github lowcoder-org/lowcoder 2.4.0
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latest release: 2.4.1
one month ago

Lowcoder v2.4 - a Major Update!

We are thrilled to announce the launch of Lowcoder v2.4, an important update that brings a new era of elegance, professionalism, and power for our platform. With v2.4, Lowcoder has transformed into a serious competitor in the landscape of Lowcode Application Development Platforms, setting a new standard in functionality and design. This release establishes Lowcoder as the premier choice for building external applications, customer-facing apps, and complete websites, next to all kind of internal Apps for Companies and Enterprises.

Our unique feature set now positions us as the go-to platform in many sectors, offering capabilities unmatched by others. We see the increasing enthusiasm and confidence from the market, as we welcome a lot of global enterprises to our community too.

Enhanced Components

Calendar: Introducing Premium Views which provide richer and more interactive visual representations of schedules and events. These enhanced views offer more intuitive navigation and greater customization options to meet diverse user needs.

List & Grid Component: Now supports horizontal layouts, giving users more flexibility in how data is displayed. This is ideal for creating more visually engaging interfaces and can be particularly useful in dashboards and media-rich applications.

Tabbed Container: Expanded to support four directions—up, down, left, and right. This versatility allows for a more dynamic UI layout, accommodating more complex application designs and improving spatial utilization.

Sliders and Range Sliders: Added vertical layout support, enabling more spatially efficient UI designs, especially useful in scenarios where screen real estate is limited, such as mobile devices or embedded applications.

Style Enhancements: We've expanded style support across numerous components, allowing for greater customization and consistency with branding requirements. This includes new styling options for backgrounds, fonts, and color schemes to make your applications look more polished and professional.

Style “Reset”: We invested time to bring the styles back to the standards. At v2.3.1 we introduced many new style capabilities, but did not found time to keep everything backwards compatible. Now we did this and things should look good “again”.

Input Enhancements

Prefix Text for Number Inputs: Users can now add a prefix to number inputs (e.g., currency symbols, units) to provide clearer context to the data being entered, enhancing usability and accuracy.

Icon Additions for Number and Text in Table Columns: Introduce icons in table columns to help users quickly identify column types or to highlight specific data fields, improving visual scanning and data interpretation.

Enhanced Fixed Number Precision in Table Columns: This improvement allows for more accurate data representation and calculations, crucial for financial and scientific applications.

Boolean Icons in Table Columns: Replace plain text or checkboxes with intuitive icons for Boolean values, making tables easier to read and interact with.

New Switch Input for Table Column Modifications: This update introduces a toggle switch input for quick Boolean value adjustments directly within table columns, streamlining data entry and modifications.

New Components in Lowcoder 2.4

Layout and Design Components

Page Layout Component: We are proud to introduce the new Page Layout Component in Lowcoder v2.4. This powerful component allows for the free design of page layouts, including the ability to nest layouts and incorporate dynamic elements such as menus and footers positioned as siders (left, inline, or right).

Within the body of the layout, you can embed full Lowcoder applications—even those hosted remotely—or utilize a grid system to place any component exactly where you need it. This flexibility, combined with responsive layout capabilities and screen size information, opens up a whole new world of possibilities for crafting tailored, efficient, and visually appealing digital environments. Whether you're building complex applications or simple, elegant interfaces, our new Page Layout Component provides the ultimate toolset for creativity and precision in your app development.

Card Design Component: A flexible container for varied content types, perfect for creating responsive layouts with grid, overview sections, or feature cards. (thank you @mousheng!)

Shapes Component (Preview): Offers over 100 geometric shapes for adding creative visual elements to projects, similar to capabilities in PowerPoint. As we need to work on the ability to have own gradients, colors and borders for the shapes, we see it as preview. (thank you @freddysundowner!)

Float Text Layout: Allows text to wrap seamlessly around any object, improving content integration and layout aesthetics.
Functional Components

Openlayers GeoMap: The Openlayers GeoMap leverages the power of the OpenLayers project to enhance your applications with sophisticated geographic data capabilities. Whether you need to display locations, track movements, or manipulate geographic data layers, the Geo Component makes it straightforward and efficient. (thank you @sjhoeksma!)

GeoMap Charts Overlay: This component allows you to use GoogleMaps, bot on top of it eCharts as overlay, greographically placed! Now you can show for example KPIs by Locations or movements of Items / Things on the map.

Steps Component: Visualizes user progress through a sequence of tasks or navigation stages, ideal for multi-step forms and process flows.

Tutorial in Apps: Provides interactive onboarding or feature introductions, enhancing user engagement.

Avatar & Avatar Group Components: Displays user profiles with support for images, icons, or text, suitable for social networking scenarios or team displays. (thank you @mousheng!)

Float Button: A floating overlay button for quick actions and navigation, enhancing user interaction without disrupting the visual flow of the application. (thank you @mousheng!)

Transfer Component: Facilitates efficient two-sided data management, ideal for roles, permissions, or grouped data settings. (thank you @mousheng!)

BPMN Component: Models business processes in a standardized format, supporting complex workflow visualizations. (thank you @sjhoeksma!)

Pivot Table (Preview): Enables dynamic data analysis and interactive reporting, crucial for data exploration and business intelligence. (thank you @mat02)

Turnstile Captcha: Enhances security with a user-friendly validation method, minimizing spam and automated submissions. (thank you @sudoischenny)

Hillchart: Provides a novel visual method to track project progress, distinguishing between exploratory and completion phases in project management.

Major Feature Additions

Generic OAuth Provider Support

With Lowcoder v2.4 we introduce Generic OAuth Provider Support. This powerful new feature empowers administrators to integrate a wide array of login sources into their applications, greatly expanding authentication options. Whether it's popular social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn or robust corporate identity management systems such as Azure AD, KeyCloak, and Okta, Lowcoder now should seamlessly supports them.

Minimal Branding in Lowcoder v2.4

In our commitment to providing a seamless integration experience, Lowcoder v2.4 reduces our platform branding, allowing you to use our tools in your projects with minimal visual intrusion. The only remaining element of Lowcoder branding is a discreet "Powered by Lowcoder" label on the login screen, which is mandatory but designed to be unobtrusive.

This change is part of our ongoing effort to ensure that Lowcoder can serve as a behind-the-scenes engine that powers your applications, without drawing attention away from your own branding and design aesthetics. By keeping our presence minimal, we empower you to showcase your brand more prominently, enhancing the look and feel of your projects while maintaining a professional appearance. Whether you're building applications for external customers or internal stakeholders.

Agora Meeting

Smaller Bundle Size for Agora Meetings: We moved the Agora Package to Lowcoder-Comps (remote comps) and upgraded to production state: Agora Meeting has now been fully integrated as a component within Lowcoder, making it easier than ever to embed real-time video and audio communication features into your applications. We moved it to reduce the bundle size for standard Lowcoder applicatios (they may not even use Agora Meeting Components), as the Agora SDK comes with around 500kb only.

User and Organization Enhancements

New User Profile Page: The redesigned User Profile Page now includes a Language Switch, empowering users to select their preferred language, enhancing accessibility and user experience. Additionally, users can manage their API keys directly from their profile, ensuring secure and convenient access to integrations and services.

New Organization Welcome Page: This feature provides a customizable welcome page for new users, making their first interaction with your organization engaging. Admins can select an application within the workspace to be displayed as the Welcome Page, personalizing the onboarding experience.

Password Reset Flow: We've developed finally the password reset process to allow users to independently reset their passwords, supported by SMTP server integration. This ensures a more secure and user-friendly password management system, reducing administrative overhead and enhancing security protocols. Admins can set an SMPT Server via ENV Variables on each Lowcoder Installation (API-Service)

Style and Interaction

Advanced Style Handling with global CSS styles: This update introduces more sophisticated styling options, allowing for the application of global CSS styles across your entire canvas. This capability ensures consistent theming and branding, giving developers and designers more control over the appearance of applications. Docs

Click Event Support in Charts: Charts now support click events, enabling dynamic data drill-downs and interactive dashboard functionalities. This feature is crucial for creating data-intensive applications where users need to explore and interact with complex datasets.

Controllable App View Header Display: Enhancement to the App View Header Display, to allow developers to control the display of the header in the APP /view endpoint.

Expanded Event Handlers: The addition of more specific event handlers provides developers with the ability to assign more precise and fitting events to components. This update extends beyond the generic 'onChange' to include events that are tailored to specific user interactions and component states, improving application responsiveness and interaction quality.

Performance and Integration

Reduced Bundle Size:

Decreased the initial SDK and app loading size by two-thirds, now approximately 1MB: In our latest update, we've significantly optimized the size of the initial SDK and application bundles, reducing them from 3MB to about 1MB. This major reduction enhances the load times and performance of applications across all devices, especially benefiting users with limited bandwidth or slower internet connections. This optimization reflects our commitment to providing efficient and streamlined user experiences, and we are aiming to further reduce the bundle size to around 500KB in future updates.

This is dedicated to our main goal to enable Lowcoder to be a Website Builder too. In the end it should need nothing else than Lowcoder to make Apps, Websites that may embedd this apps and powerful Slides and Presentations.

SDK Login Redirection

Improved login integration for apps embedded on external websites: We have refined the login process for applications embedded in external websites. Previously, a missing authentication on an embedded app would trigger a full-page redirect, which could disrupt the user experience and integration. Now, instead of this disruptive redirect, a discrete login button is displayed. This improvement is particularly important for users leveraging Lowcoder to enhance existing websites with additional functionalities without needing to overhaul their current content management systems.

Dedicated Admin News Page

Newspage for Lowcoder Admins: In Lowcoder v2.4, we've introduced a new Dedicated Admin News Page. This page will offer a steady stream of updates, insightful tips, and practical advice to enhance the administrative experience. Whether it's new features, security updates, best practices for user management, or ways to optimize application performance, this page is your go-to hub for all things related to Lowcoder administration. Regular updates will ensure that you're always equipped with the latest information and tools to manage and improve your applications effectively.

What's Changed

New Contributors

Full Changelog: 2.3.1...2.4.0

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