We released an update to the Wixie student tool. The update is immediately available for users on Windows, Macs, and Chromebooks. The update will be available for tablets from the app stores (Amazon, Google, and Apple) as soon as it is approved.

This update is primarily performance enhancements around saving and opening files. We combed through the Wixie code to make sure we are not asking for any files we do not need and are getting the files that we do need in the most efficient manner possible.

While we were at it, we threw in some other tidbits for you:

Objects fade while painting. One of the nice effects in Pixie was that stickers and images fade when you paint behind them so that you can see what you are painting. This just hadn’t made it into Wixie yet.

Photos category icons. Another feature from Pixie 4 that we had not taken the opportunity to add to Wixie yet is the category images when you are browsing the Photos in the Stickers library. The stickers library has images for the categories, but Photos had just been folder icons. Hopefully the new category images will make it easier to find the images that you are looking for.

Use a page for the profile photo. A request that just made a lot of sense was the ability to use a page in a Wixie project as a profile photo for an account. When you are using the Wixie student tool,  there is now an option in the Wixie menu to select the current page to use as the profile photo along with the existing option to use your web cam to take a picture.

New spelling servers. The spell check is now on dedicated servers. As you can imagine, checking spelling talks to the servers a lot. Before, the spell check happened on the same servers that handled all of your files which made for a lot of talking to the same servers. Separating the spell check onto dedicated servers means those servers can focus on doing specific tasks more efficiently.