It is recommended for new projects, but it is explicitly stated that it is still a beta version.
Now, if I understand correctly, no updates have been released for 7 months, whereas before that, updates were released at much shorter intervals.
When I search the forums for solutions, for example, how to add a horizontal scroll bar to the data grid or pin elements, the suggested solutions in most cases refer to the older theme. However, these do not work with the new theme.
Since so much time has passed since the last update, I wonder whether functions that have already been implemented may have turned out to be impractical and are therefore being revised, resulting in breaking changes.
What is the current status of development, what new features are coming, and when is the next update planned? Is it still recommended for new projects?
I wonāt speak about future updates for the new M3 theme, but as far as I can tell, they arenāt planning on retiring it! I use it very frequently as my go to theme!
For Anvil, they are quite conservative in removing the Beta tag anyways ā the current web editor was in Beta for several years, during at least half of that it was the main driver for most people, I think, without a whole host of issues.
that would mean that there would be no more changes or improvements. I hope thatās not true.
For example, I find it very unpleasant that I canāt specify a label for a date picker and that the placeholder text looks different than in text boxes or drop-down menus:
I would like to be able to specify in column panels that elements are automatically centered vertically. Currently, I have to do this manually. In the old theme, this happens automatically.
Iāve only been working with Anvil for about two months now, and Iām noticing more and more that there are things missing that I think should be standard. At the very least, Iām used to having certain elements available (tree views, events for selecting a row in a data grid, horizontal scroll bars for large tables, etc.).
In the old theme, I can specify the type for each text box (text, number, etc.), but this is missing in the m3 theme.
And when there has been no update for more than half a year, I start to wonder. For a beta, the current status is fine if there is more to come. Otherwise, itās a half-baked solution.
Yes, I have seen that there are many workarounds. However, I prefer a solution like Anvil because I donāt have to spend ages searching and testing to find out how to implement something. That shouldnāt be the way it is, otherwise the promise of āMove from idea to production at record speedā is just empty words.
Ok, now I can stop burying the lead so much, haha.
I donāt pretend to know Anvilās internal priority list, but I know that they are starting to interact with the repo a bit. You can see that with my own PR thatās getting some dialogue as of today:
Anvil is still very much plug and play ā this is why the older themes are still there, not to mention Iām sure some people just plain prefer them. Most of the plug and play nature IMHO comes from the ability to get yourself 95+ percent of the way there without any CSS/HTML, which I still think the Beta M3 gets to, though maybe right now only 85-90%.
And while the new M3 is not up to the same standard as the mature themes are, Anvil is releasing it in Beta so we can have the more modern/standard material 3 as they work out the kinks and so the community can provide feedback along the way.
There are also some nice community themes, I particularly like this one:
I certainly understand some of these pain points, but no system is perfect, but Anvil is always improving ā Iāve been here for almost 5 years and its so much better than when I started
