<DevTalks: /> October 2019
Hi everyone, and welcome to our development updates for the month of October. As in the last few months, the main thrust of development work has focused on non-custodial trading.
We have almost completed the actual trading process end-to-end, and will soon move onto the integration step and the migration process of moving existing users to the new system. This is a feature-set we cannot rush, as most existing non-custodial platforms are plagued by poor usability, due to the difficulties inherent for beginners in using decentralised systems.
However, while the development of non-custodial continues, we certainly haven't been sitting idle! We have launched a number of new features and updates to the live platform ready for you to enjoy.
Translations
Launched only yesterday, the entire site is now fully translated and available in 6 new languages, bringing our total supported languages to 9.
Traders speaking Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Malaysian, and Portuguese can now enjoy a seamless native trading experience which includes all text on the site translated, emails and notifications in native languages, and a support process for foreign language trading.
There might be a few minor lingering visual issues here and there with certain languages, as adapting the site to all the different styles and sizes of text was no easy feat. If you spot any issues, please bring them to our attention so we can make our local language support as smooth as possible.
Telegram bot
This feature was requested by several people, and customers are our obsession - so this one was impossible to ignore!
You can now use our friendly LocalCoinBot (who you might remember from the Telegram chat group), to send you notifications of new trades and new messages.
The setup process for LocalCoinBot is very simple and all you have to do is follow a link from your settings page. We hope this will make it easier to catch trades for users in places with unreliable SMS coverage.
Complete refactoring of dashboard
Let's be honest, the existing dashboard page was visually the weakest part of the site. I mean it worked, it did what it was supposed to do, but every time I looked at it I felt a neurotic twinge at the lack of UX design.
Thankfully, I had some time free in my development schedule I was able to allocate to this page, and we have now completely redesigned it to be visually appealing, user friendly, and provide asked-for functionality such as one-page table views.
What is the page most in need of a fix-up next? Please tell us if you have any thoughts.
Nearby searching
Another much-requested feature, we have updated our backend database system to use geometric searching instead of matching location and country names. Although this was critical to foreign-language support, a cool byproduct is that we have been able to introduce a nearby searching feature.
Now if you search for a location to trade in rather than a country, you'll also find all advertisements within a 500 mile radius of your search location. So cash traders can now find available ads from nearby towns.
Message sounds on notifications and new trades
This one wasn't specifically requested, but we seemed to be the only platform without this feature - and we couldn't allow ourselves to get left behind. When you get a new trade or a notification from a trade you'll now hear a notifying sound so you don't miss it while doing something else on your computer.
If these sounds annoy you, fear not - they are easily disabled by clicking on the speaker icon in your notification list.
New profile page appearance
The profile page looked a little off, buttons weren't aligned, and there was text everywhere. So we did some minor tweaks to improve its overall appearance.
We have quite a few more features and improvements in the works for profile page updates however, so stay tuned!
General theming and usability fixes across site
As always, we've done a bunch of minor changes and tweaks across the entire site. Our theme is now consistently applied on all pages, local currencies are rounded using the CoinMarketCap standard everywhere across the site, and the way that certain tables work on very small mobile screens has been fixed.
We've also updated the appearance of the header on mobile, and changed the z-index of a few things to reduce annoyance to users when changing pages. General tweaks are always an ongoing thing, so if there's any tiny issue that annoys you let us know - because we listen!
Thank you again for your continued support, we are proud of our development pace over the last few months and look forward to bringing you even more cool features soon. See you next month!
Nathan Worsley CTO & Co-Founder, LocalCoinSwap
The preceding DevTalks to read in your spare time: