ProcessWire Weekly #278

ProcessWire 3.0.140, and a major update for the commercial FormBuilder module

In this week's post at the processwire.com blog Ryan walks us through the latest core development and pro module news. We'll summarise both here, but be sure to check out the full post for more details!

FormBuilder v40 adds native multi-page support for forms and adds support for forms within forms

The latest release of the commerical FormBuilder module, v40, is a big one. This version includes two new major features: multi-page forms which allow you to create complex form setups without breaking a sweat, and something that also really helps with those complex forms – the ability to reuse forms within other forms.

Since this update is pretty big and contains numerous things that pretty much have to be seen in action, we'll let Ryan do most of the talking. Here's a showcase video where the man himself explains what's new in v40, and why it's quite a big deal:

By the way, that Andrew looks like a brilliant young fellow :)

ProcessWire 3.0.140 contains the Toggle field – and also an updated "toggle style" user interface for said field

The big news for ProcessWire 3.0.140 is that the Toggle field is now ready for use in all your custom templates. Last week we mentioned that the inputfield was ready, which meant that you could make use of it in modules and such, but what was still missing from 3.0.139 was an accompanying fieldtype needed to use it in Page Editor.

This week's release includes that missing fieldtype, which means that you can now add Toggle fields directly to templates. As we explained last week, this field type is kind of a middle ground between a simple checkbox field and some of the more complex fields, such as options: you can configure 2-3 options (essentially yes, no, and maybe) which are displayed as radio buttons – or, as of this week, really nice "toggle style" buttons:

(If you were paying attention to the FormBuilder video we mentioned earlier, you could probably spot a few occurrences of Toggle fields in there as well.)

That's it for the core updates section this week. For more details regarding the updates covered above, be sure to check out the latest post from Ryan at the processwire.com blog. Feel free to leave a comment there as well if you have any feedback to share.

Weekly ProcessWire resources and highlights from the support forum

Once again we've got plenty of stuff piled up from the support forum, and we're going to throw in a few interesting links to other resources as well. Check this list out to get an idea of what's been going on with the ProcessWire community lately.

First of all, we've been discussing some neat new front-end stuff on the forums:

• One of the things that have been making splashes within the community has been the TailWind CSS framework. It's a fresh take on how front-end frameworks should behave – and this discussion also shows that we're not just about Uikit here :)
• On the topic of front-end frameworks, definitely check out the so-called "web manifesto" from Tom as well, and the Uikit / Tailwind starter template he has kindly provided for those interested in following in his footsteps. Great stuff!

Talking about starter setups, here are two GitHub projects we've recently stumbled on, both of which are related to that topic in particular:

• Here's a Docker setup for ProcessWire by Data Locals. We can't say much about them, but the setup looks nice and simple, which might make it a good starting point in case you're just getting started with all that Docker and container stuff.
• Another interesting "starter profile" would be Kreativan Core from Ivan Milincic, aka Kreativan. This is a direct output site profile based on the Uikit 3 framework, and a number of third party modules.

Moving on, we have a couple of tutorial / recipe type topics you might find interesting as well – both from the same author, Moritz L'Hoest:

• Handling special cases: The elusive navigation menu override covers the topic of handling special cases and change requests without introducing code bloat or degrading code quality and maintainability through the example of a complicated navigation menu. This is an intriguing read and the following discussion makes it even better, so get a cup of your favorite hot beverage ready and drill right in :)
• Utility function to recursively search through repeaters is yet another interesting topic from Moritz. This one is pretty straightforward, but includes some nifty tips and tricks in terms of both ProcessWire and modern PHP development.

Finally, we'd like to thank and congratulate netcarver for stepping up and taking over the responsibility for managing pwtuts.com. SamC was managing this project up until recently, but after he decided that his true calling was helping the homeless – which, just for the record, we find admirable – he had to step down and pass the baton to a new project lead. Congratulations to Sam as well, and all the best from us!

As always, please let us know if we've missed anything important so that we can feature it in one of our future issues. If you're interested in ProcessWire news, discussions, and updates, there's always something interesting going on at the support forum!

Site of the week: Mailänder Consult

Our latest site of the week belongs to Mailänder Consult – a consulting firm specializing in planning and construction supervision as well as expert opinions in the fields of traffic, transport, environment, building construction and area management.

The ProcessWire powered website of Mailänder Consult was built by designconcepts GmbH, and it boasts a simple and really elegant design and plenty of content: there's a news archive, a projects section, a proper personnel page, and pages for company details and such. In addition to animated elements, running numbers, and other ful little detail, this site also features filtering features for some of its content types, a full-screen navigation / contact feature that works identically between small and large screens, and a site search tool with autocomplete feature baked in.

Overall this is quite a big and complex site, though the uncluttered layout complete with clean and usable user interface makes browsing this site quite a nice experience. When it comes to the stuff happening behind the scenes, like most ProcessWire powered websites this one doesn't give too many clues either – but what we can say is that the site is getting some performance-related help from the ProCache module, and the autocomplete / suggest search feature is powered by the jQuery Typeahead plugin.

Thanks to designconcepts GmbH for sharing this project with us, and our congratulations to Mailänder Consult for their new website!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's all for the 278th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 14th of September. As always, ProcessWire newsletter subscribers will get our updates a few days later.

Thanks for staying with us, once again. Hope you've had a great and productive week, and don't forget to check out the ProcessWire forums for more interesting topics. Until next week, happy hacking with ProcessWire!