Today we are going to share our ambitions for 2021 with you! Some of the updates are of smaller scale but others, like Webix core decomposition or styling scheme, are complete game changers. Let’s proceed with the reading to uncover the upcoming features and upgrades.
Table of contents:
Gantt updates
Starting right from its birthday Gantt keeps getting enhanced. The hithermost Webix 8.2 promises to enrich the widget with another two powerful features: critical path and resources – indispensable parts of any good project management tool.
Critical Path
Critical path is a sequence of the tasks that cannot be delayed to meet the deadline and successfully complete a project. It will be implemented to help users to identify the most important tasks in a project and make sure that the project doesn’t fall behind the schedule.
Resources
In project management resources are people, materials, tools, etc. that are required to successfully complete a project activity. The new feature will help users to efficiently allocate resources throughout the project and thus increase the overall productivity and performance.
Auto Scheduling
Apart from this we plan to implement an ability to schedule tasks automatically depending on time constraints and various relations between them.
Spreadsheet updates
Spreadsheet will be boosted with a new math engine already by the end of this month. The update will ensure stable work with multi-sheet formulas. Also we will revise styling logic and add more Excel-like features. In the future updates the set of math operations is to be extended.
Scheduler updates
We are working on new features that will simplify the process of time management in Scheduler.
Timeline View
Timeline view will help your users to visualize events on a horizontal scale. It will allow grouping events by certain criteria whether it is certain tasks for a certain person or room booking.
Copy-pasting of Events
Another functionality to await is an ability to copy & paste events with familiar key combinations.
Chat update
We are going to extend the Chat widget with audio and video calls. The update implies both one-to-one and one-to-many calls.
Pivot updates
Pivot Table and Chart will undergo changes in performance and UI. New reporting engine will allow processing huge volumes of data a way faster. For user convenience, the interface will become more intuitive.
New widgets
Webix Diagram
A new component appears on the horizon. Coming to replace Organogram, the Diagram widget promises to have an ability to render diagrams from incoming graph data and visualize it with a variety of built-in shapes.
The widget is likely to appear in Webix 8.3 in the end of April.
Richtext
This would-be widget will be able to edit texts, images, lists and tables as well as do formatting. For data export and import it is supposed to offer HTML or Markdown formats.
Webix Core updates
Decomposition of the Core
One of the most powerful features of this year is restructuring of Webix Core packages so that developers will be able to pick and use only those widgets you need. This will minimize the size of complex widgets’ packages as well.
Better styling and sizing logic
Styling and sizing of the widgets will be reworked to allow for modern technologies like Flexbox. This will also open the way to CSS definitions of borders and paddings.
These are rather epic features that require deep revision of core concepts. Now they are in the proof-of-concept stage and will appear no earlier than the 9.0 release.
Chart updates
We are also going to enhance Webix Charts with better data rendering techniques, dynamic data loading and UI solutions like zooming/panning, visual markers, etc. Also, more types of charts will be added.
Integration updates
We will also do our best to move Webix towards the modern tools and technologies, namely:
- show demos for integration of complex widgets with popular JS frameworks
- prepare show cases of multi-user collaboration with complex widgets (File Manager, Document Manager, Kanban, Scheduler, Gantt, Spreadsheet)
- actualize Typescript definitions for Webix Core and complex widgets
What’s next
So this is our roadmap for 2021 and maybe a little bit further. It is important to know that we can be flexible and reschedule plans for later times. We can also accommodate other features if we notice your high demand in them.
Are we missing something? Do not hesitate and leave your thoughts about our roadmap in the comments below.
