Today, we’re super excited to give you a huge update to one of the core elements of GitBook — published documentation. It’s been in our DNA since we first created GitBook back in 2014, and it’s still a huge part of what makes us who we are.

With this release, we’ve rebuilt and redesigned our published content, with major improvements across the board and a new look and feel that we think you’ll love.

Let’s get into the details.

Time for a new look

This release brings a new look to your published docs, with a more modern design and a streamlined layout that makes your docs easier to browse and read.

We haven’t messed with the layout, but we have made some things easier to find. We’ve also made some neat visual improvements that add a little style to your docs. For example, you’ll notice better highlighting in code block syntax. Or take a closer look at the icons in a hint block — you’ll see a subtle animation to draw attention to the hint.

New customization options and multi-space search

All of your published documentation will benefit from this modern new design. But there are also some options you can enable behind the scenes that will make your content look even better.

First up, you now have a new customization option to change the background color of your page. In the Customize menu, you can select either a plain background, or you can choose to subtly change its color to match your theme. So now your docs can look even more on-brand.

Plus, we’ve also added automatic mode detection to published docs. So if you’ve chosen to make your docs available in light and dark mode, your site will automatically detect your device’s system setting and set the docs to match.

You can now also search across multiple spaces — which is great when you have more than one published space in a collection and want to let users find information across them all. Now they can do it all from the single search bar on any page.

Faster, easier visitor authentication

As well as those more cosmetic upgrades, we’ve also improved the way visitor authentication works for published documentation. You can now set up authenticated access for published docs using our Auth0, Azure AD and Okta integrations — which makes the whole process much simpler. Of course, you can still set it up with a custom backend if you prefer.

Authenticated documentation is great if you have sensitive information you want to share with specific clients, team members or authorized users. Or if you have multiple customers who all need custom documentation that isn’t open to the public.

API documentation improvements

As well as the more cosmetic upgrades, we’ve also made some big improvements to the content on your page.

First up, we’ve improved our OpenAPI block for published content. The new OpenAPI block displays information like sample code to use an endpoint, the shape of a response, and a detailed list of attributes — all based on your actual API definition, rather than manual input. So now you can see all the information you need to use the API at a glance, and it’s easy to navigate between response types and languages for sample calls.

We want your API documentation to be a real productivity tool for developers, so we also have more improvements in the pipeline — including a Try it! option that opens an interactive playground. We’re also planning an update to visitor authentication so users can explore APIs using their own API tokens, offering a more personalized experience.

Faster loading, better PDF exports and more

That’s a lot of cosmetic upgrades — but this release also improves things under the hood. So along with better-looking docs, you should also notice improved loading performance across all your content. Pages should load faster, feel snappier, and generally give your readers a better experience.

And that’s not all. We’ve also redesigned the PDF export experience. It’s now faster and easier than ever, and it produces even better results. So if you enable the option in the Customize menu for your published space, your users will get an incredible PDF every time.

There’s more to come

We’ve been working hard on these improvements for some time now, so we hope you love the changes. As with all updates, we’ve seen some bug reports and improvements to make — and we’re hard at work on them now. Stay tuned for more on this in the coming weeks. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy exploring and customizing your new public docs.

In the next few weeks we’ll have another big upgrade to share about published documentation. Stay tuned to find out more — in the meantime, we hope you enjoy exploring and customizing your new public docs 👀

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