In May, we introduced the Beta Forms on production and are now moving closer to the moment where we will make them the default forms in the Pagebuilder. You can currently already check them out on production behind the Beta toggle in the sidebar of the component library to provide us with feedback!
In this blog, we want to remind you about the benefits of this change, the consequences it has for your current pages, and the plan until we reach that moment. Next to that we prepared a Kickstart Guide with an overview of known issues and how to mitigate them.
Why new forms?
The new form components will bring a lot of benefits for the future of development on our platform. The most important ones are as follows:
Seamless building experience
The new forms are one of multiple initiatives to remove the need to switch back and forth to the old and new building environment. Developing in one IDE will bring focus and increase your speed of development by reducing the need to switch. Next to that it will be much easier to adopt the platform as it is not needed to learn how both interfaces function.
Pro coder enablement to create action steps
The next generation of actions was built with flexibility in mind. The functionality of the classic Action environment was restricted by the development power of Betty Blocks. By making the Actions environment an open platform where pro coders can develop their own extensions, the possibilities of the actions environment are basically limitless. Betty Blocks will not be the limiting factor anymore. When functionality is not present, any pro coder can develop it themselves and make it available to all no-coders.
Performance
The new actions use the latest technology stack which provides us a much more performant and stable environment than the classic environment of Actions. Load tests and early beta users have reported performance increases of more than 12 times faster in certain cases. These are just the results of early users, without any special focus on performance. We imagine that the environment will deliver an even greater performance increase when it evolves over time and the environment is optimised further.
What will I notice?
The palette in the Page Builder will have new form components by making the current Beta components the default. These components are using the Next Generation of Actions. Most of the components are working the same in the Page Builder with the only change being they are now connected to the Next Gen Actions. However we did make some improvements in the last months:
- Relational properties are now selectable in the form configuration to mutate relational data without having to make changes in your action.
- The file/image upload has been improved by now supporting a max file upload size of 25mb that can be configured on the property and is able to show and update the current value.
- The inputs can be added everywhere on the canvas again and do not require to be property based. So that more custom setups can be achieved and the inputs can be used for filtering or making changes in the UI.
Important
The current form components will no longer be available by default via the component library in the sidebar of the Page Builder and considered deprecated. It is important to start using the new components when you can. Especially for new apps or even new pages in existing apps. These components will be future proof and extended over time with new functionality.
The current components will of course remain to function in all your existing pages. During this transition period the current form components will still be able to be loaded in via the page settings. So that you can edit existing forms on pages or still create our previous actions if absolutely necessary.
Kickstarter Guide
To help you as much as possible in making this switch, we have created a Kickstarter Guide that lists known issues and possible ways to mitigate them. Of course you can always reach out to our Community or contact us via Support if you need any additional help.
Ultimately the Next Gen Forms and Next Generation actions will completely replace the forms and actions in production. This will result in one building environment where citizen developers, no-coders and pro-coders can work together seamlessly.
That was all for now, your feedback allows us to continuously improve our product. Please let us know what you think about it. Happy building! 😃
