New features
Starter Kits
Starter Kits are curated combinations of custom coded components within fully designed templates. Starter Kits let you experience custom components without having to touch any code.
You can now browse our Starter Kits and select one during the integration process after running `npx makeswift@latest` in your terminal. There are currently three Starter Kits — all ecommerce examples using BigCommerce, Shopify, and an NFT drop created with thirdweb.
We are planning to create more Starter Kits in the future so hit us up in Discord to suggest which ones to create next.
Preview Mode
Preview mode is a new feature that reinforces a core design principle of Makeswift: what you see in the builder is exactly what you see when visiting your site. Without preview mode there was a discrepancy between live and preview pages which caused 2 issues:
1. Developers had to define two separate files when integrating with Makeswift
2. When previewing your site in Makeswift it wasn’t possible to navigate to pages since the URL for preview didn’t match the URL for live pages
Now, instead of requiring two pages for integrating with Makeswift, we only require 1 page and use Next.js’ Preview Mode to fetch the appropriate data when in the builder and preview `iframe`s. This removes the discrepancy we had before while also providing a better integration experience for developers.
For more background on Preview Mode, here’s a link to the RFC.
Support for on-demand revalidation
As part of this release we also introduced a new concept to the Makeswift integration: the Makeswift API route. This was necessary to support Preview Mode but also gives us the ability to support other features automatically. With it, we’ve added support for automatic on-demand revalidation. This is a big improvement since it means that Makeswift pages can be statically generated at build time and regenerated on demand whenever published, without needing to redeploy the Next.js app.
In the past we had to specify a low revalidation period of 1 second so pages would become stale after 1 second and regenerate. Now, pages only regenerate exactly when they’ve changed. If they haven’t changed, pages will stay cached forever. This results in lower infrastructure costs for Makeswift customers since most requests will be cached instead of resulting in a lambda execution for revalidation at worst every 1 second.
New integration API
Finally, we also introduced a new client for Makeswift’s API to make the Makeswift integration more explicit and less magical. While more verbose, this should help developers better understand how Makeswift works with their Next.js app and how they can use it together with other data sources like a headless CMS, APIs, etc.
For details on how to migrate to the new release and what changed in the integration, here are the release notes.
improvements & fixes
- The UI for the builder header has been redesigned to resemble a browser bar. When integrating with Makeswift, this change better communicates that what you see in the builder is your own app.
- Sites hosted by Makeswift have been updated to React 18. This update also fixes typing latency issues some users were experience using our text component.
- New and duplicated pages have prettier URLs by default
- Fixed a bug where certain punctuation in table column names prevented those fields from being recorded in forms
- The workspace and site selectors in the CLI process are now being sorted alphabetically
- Fixed an issue causing the hover preview thumbnails shown in the pages sidebar to not display the correct page
- When logging back into your account, you’ll now immediately be redirected to your last visited page in the builder
- Added the ability to easily add environment variables depending on the selected Starter Kit
- Added a `--template` flag to the CLI to auto select a Starter Kit
- Updated our Vercel integration to preselect templates based on the deploy link
- Fixed an issue causing the builder canvas to show up as transparent instead of white
Previous updates
Oct 27, 2022
Since releasing our components API earlier this year, we’ve been working on ways to make it easier to get started. You can now use our CLI to quickly integrate either a fresh Next.js app or your exist…
Oct 20, 2022
With the latest version of `@makeswift/runtime`, we’ve introduced the `Slot` control. This control allows your components to receive `ReactNode` as props, unlocking visual composition for your…
Aug 2, 2022
We’ve added several new user roles that allow you to limit what certain members on your team have access to in your workspace…
Jul 28, 2022
We recently launched Makeswift 2.0, which lets you make any page in your Next.js site visually editable, giving your marketing team the ability to work independently and make changes directly…
Mar 30, 2022
More SEO features
You can now create redirect rules to forward visitors from one URL to a different URL. This will allow you to prevent visitors from experiencing any offline pages, making sure they only see live URLs…
Feb 1, 2022
No more copying a single edit you made to your navigation and tediously pasting it on every page on your site. You can now save navbars, footers…
Dec 7, 2021
If you've logged into Makeswift within the past week, you may have noticed a fresh coat of paint on our user interface. But this update isn't just a reskin...
AUG 16, 2021
Over the past few months we've been working on a big release that we're excited to finally unveil. All Makeswift sites are now powered by our brand…
Mar 12, 2021
We've just released more improvements to the page builder in an ongoing mission to give our users the fastest and smoothest experience while…
Nov 30, 2020
We've been designing version 2 of Makeswift with some of our early customers for a few months now, and are excited to release the first…
Oct 13, 2020
When working on a product for so long, you sometimes don't realize that the most basic of interactions need a second look. In our case, it was som…
Sep 29, 2020
Over the last couple of weeks, we've made updates to Makeswift that improve the speed and performance of the page builder.
Sep 14, 2020
As we've been observing new users learn Makeswift, we've realized that alternating the spacing handles as you move your mouse in and out of…
Aug 26, 2020
We've added enhancements to live collaboration that will now show you exactly which elements a teammate is hovering over, as well as what…
Aug 10, 2020
Makeswift is now listed with a dedicated page in Zapier's App Directory. All Zapier users can discover the Makeswift app and start creating Zap…
Jun 11, 2020
Makeswift is built for teams. Now you and your teammates can work on the same page simultaneously. As you make edits to a page, your team…
May 5, 2020
Previously, it was difficult to make sure all boxes were equal in height when creating multi-column rows. With nothing more than your naked eye…
Apr 21, 2020
When creating a new page, you'll now be able to select from a library of beautiful, responsive page templates. Each template was built inside…
Apr 2, 2020
While using our product over the last many months, we've realized that it takes too many clicks to navigate around Makeswift. For example, it took…
Mar 25, 2020
While in content mode, you can now edit existing text links instead of having to unlink them first. You can also add adjacent text to an existing link…
Mar 12, 2020
You can now view and download invoices from your Makeswift account. We also added a section in billing overview allowing you to add tax IDs to your…
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