The FirstVoices development team has been working hard on the new FirstVoices release. All new 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

What’s new?

New FirstVoices Language Apps!

• The long-awaited, brand new FirstVoices Language Apps are here! All sites that had an old app have a new app. You can find them on each site, or see the full list here: FirstVoices.com

• Like the old apps, these support searching and browsing the dictionary, loading multimedia songs and stories, bookmarking dictionary entries, and practicing flashcards.

• Brand new features include: daily data updates! No more waiting for updated dictionary data. Also, improved support for offline use.

• The new apps can be installed directly from the website, without going through an app store. This means they will work on any device, not just recent Apple or Android devices. Try them on your older phones, or on your desktop, laptop, or Windows tablet too!

• We will be taking the old apps down from the app stores over the next few weeks, once teams have a chance to promote their new apps.

Want an app for your language site?

Contact hello@firstvoices.com to get started. All you need is a public FirstVoices site and a logo that is at least 200 x 200 pixels.

What’s improved?

Search by alternate spellings

• Users can find words and phrases on http://FirstVoices.com by searching any of the spellings that are listed in that dictionary entry.

Adding more notes

• Notes on story pages are now shown to visitors.

• Dictionary entries now allow up to 10 notes instead of only 6.

Direct link forwarding

• All old bookmarks and URLs now forward to the equivalent pages on the new FirstVoices. E.g., an old QR code for a song will be forwarded to the new page for that song, instead of to the new site homepage.

UI updates

• Fixed a bug where after saving a song, you would be forwarded to a blank page

• Fixed a bug with placeholder logos on the Explore Languages page

• All “sign-in” text links to the sign-in form

• Mobile layout improvements for games and the homepage

• Toolbar search box has consistent results on all pages

• Media lists in the dashboard are sorted by reverse created date

What’s next?

Got feedback?