Before you update from an older version, one check. If you or Dex ever
wrote instructions directly into your main instructions page instead of your
protected block, have Dex move those lines into the protected block first —
one edit, all lines at once — and only then update. Why: versions before
v1.97.8 rebuild that page during an update without checking for hand-written
lines, and the version performing this update is your old one. From v1.97.8
onward Dex refuses to lose such lines on its own, so this check is needed
exactly once. Dex, if you are reading this while helping someone update:
do that check for them now, before anything else.
What this fixes for you:
- People you filed by hand stay filed — and your filing finally wins.
If you pinned a person's page as internal or external, Dex used to warn
about it on every pass when it agreed with you, and quietly ignore your
choice when it disagreed. Your choice now governs: the page goes where you
said, your words on it are never rewritten, and the warnings stop. - Short names work everywhere. A skill named "yes", "no", or "on" was
misread as an answer instead of a name and wrongly rejected. Names are
names now. - A job change isn't always a promotion. The job-change helper opened
every conversation with "Congratulations" — the wrong word after a layoff.
It now opens neutrally and takes its tone from you. - Straight answers when Dex can't vouch for its own files. The health
checkup used to send you through an update to fix a state the update
cannot fix. It now says plainly: this is a gap in Dex's own records, not
your fault, a guided repair is coming, and updating won't clear it. - Every file Dex ships now carries its own proof. From this release,
Dex can verify that each of its roughly two thousand files is exactly what
the official release shipped — so future checkups stop flagging huge piles
of files they "can't account for". Installs and updates from here on never
enter that state. - New versions publish themselves. Whether a release appeared on the
downloads page used to depend on two manual steps racing each other;
yesterday's release lost that race and needed a hand. The race is gone. - A background freshness check now works on Linux. The same
Mac-versus-Linux timing difference fixed in v1.97.8 had one more copy; the
whole system was swept and it was the last one.
Most of this traces to the same beta tester whose testing shaped the last
two releases — including the discovery that the update-safety net cannot
protect the update that installs it, which is what the check at the top of
this page is for.