In the past four weeks, we have made significant progress in the development of Baserow. Although we have successfully resolved 25 issues from our list, Baserow is still in its alpha phase. We are excited to announce that the latest version, 0.1, has just been deployed to the production environment. You can now test it by logging in or creating an account from the homepage.
New features
- Row popup editing functionality
- Resize field widths in the grid view.
- Validation and formatting for the number field.
- Canceling of editing state by pressing the escape key.
- Improved field type conversion.
- Password forgotten functionality.
- Password change functionality.
- Enabled the arrow keys to navigate trough cells in the grid view.
- Added the long text field.
- Added the date field.
- Introduced cell copy paste functionality.
- And lots of other small things and bug fixes.
Additional fields and improved user experience
We are pleased to introduce the new long text and date fields. The long text field allows you to store text that doesn’t fit on a single line, providing more space for editing and supporting multiple lines. Additionally, you can now store dates, optionally with a time, in European, US, and ISO formats. When editing these fields, you will have access to user-friendly date and time pickers. Furthermore, the number field has been enhanced to display a validation message when an invalid number is entered.
We have also made numerous user experience improvements for the grid view. You can now resize the width of fields per view, navigate between cells using arrow keys, cancel edits by pressing the escape key, and copy and paste cell content more efficiently. Another improvement worth mentioning is the enhanced conversion of field types. Previously, this process often failed, but now it attempts to convert existing data to the correct format. If conversion fails, the content is left empty.
A few must have features
The grid view offers excellent speed and a clear overview when editing your data. However, it could sometimes feel crowded, especially with numerous fields and rows. To address this, we have introduced the ability to enlarge a row in a popup. This provides a neat form where you can easily edit the data for that specific row.
When Baserow was initially launched, two essential features were missing: password recovery and password changing. We are pleased to inform you that these features have now been implemented! When logging in, you will find a “forgot password” link at the bottom left of the page. Additionally, once logged in, you can access the settings link at the bottom left, which will direct you to a password change form.
Upcoming weeks
In the coming weeks, our focus will be on preparing for the open-source release of Baserow. The delay in this release was due to the absence of necessary documentation, including developer docs, API docs, and a plugin boilerplate. However, we are happy to report that the in-code documentation is already at an acceptable level, featuring clear explanations, rationale behind design choices, and examples. We are confident that developers will find it valuable. Once the remaining documentation reaches an acceptable level, we will make Baserow open source!
As indicated on the roadmap displayed on our homepage, we plan to work on the undo/redo functionality and real-time changes after the open-source release. However, these items may be delayed by a few weeks. We have been in contact with potential users who have expressed their needs, and the most requested features are connecting rows and exposing data publicly via an API. We value our users’ feedback and will prioritize implementing these features if they are deemed most important.
