We are very happy to announce a big update for Gutenslider. We worked on it for almost half a year now and it will bring lots of improvements for you as well as maintainability and faster updates (for us developers) that let you profit from new features faster.
The biggest change is the transition from the slider library slick
to swiper
. Not only is swiper more modern, with more features but also, unfortunately, slick is discontinued since some years, which makes swiper more secure as well.
Another big change, lots of you asked for is a better UX for the editor. And with new Gutenberg features (that are constantly released very quickly), we can now deliver a much better UX without the need to switch between preview mode and edit mode for slide editing. Also the preview in the editor is now much closer to the final result on the front.
All Changes in Version 5.0
Gutenslider Free
- Move from slick to swiper as slider library because of maintainablity, usability and security reasons
- Improved UX (no edit / preview mode swith)
- Flip animation
- Insert images from url
- Slides per view auto
- Conditional assets loading (only load gutenslider css and js on posts/pages with Gutenslider blocks)
- Reduced file size – faster loading – better SEO score
- Improve Lazy Loading and srcset
Gutenslider Pro / Expert
- Added two more animations on top:
- coverflow
- cube
- Added more progress options:
- Fraction – display Slide Number
- Progress – display a Progressbar
- Dynamic – display dynamic bullets
- Position of the progress
- Space between slides
- Advanced more finegrained responsive controls
Upcoming Changes
Not only are we releasing new features with this version, but as noted above also a new software design that allows us to deliver new changes we were not able to release before. We collected all feature requests from our users as well as our own ideas on this board, where you can also vote for new features: https://shipright.community/gutenslider
We have lots of todos on our list, but upcoming changes requested by you are:
- vertical slider
- lightbox
- block transforms (from and to other blocks)
- thumbnails
- more controls over the transition
- …
So, keep your eyes open for new releases and the added features. If you have more feature requests, please use the contact form in your WordPress admin -> Gutenslider -> Contact Tab.