diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index e59cf494..301a2de7 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -1,3 +1,9 @@
+dvisvgm-2.8.1 (2019-11-14)
+- added SVG optimizer module 'simplify-text'
+- added support for PS operator 'nulldevice'
+- copy absolute paths from special 'psfile' unchanged to the SVG file
+- some code refactorings
+
 dvisvgm-2.8 (2019-10-25)
 - added support for JPEG, PNG, PDF, and SVG files to special 'psfile'
 - added support for Ghostscript 9.50
@@ -8,7 +14,7 @@ dvisvgm-2.8 (2019-10-25)
   scaling components into positional and size attributes
 - replaced CRC32 checksums used in cache files with XXH32 hashes
 - updated potrace to version 1.16
-- updated xxHash to version 2.7.2
+- updated xxHash to version 0.7.2
 - updated gtest to 1.10
 - lots of code refactorings
 
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 9ecd5225..7c86a25f 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -19,6 +19,9 @@ The latest releases support standard DVI files (version 2) as well as DVI output
 created by [pTeX](http://www.ascii.co.jp/pb/ptex) in vertical mode (version 3),
 and [XeTeX](http://scripts.sil.org/xetex) (versions 5 to 7, also known as XDV).
 
+To get an impression of the conversion results, have a look at the
+[examples](https://dvisvgm.de/Examples) created with _dvisvgm_.
+
 Short overview of the main features:
 
 * Complete font support including [virtual fonts](http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=virtualfonts), evaluation of [font encodings](http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=whatenc), CMap files, sub-font definitions and font maps.
@@ -31,6 +34,7 @@ Short overview of the main features:
 * Option `--pdf` allows to convert [PDF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF) documents to SVG.
 * [Intersections of clipping paths](https://dvisvgm.de/Clipping) can be computed directly instead of delegating this task to the SVG renderer. This increases the compatibility of the generated SVG files.
 * Approximates PostScript [color gradient fills](https://dvisvgm.de/Gradients) not directly supported by SVG 1.1.
+* The generated SVG structure and data can be improved with the built-in [SVG optimizer](https://dvisvgm.de/Manpage/#opt-optimize).
 * Optionally creates compressed [SVGZ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Vector_Graphics#Compression) files.
 * Provides options for applying page transformations, like translation, rotation, scaling, and skewing.
 * Evaluates several [specials](http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=specials) including color, emTeX, tpic, hyperref/HyperTeX, papersize, PDF hyperlink and mapfile, as well as PostScript specials.