We have been teasing everyone now for weeks about all of the cool new features coming in the next version of Headway. And we even gave a few a sneak peek to get some feedback. The overall reaction was WOW! And that has been my reaction every time Clay showed me each of the new features he was adding. Below is a short list. We will be putting out a complete change log soon.
In the meantime, those of you holding a developer’s license to Headway can go to the forums and download your very own copy. Enjoy!
Here are a few of the major changes that 1.7 brings:
Quick Start Wizard
Starting from a fresh install, the quick start wizard will show immediately after loading the visual editor. Otherwise, you can run the wizard through the Tools menu in the visual editor.
The wizard will guide you step-by-step through choosing your layout, uploading your header image, building your site’s color scheme (it’ll even detect colors from your header image!), and selecting fonts. At the end, you’ll click a button to build your site and it’ll all be done in a snap!
Column System For Leafs
Those who have a more column-based layout will find the new columns system to be incredibly beneficial. Instead of jogging all of your leafs around, you can put them into columns and move and resize the entire columns with ease. Don’t fret, the previous layout system is still present. You can specify whether or not you want columns for the particular page in the visual editor.
Styles Manager
Before Headway 1.7, Headway came with 1 layout and you had to work from there. Headway 1.7 comes with 4 pre-loaded styles in the new Styles Manager, which allows you to save and load styles. You can also import and export styles just like before, but in a much more organized way!
Leaf Templates
Instead of linking pages and being locked into the layout of the page you are linking to, you can now save your leafs (and columns) into Leaf Templates. Leaf Templates can be loaded onto any page. Once a template is loaded, you can modify it just like any regular page.
Automatic Upgrades
Even though we think all of the other features in 1.7 are incredibly cool, we REALLY think this one is cool . No longer do you have to go to the Headway site, download the latest version, upload it, and activate it. Oh, and if you ever did any custom.css or used the custom folder in Headway, you won’t have to worry about transferring that to the new installation either. The automatic upgrader does it all with only a few clicks!
HUGE Speed Improvements and Optimizations
In 1.7, we rethunk (hey, we’re from Kansas!) how many things were coded in Headway. We’ve made major improvements to the visual editor to drastically reduce the amount of conflicts from third-party plugins and also make loading the visual editor MUCH faster. Also, we completely rewrote the content leaf to be more efficient and more stable than before.
Feature Removal: Photo Gallery Leaf
This was a difficult consensus to reach amongst the team here, but we decided it would be best to remove the Photo Gallery leaf from the Headway core. We felt that the leaf was too complex to be in core. Also, the photo gallery was the only leaf that used the advanced leafs panel, making that a waste of space in the admin panel. If you’re screaming at us now, don’t worry! If you use the Photo Gallery leaf on your website (or wish to use it anyway), you will be able to download the leaf from the Headway Marketplace for free.
Download your copy of Headway 1.7 Beta here.
