There are some much anticipated and probably expected features coming in Gravity Forms version 2.6.
I want to quickly demonstrate each of the exciting improvements, however, you should be able to download the beta version of Gravity Forms 2.6 via your Gravity Forms account download page.
Please do not install the beta version on your production site.
The New Features
- Choice UI flyout
- Added the submit button to the editor
- New form embed capabilities
- Save the form via an AJAX request
There are few other improvements or fixes, but these are probably the biggest highlights!
Choice UI Flyout
If you’ve used a radio button or checkbox field in Gravity Forms 2.5 you may have noticed you didn’t have much room to manage your choice options. And if you’re using an add-on like Jetsloth’s Image Choices, you know how painful it can be to configure your field choices.
As you can see from the screenshots below, you don’t have much room to work with your choice fields.
2.5 Default Editor
2.5 Editor with Image Choices Enabled
I am pretty excited about the UI changes being added in 2.6, this will change the user experience for the better.
They’ve added a flyout, just like the Conditional Logic section uses, but even better.
The Submit Button in the Editor
Before 2.6 you had little control over the display of the submit button, and certainly did not see the button in the form editor.
In 2.6, the submit button is automatically added to the form editor after adding your first field.
With the additional of the submit button in the form editor comes some additional settings/controls for the button.
Where the submit button settings were originally in the Forms Settings, they’ve now been moved into the form editor.
You can still use a text or image button. You can adjust the button width and set the button location; end of form or inline. Conditional logic is also still available.
You may have noticed, there still isn’t an option to change the button color, that will still need to be done with some custom CSS.
I’m hoping for a built-in styling feature in Gravity Forms 2.7, it could happen!
Note, if you’ve used the method explained here to create an inline form, you can now set your button inline from the form editor.
Form Embed Capabilities
A common question from new Gravity Forms users is, how do I embed my form?, or where do I find my embed shortcode?, all valid questions.
Most other WordPress form builders provide access to the shortcode or an embed method from within the form editor.
This is a huge enhancement.
Now you can access the form shortcode from the editor, but it gets so much better!
You can also embed your form on an existing page/post or create a new page/post directly from within the editor.
Save the Form via an AJAX Request
This might not sound like a big deal, however, in version 2.5 every time you save the form it performed a complete page reload, which could take a few seconds slowing down your progress.
With the AJAX request, now only the form editor is saved without requiring that the page be reloaded.
This also means that you don’t lose your progress. For example, if you’re in the middle of configuring a field, if you stop to save the form in the middle of your changes, you won’t lose your progress because the page no longer reloads.
Gravity Forms 2.6 Change Log
You can keep up with the changes by keeping an eye on the change log here. You can also subscribe to the GravityRanger newsletter and we’ll keep you updated all the way until 2.6 is officially launched.
The Wrap Up
I would recommend that you clone your site over to a staging environment, and install the beta version there to see what, if any, changes need to be made to your forms to support the changes in version 2.6.
It will also give you a chance to play with these cool new features and get even more excited about the future of Gravity Forms.
While 2.6 introduces some awesome enhancements, I suspect we will see even more great things from the Gravity Forms product team in 2022!
