After many years of loyal service, it’s time for us to say goodbye to the Classic Editor. It has served many Anvil developers well over the years, but its AngularJS 1.x code base was creaking and the UI was an inflexible dead end. It has long since been surpassed by the “new” Editor (golly - that first beta post is from 2021!). These days, who could live without version control, tabbed editing, collaboration, or deployment environments? We’ve kept the Classic Editor around ever since then, but as we move to new, more advanced themes, the Classic Editor will no longer be able to edit most new Anvil apps, and it has stopped making sense to keep it around.
So, on the 13th of March 2025, we’ll be turning off the Classic Editor for good. This will also remove the Classic Designer, which was the last piece of the Classic Editor that still survived in the modern IDE.
Do you still use the Classic Editor or Designer?
If you are still using either the Classic Editor or the Classic Designer, and there is something it can do that the new editor cannot, then please let us know by posting a topic in the Q&A forum. We think the modern Anvil Editor does everything the Classic Editor could, and more, but if you depend on a use-case we’ve missed, this is your chance to let us know!
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I have several apps in production made with the Classic Editor, running on anvil-app-server 1.7.3. Will the switch to the current editor require updating to a newer version of anvil-app-server? Also, updating the application currently requires only a ‘git fetch origin’ and ‘git merge origin/master’ from the application repository in my anvil.works account. Will that process need to change? These applications are running in rigid IT environments where changes require many levels of approval and red tape, so changes to anvil-app-server requirements will be daunting if required.
Short answer to both questions: No!
The format of an Anvil source code repository is the same between the Classic Editor and today’s Editor. (When you hit Run in either editor, you’re using the same runtime code in any case.)
The only danger, if you’re deploying on an old version of the App Server, is that you accidentally build your app to depend on some new feature that doesn’t exist in the App Server you’re deploying to. But as long as you can avoid that, you should be good.
(There is also the matter that we don’t monitor older App Server versions for, eg, vulnerabilities in its dependencies, so for security’s sake it’s a good idea to be using a relatively modern App Server. But I don’t have a particular historical vulnerability in mind as I type this, and it has nothing to do with the Classic Editor.)
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Thanks for the quick response Meredydd! I’ll miss the simple Classic Editor - it runs elegantly on smaller form factor screens I use when traveling weekly. I’ll use the editor upgrade to justify buying some new hardware 
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I’m becoming a fan of the current editor 
…it’s time to update my tutorial with 200+ annotated screenshots…
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