cannot be recovered.

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Improvements

PDF Summaries & Highlights

Our PDF summaries and highlights feature has been further refined to provide more accurate and comprehensive insights into your documents. Table rendering for summaries and highlights has been improved, and we've fixed issues related to incomplete PDF uploads and analysis errors.

Expanded PDF Analysis

Building on our initial PDF enhancements, we now support analysis of up to 100 pages per PDF. This includes generating summaries, creating flashcards, highlights, and enabling chats with Scholarly Assistant based on the PDF content. Additionally, you can now download uploaded PDFs for offline access.

Image Upload Enhancements

Uploading images to empty image components has been improved for better performance and stability. The AI Image generation button has been moved below the main button for a cleaner interface. Pasting images from text components now shows a loading state and maintains the order of images.

Onboarding Improvements

Our onboarding process has been revamped to ensure a smoother and faster start for new users. These improvements include additional default pages for better organization and automatic redirection to the Getting Started page after onboarding to reduce cognitive load.

Sidebar and Navigation

Enhancements to the sidebar include smoother animations, improved sorting mechanisms, and ensuring newly created pages appear at the bottom of the page list. The archive dropdown is now scrollable for easier access to archived items.

Scholarly Assistant Enhancements

Scholarly Assistant now performs better with linked contexts like PDFs and pages. It can access PDF summaries and highlights, and messages are split correctly for multi-line inputs. The chat width is now constant with smoother animations.

General Performance Improvements

Various tweaks have been implemented to enhance the overall speed and responsiveness of Scholarly. This includes faster PDF rendering when zooming, better text completion tip positioning, and more responsive page widths across different screen sizes.

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Quality of Life and Bug Fixes

Flashcards

• Resolved issues where flashcard decks with only one card wouldn't display until a page refresh.
• Fixed bugs causing flashcards to render incorrectly or not at all when scrolling.
• Improved consistency when switching study modes and exporting flashcards.
• Resolved language generation bugs and saving issues from PDFs.
• Redesigned the flashcard ending screen and enabled history tracking.
• Fixed display issues for single-card decks and rendering problems when scrolling.
• Ensured flashcards now center correctly and edit titles are accessible.

PDFs

• Ensured seamless equation insertion from Chat to pages.
• Fixed PDF thumbnail generation and loading issues.
• Resolved PDF to Flashcards functionality and related analysis errors.
• Improved PDF memory usage and rendering at higher resolutions.
• Fixed issues with incomplete PDF uploads and analysis errors.
• Resolved bugs related to PDF viewer limits and rendering, especially with large documents.
• Fixed the 'Send to Chat' button to disappear immediately if text is unselected.

UI and Interaction

• Fixed the AI Text Edit button functionality.
• Addressed sidebar page sorting issues.
• Disabled dragging pages into the pinned section to prevent crashes.
• Corrected positioning problems with tooltips and AI chat settings.
• Fixed bugs where clicking buttons other than send would inadvertently send messages.
• Adjusted text completion tooltip positioning below the cursor.
• Fixed display issues with file upload errors to show correct max file size in MB.
• Resolved visual bugs with linking text to chat and AI chat tooltips.
• Fixed bugs related to component interactions, text selection, and page navigation.
• Fixed exporting page functionality and bugs involving moving components and re-ordering pages in the sidebar.
• Fixed max file size issues and the back button on onboarding not working.
• Ensured new pages appear at the bottom of the page list.
• Fixed the forgot password link direction.
• Fixed 'Escape' key functionality to cancel text completion without unfocusing the text field.

Performance and Stability

• Enhanced Emoji Selector performance and AI command processing speeds.
• Fixed page crash issues with pinned sections and large numbers of flashcards.
• Improved Scholarly Assistant's ability to pull PDF contexts correctly.
• Enhanced loading popups for AI commands and chat animations.
• Improved overall stability to ensure a smoother and more reliable user experience.

Authentication and Syncing

• Improved error handling for Google OAuth login reliability.
• Fixed syncing issues across pages and components.
• Enhanced registration and login processes with automatic input focus.

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General Maintenance

Backend Performance Optimizations

We've upgraded our backend systems to ensure faster load times and smoother operations across the platform. These optimizations contribute to the overall efficiency and responsiveness of Scholarly.

Design Maintenance

Continuous design improvements have been made to ensure a consistent and aesthetically pleasing user interface. From the sidebar to the landing page, every element has been refined for better usability and visual appeal.

Resource Management

Enhanced resource usage ensures that pages with multiple PDFs or flashcards load faster and more efficiently, reducing memory consumption and improving overall performance.

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Additional Enhancements

• Text to Speech Improvements: More natural voice quality.
• Page Chat Animation: Smoother and more intuitive animations.
• Export Features: Export flashcards as PDFs and add them to the PDF export dropdown.
• AI Command Enhancements: Improved usability with larger input areas and faster processing.
• Help Page Updates: Bigger and easier-to-view videos for better guidance.
• Feedback System: Send feedback without needing to log in.
• General Performance Improvements: Various tweaks for overall speed and responsiveness.

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What’s Next?

We are dedicated to continuously improving Scholarly to better serve your educational needs. In the coming months, you can expect more advanced AI features, further performance optimizations, and additional tools to enhance your study experience.

Thank you for being a part of the Scholarly community. Your feedback and support drive us to keep innovating and providing the best tools for your academic success. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you!