Here at Gravity Forms we are excited to announce the release of 2.5 Beta 3. Taking yet another step closer to the release of 2.5, we encourage you to now test beta-3 with your theme/s as well as your add-ons.

So far, we have been delighted with the uptake of the 2.5 betas, with a vast number of our community members downloading and testing it out. For us, involving our huge community of developers and designers is the best way to increase the variety of use cases and setups 2.5 gets tested against, as well as gather the greatest variety of feedback.

Therefore, we are asking for your comments and feedback on beta-3, and importantly how it works with your theme and other add-ons. This will help us to continue to identify and make the necessary changes and improvements needed before the final release of 2.5.

Keep reading to find out more about 2.5, what’s new with beta-3, and how to install and use this latest beta successfully on your website…

2.5 in a Nutshell

We have written extensively about what to expect from 2.5 over the last few months, but if you have missed the news, here’s a summary of what you can expect from 2.5…

• New Form Editor – The Gravity Forms editor has been restyled and reworked, making it easier to use than ever before. You can expect a complete redesign of the form building experience, with new ways of working and a beautiful revamped look and feel.
• Column Control – Within the 2.5 form editor you can easily manage form layouts using drag-and-drop column control for up to four columns.
• Accessibility – Our developers have been working hard to make Gravity Forms the most accessible form builder on the market. Working with accessibility specialist Rian Rietveld and her team at Level Level we aim to ensure that with our form builder you will be able to create truly accessible forms.
• Updates to Markup and Styles – 2.5 enhancements to form markup and styles will make it easier to customize frontend forms. For those of you looking to extend upon the base styles provided by Gravity Forms, you will find customizing the CSS is a smooth and simple process.
• Theme Integration – The Gravity Forms team is working with a wide assortment of theme developers to help ensure that 2.5 will work with many popular WordPress themes straight out of the box.

For more in-depth information on Gravity Forms 2.5, have a read of this article – Gravity Forms 2.5: Install it Today!

2.5 Beta 3 – What’s New?

Beta-3 is another huge release, and includes a multitude of enhancements, improvements, and fixes. Let’s have a look at some of the changes you can expect to see…

• Key Improvements to Frontend Styles – It’s time to test 2.5 with your theme! We are excited to ask our community to test beta-3 with your theme/s and look forward to hearing about how you get on.

• Enhancements to the Form Editor – From drag and drop support for touch devices to an improved conditional logic UI, including a fly out menu to allow much more space for complex conditional logic sequences, there have been many tweaks added to the form editor to enhance design, performance, and usability.

• More Accessibility Updates – With accessibility continuing to be the main focus of 2.5, beta-3 brings yet more accessibility updates including fixing the consent field to use a fieldset container for better accessibility.

• Loads of Bug Fixes – Make our job easier by reporting any bugs you come across!

For a full list of all beta-3 alterations, check out the 2.5 Beta Change Log.

Get Started with 2.5 Beta 3: Top Tips and Useful Resources

Ready to get started with 2.5 Beta 3? For those of you who previously installed a 2.5 beta, but don’t have automatic updates enabled, simply update the Gravity Forms beta plugin within your WordPress dashboard.

Or, if you haven’t already downloaded one of the betas, you can download 2.5-beta-3 by logging in to your Gravity Forms account and going to the Downloads area of your account dashboard.

Here are some top tips and resources to help you when testing 2.5-beta-3…

• Don’t Install Beta on Your Live Site – 2.5 beta is not recommended for production sites. Even if you test 2.5 and think everything is working, you should still not use it on your live site.

• Check Out the Docs – The Gravity Forms support team has written extensive documentation to support the release of 2.5 beta. Make sure you check out the docs, in particular the FAQs and the Known Issues pages.

• Report Any Issues – As is normal with a beta, we can’t guarantee a totally smooth ride straight away. If you come across any problems with beta-3 we really want to know about them. Please report any issues directly to the Gravity Forms support team via our 2.5 feedback form.

• Keep Up to Date with Beta News and Updates – Join our beta 2.5 mailing list to stay informed of updates, known issues, and other important 2.5 news.

Join Our 2.5 Beta Mailing List

2.5 is one of our biggest ever releases, and we can’t wait for you to try it out. So if you haven’t already, pop over to your Gravity Forms account and install beta-3 today!

And make sure you sign up to our beta mailing list to stay updated with all the latest beta news and announcements….