NEW FEATURES

• "Customize your Weather" has been updated to include a new native weather experience for users. If you have weather enabled in settings and your weather icon turned on, there will be an addition of a "location" button on all native cards. Clicking the location button or clicking Customize your Weather in settings, will take users to a Weather List page where they can enter multiple zip codes and refer back to locations of interests. This page controls the data displayed on all-weather cards. Included on the Weather List page is the ability to turn on device tracking so your current device location can retrieve weather data. This is labeled as Show the weather around me. (NOWIOS-151) (NOWANDROID-85)
• This feature offers an optional deployment of a video player associated with your Live Stream banner. The controls are in Page Customizations/Live Streaming. To deploy: 
  • Enable the Video Player
  • Upload a thumbnail for the live stream. The user will be greeted with the live stream player at the top of the home topic feed under the breaking news region.
  • If the user dismisses the player, the live stream banner moves back to top of the app above the header. (NOWIOS-156)
• The GAM video ad unit in Page Customizations/Advertising will now deploy pre-roll for native live streams deployed through live streaming banner in addition to deploying video for the multi-media card. (NOWIOS-260, NOWANDROID-140)
• The following events have been added to legacy GA analytics. This applies only to customers that have a GA 360 account. 
  • Event Name: login_display
    • Category: user_action
    • Action: wall
    • Label: Login Display
  • Event Name: user_login
    • Category: user_action
    • Action: login
    • Label: User LogIn
  • Event Name: user_registration
    • Category: user_action
    • Action: registration
    • Label: User Registration (NOWIOS-170) (NOWANDROID-94)
• The minimum device support has been updated from IOS10 to IOS11. (NOWIOS-225)
• The temperature unit in the weather URL (available when a reader clicks on the weather button in the navbar or on any of the weather cards) is now being passed in the URL. (NOWIOS-247) (NOWANDROID-132)

IMPROVEMENTS

• The Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) is a random device identifier assigned by Apple to a user's device. Advertisers use this to track data so they can deliver customized advertising. The IDFA is used for tracking and identifying a user (without revealing personal information). In this release, BLOX Now apps will begin offering Request App Tracking Transparency authorization, which is a consent prompt asking for user consent for tracking.  For documentation on IDFA, visit: https://help.bloxcms.com/blox_now/article_f1df5d7c-9301-11eb-94fb-f7a0a040a852.html (NOWIOS-31) 
• Unused code was deleted to reduce the size of the app packages and improve the performance of the app such as loading time.  (NOWIOS-145) (NOWANDROID-81)
• Alert Banner in Page Customizations is now label Live Streaming
  • If no Field59 schedule URL is provided, the banner will stay up all of the time.
  • If a Field59 schedule URL is provided, the URL will display when the schedule dictates there is a live stream.
  • If no live stream is available according to the Field 9 schedule, then a banner will not display.
  • This is a change from toggling between active and inactive messaging for the alert banner.
  • The inactive messaging will no longer apply.
  • Customers will want to make sure the Live Streaming messaging is set up to pull from the active messaging fields in page customizations.
    (NOWIOS-153) (NOWANDROID-86)
• In this feature update, we have improved the UI to expose the Save and Share options on the bottom right-hand side of the cards in the topic feeds. Previously, users would have to swipe left or right on the card to expose these features. (NOWIOS-155) (NOWANDROID-87)
• The accent bar has been reduced by 50% throughout the UI in the app. (NOWIOS-187)
• We have removed the "External" flag that was forcing the e-Edition to open in a browser. The e-Edition will now open in a WebKit page and that WebKit page allows rotation so the e-Edition performs properly. In addition, the e-Edition now bypasses subscription pages and if the paywall is enabled on the app, the user will be prompted with a login screen. If they have a web subscription, they will be granted access. 
• For more details of e-Edition and Access Control updates in this release, review this page on the help site. (NOWIOS-235) (NOWANDROID-127)
• We reduced the spacing between the top and the title for headline cards and the space between the title and the bottom of the image on feature cards by 2/3. It was 16 and it is now dropped to 10.  (NOWIOS-24)
• We have made changes to the GA4 Analytics. For documentation, visit the help site.

BUG FIXES