What to expect in the next Beaver Builder updates

Here’s a list of the exciting new features and updates expected in upcoming Beaver Builder plugin and Theme.

Plugin Updates for 1.9

Version 1.9 of the plugin will bring copy and paste for rows and modules and custom units for margins and padding. Included in the release will be new content page templates; a list of which you can review here. An update to the way margins and paddings can be set to allow for responsive screen sizes is planned along with an undo / redo feature that will save plenty of time and heartache!

New content page templates

We’ve grabbed a few screenshots of the new page templates designed by Beaver Builder and to be released in the next plugin update. All the layouts seem to incorporate plenty of white space and keep things pretty minimal.  See more templates here.

New Beaver Builder About Me content template

New Beaver Builder Team 2 content template

New Beaver Builder Team content template

New Beaver Builder Services content template

New Beaver Builder FAQ content template

New Beaver Builder Contact Me content template

The big new features listed on the Roadmap are the new Beaver Builder Theme Builder and Field Connections options that will allow you to create whole new templates for your single posts, custom posts and page layouts and connect areas on the layouts with existing fields in your editor.

This will make creating richly diverse websites a real possibility and with connections to ACF fields also planned, the sky is the limit!

The theme builder is planned as an add-on at this stage so we hope that the templates it creates can be transported without it. A transporter would be ideal for child theme designers and developers handing over sites to clients that don’t want to bundle the theme builder to drive their designs and need to ensure template images are faithfully transported too.

The Field Connections feature is another powerful addition to the plugin roadmap. We use ACF fields extensively on Beaver Brains and adding them to the front end requires PHP, CSS and messing with child theme templates and functions files. It can quickly add up to a confusing mess. Having an easy way to map ACF fields used in combination with the template builder will save a lot of headaches. We’re definitely looking forward to both of these updates. Thierry Pigot has been showing a similar feature in his upcoming Ultimate Beaver add-on pack so it looks like we may have plenty of options in the near future.

A new lightbox module is planned that will open an image or video from a button on your page. Other plugin developers have released similar functionality that also includes HTML or Templates as popup content. So we hope this lightbox will do a little more than images and video alone. Last, but not least, a new table module is ready for release in 1.9 which hopefully adds sortable columns and a way to display data responsively.

Theme Updates for 1.6

1.6 of the theme release will feature CSS support for WooCommerce tabs on the ‘My Account’ page. WooCommerce recently changed the way tabs are displayed and Beaver Builder will update the theme to suit the new layout.

New presets in the theme customiser will bring further starting points for designers – at the moment there are 9 presets that allow you to quickly find a style that suits your design. It’s not known whether or not the new presets will add to, or amend those already available – we hope to see a few more on the dropdown!

Current theme presets available in the customiser

Full height rows in the BB Theme will now account for the header height. So adjusting the header height or even making it transparent (see below) will affect the height of the full-height row accordingly.

Arrows will be offered as part of the drop down menu configuration options in the theme customiser which will match that available when you manually add a menu to your page.

Menu arrows planned to be included in the customiser

The largely anticipated features are the transparent header and header design controls. At the moment, to do anything creative with the header like transparency requires add-ons or coding to achieve. Having this built in would bring the Beaver Builder theme in line with many others on the market. The Facebook Group and UserVoice forum take requests for these two features often, so we’re looking forward to seeing these incorporated into the core.

Conclusion

There are so many cool features listed in these update notes and if all features make it to the final releases we’ll be very happy Beavers. We can’t wait to test them out!