Now You Can Try Mixel without Logging In

Khoi

13 years ago

Happy new year everybody! Here’s one last holiday gift: there’s a new build of Mixel, our social collage app for iPad, available right now in the App Store. Version 1.2 adds a few minor interface changes for existing users, but its main feature significantly improves the first-run experience for new users — and for those who have until now been reluctant to give it a try because of our Facebook login requirement: you can now open up the app and browse the entirety of the network without having to login at all.

Come on In

Previously, when you’d open up the app, what you’d see was a screen that said, essentially, “login or go home.” There was no way to sample Mixel’s great content or see all the terrific stuff people are doing with it every single day, much less try your hand at making a mixel yourself. Frankly, it was not a great experience at all, but there was so much for us to do to get Mixel out into the world that it was one of the unfortunate causalities of our limited resources.

Well we finally found the opportunity to fix this. With version 1.2, when you fire up the app, you’re free to browse around without logging in at all — in fact, you don’t need to identify yourself in any way. This version lets you browse any mixel, see how it was put together, follow its constituent pieces to any other mixels in which it might be used… you can even remix any mixel or start a new one of your own.

Right: What you used see when you opened up Mixel for the first time.

Right: …And what you see now. No registration required to have a look around.

What you can’t do, however, are all the operations that normally require you to identify yourself: comment on, like or love mixels, or post any mixels or remixes you make to the network for others to see. There’s just no way to let you do any of these things without attaching a name to them. However, any mixels that you do make can be saved to your Photos app (see the feature we enabled in version 1.1) so you’ll be able to save copies of your work. And, once you register or login (Facebook is still required), those mixels can then be posted to the network, of course.

We’re working on making Mixel as accessible and easy to try as possible, and we think this goes a long way towards doing that for new users. Download it today and give it a try.