Before you going to enjoy Christmas Holidays, we decided to share with you what's going on the dark side and what are we developing now. Probably, you know that we are actively working with the new version of Balbooa Joomla Forms. The Beta of Forms 2.x is almost here and today with incredible joy we want to share with you details regarding what is waiting for you in Balbooa Joomla Forms Builder 2.x.
The Forms 2 is a brand new form builder. The Forms 2 is not just an update for the current version. We built it from scratch considering your suggestions and wishes.
The Forms 2 dashboard released in the same style as Gridbox and Gallery. Now all our extensions have the same UI which makes workflow user-friendly and the same within all Balbooa Extensions.
The sidebar provides you an easy way to navigate within Forms 2.
It all starts here. The “Forms” view comes with standard features. Creating, copying, publishing, exporting…
All submitted forms will be able to view directly in the admin panel. A small icon “Bell” with the number of unread submissions will inform you about new form submissions.
Sometimes form can be deleted accidentally, do not worry, all forms will be located in the folder “Trashed” and can be restored at any time.
A heart of the Forms is a form editor, the place where you building your form. Yes, Forms 2.x editor released in the Gridbox style.
The structure is next: parent item is a form page that includes a row with columns. Form fields are adding to the columns using Drag and Drop.
Inside the page, you can add unlimited numbers of rows with different numbers of columns (1 - 4). Rows can be sorted, copied and deleted.
By clicking on the icon “Add New Page” you’ll get a multi-page form. In the Forms 2.x, we have added different types of navigation (Dots, Steps, Triangles, None) for multi-page forms.
Having a huge experience with design settings in the Gridbox, to Forms 2 we have added a wide range of settings that allows you to configure the form to fit your site design. All design settings are divided into two groups: Basic and Advanced.
Basic settings provide you the easiest and quickest way to configure your form design as you need.
Using the Advanced design settings you can configure your form more detailed.
By the way, the collection of Google Fonts is available to you!
In the Forms 2.x, you have "Freedom of positioning" your fields. No static fields like it were in Forms 1.x. Need to place the "Submit Button" to the same line with input? No problem! Using drag and drop move fields as you need, and the job is done!
17 types of fields will be available to you, here they are:
We will not review each field now. Just one thing - the functionality of each field is greatly increased, e.g. field input allows you to set masks, the calendar allows you to disable specific dates, set a default value using data tags or SQL Query, and etc.
Calculation field, we got a lot of requests regarding this field and here it is ready! You can set the calculation formula using a built-in calculator.
Combine "Calculation" fields between each other to get some crazy calculation. Why not?!
We want to pay special attention to the field "Cart".
We have added additional options, such as:
It will be very interesting if you plan to build a site for a small local shop.
Conditional logic in Forms 2.x released in a more classic way. The conditional Logic editor can be opened from the sidebar.
Yes, now you can set rules! For example: If the “Field A” is “Filled Out” then, display “Field B”.
Yes, is not so easy as it was in Forms 1.x, but the biggest advantage of this method is flexibility!
Build forms faster with pre-installed forms templates. Balbooa Forms 2.x will include a collection of pre-installed forms templates which can be a quick-start for your future form.
Form templates can be opened from the editor sidebar. And yes, as you can see templates are not yet available, but when starting the Forms stable version this will be done.
Another very interesting thing is the displaying Form in a Lightbox. In Forms 2.x you can set triggers to start displaying Forms within a lightbox. Next triggers will available to you:
Trigger Click, allows you to copy the special shortcode and paste it into the button, link, menu item, and even to the div. The form will be opened by click on the item with an added shortcode.
Integrations allow you to integrate into the Forms third-party extensions and services. “Integrations” editor can be opened from the sidebar.
In the first stable version of the Forms 2, you’ll find integrations with the next services and extensions:
Regarding the additional integrations. The first thing which you should know - we can’t add absolutely all the services which you are requested to the list. For example, in the world of more than 100 payment getaways and is not possible to add all of them.
What's the solution? Voting! Regarding this, we will talk after releasing stable Forms 2.x.
In any way, we want to note, that Forms 2.x already includes the most popular integrations.
Forms 2.x Beta is almost finished, all functionality added, just final steps left with conditional logic and testing. Release of the Beta version we plan to launch in January 2020.
As usually, before launching a stable version of an extension, you'll be able to take part in Beta testing and try Forms 2.x before official release!
Will it be possible to update Forms 1.x to Forms 2.x?
Yes, it will be possible, but we can't provide 100% compatibility, because some functionality in Forms 2, works in an absolutely in another way e.g. conditional logic fields or displaying form in the lightbox.
When Forms 2.x stable will be released?
January - February 2020.
We have no idea how long we are working with the Forms 2.x. But we know one thing - comparing the Forms 1.x and 2.x, results are more than we have expected and it's the most important!
In this blog post, we didn't overview all the details of the upcoming Forms. Very soon, after Christmas and New Year Holidays you'll be able to try Forms by yourself and explore all features and possibilities. See you soon at Beta testing! Let's Rock!
P.S. If you have any questions about the Forms 2.x, we will be happy to answer.