As I’m planning to release XKit 6 in full in a few weeks, I’ve decided to make a short post showing the past of XKit.

XKit pioneered a lot of features now “standard” in a lot of extensions, like previewing notifications, ability to add captions using One-Click Postage, In-Dashboard Asks and a lot more, only available in XKit, like In-Dash Inbox, Themes, Extension Gallery, ability to “short” long posts, XCloud and Highlighting posts using keywords.

Click Read More to see a short visual history of XKit.

Please note that releases that consisted only of bug fixes are not included. Click on the images to see them in bigger size.

XKit 0.0.1 (Aug 5, 2011)

XKit 0.0.1 was just a “wrapper” for other extensions I’ve written, like XPreview, XFilter, and XBigot. For some bizarre reason that I can’t remember, the control panel button icon is a shield.

XKit 0.0.5 (Oct 30, 2011)

Still using that weird Shield icon, XKit gained a lot of functionality by 0.0.5, with themes, Compact Sidebar (slim tags and whatnot) and a lot more. Also included was One-Click Reblog, but was not enabled by default.

XKit 0.1.2 (Nov 2, 2011)

This release brought the “queue” button in addition to quick-reblog button. (pictured on top-left.)

XKit 0.1.9 (Nov 5, 2011)

This release brought Highlight and Blacklist options, a refreshed user interface, and the Follower Checker.

XKit 0.3.0 (Nov 10, 2011)

This release bought the “X” icon (finally.) on top of the dashboard. The “balloon” design would remain in place until XKit 5.0.

XKit 0.4.0 (Nov 21, 2011)

XKit 0.4.0 (now called just “4.0”) was the first release to use the “Extension” system still in use in XKit. After an extensive re-write, an extension gallery, brand new user interface, ability to change the “Under the hood” settings, and Automatic Background Updates were the new features included.

This release would use “cartoonish” icons compared to later releases of XKit.

XKit 5.0 (Jan 17, 2012)

XKit 5.0 (previously XKit 0.5.0) was the second biggest re-write of XKit, with a brand new interface that dropped the “balloon” menu and cartoonish icons, and replaced them with a “fade-in” menu, and much more realistic icons. A lot of new features, like “Patches and Fixes”, “Reblog Yourself”, “Extension Editor”, a much faster Follower Checker, “Shorten Posts”, and a lot more was included.

XKit 5.2 (Jan 23, 2012)

XKit 5.2 brought a cleaner user interface which made customizing settings a lot easier. By then, there was over 18 extensions in the Extension Gallery. Also included was a brand new One-Click Reblog that allowed you to add captions and tags.

XKit 5.7 (Feb 2, 2012)

XKit 5.7 brought XCloud, which allowed you to backup your XKit settings to STUDIOXENIX servers, so you could restore settings in case you uninstall XKit, or sync settings between computers.

XKit 6.0 Preview Release 1 (a week ago)

Downloaded for more than 3,000 times in a week even though incomplete and just a “Preview release”, XKit 6 PR 1 is released so people can test-drive it before its “full” release. A brand new user interface was included, and nearly all the extensions were rewritten from the ground up.

Of course, no “visual history” can be “complete” without a logo history so:

Here’s to another year, 4 new logos, and a lot of new extensions, features and releases.

Thank you for reading, and thanks for using XKit!

PS: If you enjoy using XKit, please consider donating so I can feed myself and my cat. Thank you!