October 2020 - Froala

In our roadmap post a few weeks ago, we announced an upcoming brand new data visualization product called ‘Froala Charts’ and we are excited to see it shape up in the background! Since we are a few weeks away from launch, we wanted to provide our Froala community a sneak peek into this charting library while also presenting a unique opportunity (sshhh…) to sign up for a pre-sale discount 😄

Incorporating data visualization capabilities via interactive charts has been a growing need for app developers that are also using Froala Editor in their web & mobile applications. We’ve heard repeatedly that a charting library to aid development efforts, especially from the makers of a solution that they love and trust, would be exceptional! We heard your requests and Froala Charts is our answer! 😍

Sounds interesting? Keep your eyes out for the official release, but be the first to get the pre-sale discount and promotions!

Sneak Preview

Froala Charts will include some widely used basic to advanced charts and widgets including time series charts, gauges, KPIs, heatmaps, line,pie, combo charts, radar charts and more!

Built by developers for developers, Froala charts boasts some popular charting features such as:
✔ Ability to customize charts on certain events/API.
✔ Drill down capabilities to discover deep data driven insights.
✔ Customized charting messages, number formatting, tooltips, zoom/scroll and many more.
✔ Modern looking themes and lots of examples with helper source code.

Written in plain JavaScript, Froala Charts will support popular JS frameworks so that your development efforts are streamlined.

Endless Possibilities with Froala Charts

Froala Charts is extremely powerful and flexible, and so are its use cases. Here are a few interesting use case ideas of Froala Charts.

CMS Solutions

Content Management System (CMS) solutions such as learning management software, HR management systems, publishing platforms allow easy management of content. For example, Payroll and workforce solutions such as workday.com helps users manage payroll, time, attendance to plan, budget and forecast reports in one place. Using modern dashboards and customized reports, these systems let users get a visual representation of how their plans are performing. Analytics solutions such as Google Analytics visually represent live or static view and performance of current web traffic and campaigns.

***Hubspot CRM’s interactive sales dashboard***

***Google Analytics audience overview***

CRM Solutions

Content Relationship Management (CRM) software solutions help efficiently manage relationships with current and potential clients. Some examples of CRM software platforms include crowdsourcing or fundraising software, or marketing and sales platforms such as Salesforce, Hubspot, and Oracle NetSuite. Charts play a big role in helping derive and measure business impact from data.

Data Management Systems

Spanning across healthcare, utility, insurance, finance and more, data management systems use data visualization to provide users the ability to accurately manage and observe the performance of their data. From managing the collection, processing, analysis and testing of lab data to monitoring investment portfolios, real-time information analysis of energy and utility demands, consumption, and pricing, the use cases with charting tools are widespread.

Are you Geared up for Froala Charts?

Stay tuned for the release announcement and see what Froala Charts can do for you! But in the meantime, get in line for our presale pricing and discounts. Here’s the sign up again:

A man standing at the end of the road wearing dark pants and a bold white arrow pointing forward from behind him.

The Froala product team has been working diligently toward adding new features along with quality improvements to enable our users to build better applications using Froala. We’ve been getting requests for a public roadmap of what we have in store for Froala and we are excited to share our plans with our community!

In this roadmap post, we’ll take a look at our most recent release, outline the plans for Froala Editor for the next 6 months or so, give you a sneak peak of an exciting new product addition that’s coming to the Froala product line, highlight our strong focus on increased quality releases, and more!

Recap: Froala 3.2 Release

At the end of July, we released Froala Editor 3.2. The Editor 3.2 release included the most highly customer requested feature, an improved file upload system. Through the 3.2 release, we’ve equipped users with a completely overhauled file upload manager, capable of handling multiple images, video uploads, folders, and more. While building this new image manager, we put special care toward ensuring that the UI was intuitive with seamlessly incorporated drag and drop, browse, and multi-upload functionality, allowing your users to upload and manipulate their files of most popular formats all in one place.

In addition to the image uploading capabilities introduced in 3.2, we also added some smaller features and addressed a number of quality related tickets.

Didn’t get a chance to check out v3.2? Learn more about v3.2 in this post.

Looking Ahead: What’s Planned Next

As part of this roadmap, we wanted to provide some specific details on what we’ve planned for the next 6 months and beyond.

Up next: Froala Editor 3.3 Release: Markdown and Track Changes Support

Planned for release in late 2020 or early 2021, the 3.3 release will address our next most highly requested features after the image manager support we introduced in 3.2. The Track Changes feature will keep track of changes in Froala Editor whenever users edit text. This will include support for tracking changes for newly added text and deleted text, as well as various styling and text formatting changes.

Markdown support will allow Froala Editor users to easily add Markdown syntax to their text to indicate which words and phrases need to be formatted. For example, to denote a heading, a user can simply add a hash sign before it (e.g. #HeadingOne). To change the formatting on a phrase from regular to bold, a user just has to add two asterisks before and after the phrase (e.g. **this text is now bold**). In addition to new features, the 3.3 release will also include a number of quality improvements.

Froala Editor 3.4 Release

Planned for release in early 2021, the 3.4 release will add another top customer requested feature. We plan to introduce a pluggable icon system that allows developers to use a variety of icon libraries such as Font Awesome, Material icons etc. to change the look and feel of the Froala Editor toolbar and icons. As part of the 3.4 release, we also intend to update our user interface icons while maintaining compatibility for customers using Font Awesome 4 and 5 JS. In addition to new features, the 3.4 release will also include a number of quality improvements.

Around mid 2021, we plan to introduce a native mobile editor and advanced folder management, in addition to a number of other features that are currently being reviewed by the product team. Expect more details in another roadmap update in about 6 months.

Froala Roadmap graphic outlining future updates and features — * Features are not committed until completed and GA released.

New: Increased Cadence of Quality Releases

The feedback loop that you maintain with our team allows us to turn around quality releases with an emphasis on your needs. We recently started implementing a frequent patch release cycle strategy, allowing us to get smaller patch releases out to customers faster. The tickets addressed in each patch release are listed in our release notes. Patch releases, just like the larger product releases, are available through NPM. We’ve released several patch releases for 3.2 so far, with more planned before the 3.3 release.
Any quality enhancements introduced in a patch release are also rolled up into the larger product releases, such as 3.2, 3.3 etc.

Brand New Product: Froala Charts

Froala Charts is going to be a brand new product from Froala, providing interactive charts to build insightful data visualizations in your web or mobile apps. All of the major JavaScript frameworks will be supported and it is written in Vanilla JS.

Froala Charts allows users to configure charts to suit their unique needs. You can use attributes, layers or events and APIs along with abundant charting features to create insightful dashboards.

Here’s a sneak peak of what is planned:

Froala Charts

With 20+ chart types, Froala Charts XT consists of the most commonly used charts like column, line, and pie for your reports and dashboards.

Froala Widgets

From Gauges and KPIs to funnel and pyramid charts, Froala Widgets makes your dashboards and monitors a lot more insightful.

Froala Power Charts

With the inclusion of heat & treemaps, radar, and statistical charts, Froala Power Charts is a set of advanced charting widgets for domain-specific usage.

Keep your eyes out for an announcement on this existing new product release from Froala – planned for release in the first part of Q4 CY 20.

Shape the Future of Froala

We love hearing from our customers. If you’re not already aware, we have a product idea board set up for Froala, where you can vote on other users’ feature suggestions or suggest features you’d like to see added to the product. We are notorious for building out the most requested features as illustrated with advanced image manager, track changes, markdown, and many other features over the last 12 months.

You can choose to be notified of updates to feature requests, including when a feature has been introduced in a new Froala release. In addition to the public idea board, paying Froala customers can also get in touch with our excellent support staff on any technical questions or to provide feedback on new functionality they’d like to see in our Froala product line. Feature suggestions are frequently reviewed by the product team for inclusion in future product releases.

Note: These plans and roadmap represent our intentions as of this date, but our development plans and priorities are subject to change. Accordingly, we can’t offer any commitments or other forms of assurance that we’ll ultimately release any or all of the described products on the schedule or in the order described, or at all. These general indications of development schedules or “product roadmaps” should not be interpreted or construed as any form of a commitment, and our customers’ rights to upgrades, updates, enhancements, and other maintenance releases will be set forth in the applicable software license agreement.

Sshhh…Froala Charts Presale Sneak Peek