Speed, style & new development setup

This June release of Gramps Web brings a host of improvements, but three of them stand out:

• Speed improvements thanks to backend caching
• Continuing style updates and the migration to Material 3
• A new, simplified development setup

Let's dive into them.

Speedup thanks to backend caching 🚀

The new release 3.2.0 of Gramps Web API, the server component of Gramps Web, has introduced caching of requests, which should make Gramps Web feel much snappier in your browser. You can learn more in the Web API 3.2.0 release notes.

Style updates 🎨

As we continue to migrate to the refreshed Material 3 components, the most visible change in this release is the change of the typeface used in headings from Roboto Slab to Inter (the font we also use for everything else in the UI). We hope you like it. If not, we hope you'll get used to it. 😉

You'll notice some modified buttons in the person view and a new button to open the DNA match view for people with DNA data.

@m-breitbach has been busy migrating some dialogs from the old to the new material component framwork, having to touch no less than 19 files. Thanks for that!

Brace for more style updates in the next release!

New development setup 🔧

To simplify getting started with Gramps Web frontend development, we have created a new default development setup. It is based on Visual Studio Code and Dev Containers. This uses containers to set up a standardized, fully featured development environment with all the necessary dependencies. To find out more, check out the new development documentation.

Together with the corresponding backend development setup, it should now be much easier to help improving Gramps Web.

Statistics

Gramps Web's backend will now ping a server every 24 hours to allow the Gramps Web team to estimate the total number of active installations. No information about the tree or other personally identifiable information is sent! Learn more in the Web API 3.2.0 release notes.