The FirstVoices development team has been working hard on the new release, which sees the launch of new features, as well as solutions to bugs and glitches on the site. In addition, we’ve also published new information on our blog. All of these updates have been prompted by the hard-working Language Teams and community members, whose valuable feedback, ideas and suggestions have been crucial in making FirstVoices a better platform.

If you have questions about any of the updates listed below, or have ideas for ways to improve FirstVoices, please contact us at: hello@firstvoices.com

New features

The "related words" field allows words to be linked together

If you have words that you want to link together on their entry page, you can now do so using the related words field. Some examples of when you might use this are:

1. If you have words that fit within the same, niche theme (i.e. "dog" and "puppy")
2. If you have words that are homonyms, meaning that they have the same spelling and pronunciation but a different definition (i.e. "bark – the rough exterior of a tree" and "bark – the sound a dog makes")

How you use the related words field is up to you and your language team. And don't forget, the related phrases field is also available. The video below provides more information, as well as details on how to use the field.

The "general notes" field is a customizable field on all words and phrases entries

If you have information about a word or phrase entry that doesn't quite fit into another field on FirstVoices, there is now a "general notes" field. This field can host any kind of information you would like, and the text can be formatted. It also has the ability to embed videos from websites like Youtube and Vimeo. The video below provides more information, as well as details on how to use the field.

The "About Our Language" section no longer has a word limit

While previous versions of the About Our Language section had a word limit, you can now write as much as you would like in this section!

"Command" had been added as a part of speech

If your language uses "command" as a part of speech, that option now exists for word and phrase entries.

Bug fixes

Relevant reports now sort chronologically

The recently modified and recently created words/phrases/song/stories reports now sort chronologically instead of alphabetically. This means that the most recent entries that you've created and modified will be listed at the top of these reports.

Songs and Stories are no longer displaying HTML tags

You may have noticed that some songs and stories started to display code called HTML, such as <b> or <br>. These tags are no longer displaying, and songs and stories are naturally formatted without them.

Video playback issues have been resolved

Across FirstVoices, some older videos were displaying but would not play when clicked. This bug has been fixed, and all videos attached to words, phrases, songs and stories now play properly! 

Using / in certain media fields no longer results in an error

Previously, using a slash ( / ) when naming an audio file, image or video on FirstVoices would result in an error message. That has since been resolved and slashes are now allowed in all fields.

Removing text from a field does not prevent saving the entry

A former bug meant that if you had a field filled out, such as "pronunciation", and then you removed the text from that field entirely, it would not allow you to save the entry unless you re-added something back into the field. Now if you delete text from a field, you can save the entry without any issues.

New documentation

Looking for support, or to learn something new? Here is the new documentation that has been added to our Blog & Knowledge Base:

• Request a new keyboard

Contact us

Send us your questions, concerns, ideas, bugs and feedback at hello@firstvoices.com!