If you haven’t been tuning in to Webflow’s product updates, we’ve been busy! This past quarter has seen a slew of smaller updates, alongside a handful of large ones. Here’s a look at what we’ve changed, grouped roughly by product area.
Designer updates
Navigator enhancements
Released May 14th and June 5th
New location, and a new feature: pin and drag to resize.
One of the more visible updates we’ve made in the Designer began in May, when we started rolling out the new Navigator location on the left side of the Designer.
Elements set to “display: none” have a little hidden eye icon next to them in the navigator.
We also made it easier to find elements set to display: none in the navigator by adding a little icon indicating it as such. It’s a hidden eye, get it? An “eye-con” if you will. Thanks for reading.
With autoflow positioning, grid items automatically flow into the next available cell.
Most notably, CSS grid’s 2.0 release introduced a new, default mode for grid child positioning: autoflow. When a grid child is set to autoflow positioning, it will automatically be placed into the next available grid cell when added to a grid.
For a full look at the update and some cloneable resources, check out our release blog post.
CMS and Ecommerce updates
Custom label and help text for the “name” field in collections
Released April 11th
Rename name fields! Because all collection fields should be first-class citizens.
Believe it or not, people use the “name” field in CMS Collections for all sorts of things, including things that aren’t strictly “names.” This can cause confusion if you’re working with an editor who’s adding content, or if you’re building a site that’s not in English. So we made it possible to rename that name field and add some help text, just like every other collection field.
Password protect CMS collection pages
Released April 23rd
Password-protect confidential case studies, for example.
Say you want to create a set of case studies on your portfolio about your confidential client work, but want to make those visible only to a select few.
Reorder how collections are displayed in the Designer and Editor.
Before this update, CMS collections displayed in the Designer and Editor in the order they were created, which could make it hard to find the collections that matter most. And so, to make life easier, now you can drag and drop your collections into whatever order you'd like.
Quickly find and delete CMS collection connections
Released May 22nd
Quickly locate and disconnect CMS collections from your collection settings.
Sometimes when you’re working with a large, complex site with lots of CMS content, deleting individual collections or collection fields can be a pain. You can only delete them once you’ve tracked down exactly where these collections and fields are being used in your design.
To make this process less painful, we built a “connections manager” that lets you see every instance where a collection is connected to your designs. It also gives you the option to disconnect any instance of that collection in one click.
Filter collection lists by multi-reference fields
Released May 22nd
Create a list of products with the same categories (plural!) as the product you're viewing.
We pushed a couple of updates this past quarter that should make sharing your project with colleagues and clients easier.
Copy this entire URL to link to this specific page within a project.
First, we added a unique parameter to the end of the URL when you’re on a specific page in the Designer, which lets you copy/paste that URL to link a teammate to that exact page you’re working on.
Share a read-only link directly from the Designer.
Second, we made it even easier to share a read-only link with colleagues or clients by enabling and copying that link right from the Designer.
Open current page from the Designer publish modal
Released April 5th
Open your site to the page you have open in the Designer.
We also made a slight UX change in the Designer publish modal based on some feedback: now when you open your site from the publish modal, you’ll be directed to the exact page you’re working on — no need to find your way there on your own.
Include project settings when duplicating sites
Released April 10th
Duplicate projects and preserve your sanity at the same time!
Continuing in the realm of things that make your life easier, we added new options when duplicating a site that let you carry over important project settings, which can be a lifesaver if you’re duplicating a site to transfer it between accounts.
Protect projects in Team accounts from deletion
Released June 6th
Team settings > Permissions
We also gave Team account owners some extra power: now you can protect projects from deletion in the new permissions tab of your project settings.
Coming soon
Multi-image field
New collection field type: multi-image field. For both the CMS and Ecommerce.
We’ll be adding a new collection field type soon: the multi-image field. Among other uses, this will allow you to create galleries of images on CMS and ecommerce template pages, even when each collection item has a different number of associated images. So cool!
CMS-driven image and video lightboxes
Connect a lightbox to CMS- and Ecommerce-driven images or videos.
We’re also pushing an update to your friendly neighborhood lightbox element that will let you connect to CMS and Ecommerce images and videos — or connect to multi-image fields on CMS and Ecommerce template pages.
Grid template areas
Restructure layouts in one place and impact every instance with grid template areas.
We’ll be coming out with another update to grid soon: namely grid template areas, which make it easier to reuse grid layouts across your site and make sweeping layout changes across your site in far fewer clicks. More on this soon!
After Effects animations integration
Export After Effects animations as JSON files via the Bodymovin plugin, then add them to your projects and control their playback with Webflow’s existing animations toolset.
A big one coming this summer is our new After Effects integration, which — with some help from Lottie — lets you upload JSON files of your After Effects animations (exported with the Bodymovin plugin) and then add those directly to your site.
The integration will offer quite a lot of power, letting you control the playback of these animations based on Webflow’s existing interactions triggers like click, hover, and appear in view, along with more advanced triggers like scroll and mouse position.
Look out for a beta this summer!
Improvements to teams and collaboration
Following on after some of the collaboration improvements listed above, we’re making headway on some long-awaited features and requests around teams and collaboration, including:
Annotations and feedback. Collect feedback on your designs from teammates, colleagues, and clients right in Webflow.
Multiple people in the Designer. We’ve got a multi-phase plan in place to allow multiple people to work in the same project at the same time.
You’ll see gradual improvements on both of these fronts in the coming months, so stay tuned for more here.
PayPal support
If you’re keeping an eye on this question, don’t worry — we’re still on it. We’re steadily continuing work on PayPal checkout support for ecommerce and will keep you updated as we get closer to launch.
For a closer look at everything we’ve been up to at Webflow, check out our End of Q2 Live Q&A with CEO Vlad Magdalin.
Remember, you can always check our updates page for a log of the newest features, enhancements, and updates coming to Webflow. And if you have new features you’d like to see built, we encourage you to submit and vote on ideas in our wishlist.
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