While the DevExtreme team is working hard on new features for the v18.1 final release, they've been publishing several pre-releases on GitHub.
We'd love to get your feedback, so please get involved by downloading, testing, and letting us know your experience.
Note: This is pre-release software, so please, consider yourself warned.
Early Testing
Many of the v18.1 upcoming features are inspired by existing/reported customer issues. By providing early build access, we'd like to know if our solution will address the problem or if the scope of the problem is bigger than we originally thought.
Your testing and feedback can help us to change and deliver the final implementation. As you know, the best time to fix or improve source code is before the final RTM release. This way, we can avoid future unexpected breaking changes that may creep in.
So please get involved because taking part in early testing results provides several benefits such as:
- Confidence that feature implementation fits your application specifics;
- Fewer breaking changes after the final release (because we'll include fixes before the next major release);
- Increase overall product quality;
- Align team efforts with customer needs;
How to test?
If you'd like to test out the features in your application then follow the installation instructions from that release description.
Look through the releases page (pre-releases are marked with a special red label). The release will have a short "what's new" section.
Alternatively, you can use the feature list available for alpha testing. Feel free to leave comments, report GitHub issues, or create tickets in our Support Center.
The DevExtreme pre-release documentation is also available here: https://js.devexpress.com/Documentation/18_1/
Note: Some parts of DevExtreme (ASP.NET MVC Controls, Visual Studio Tools, etc.) are not developed in the DevExtreme GitHub repo. However, you'll be able to download our pre-release installations. We'll notify you once we have something to show for these other pieces that are not available via GitHub.
DevExtreme Roadmap
To provide transparency with our DevExtreme customers, we'll be publishing a DevExtreme 2018 roadmap on https://js.devexpress.com soon. Because the client-side web world is notorious for changing drastically in a short period of time, we plan to update this new roadmap as needed.
A public roadmap helps you to understand our vision for certain solutions.
DevExtreme targets several platforms such as jQuery, Angular, React, Vue, ASP.NET MVC, and likely more in the future. DevExtreme is no longer one single repository but several that are developed simultaneously in many public and private repos. Therefore, the roadmap will include links to feature discussion pages (mostly on GitHub) where you can leave your feedback and discuss your questions directly with the DevExtreme developer team.
To see what's coming out in 2018, then vote on your favorite features, and finally to get updates on our progress, here's what I recommend:
- Go to the recently publishedDevExtreme 2018 Roadmap. This is a styled as a survey to allow you to vote on our proposed upcoming features. Your votes are important to us so please go to the link above and give us your feedback.
- Then, check back regularly on the roadmap on the DevExtreme website for updates.
Subscribe and Get Notified
The best way to stay current with DevExtreme is to get notifications. There are lots of options that you can choose from too:
- Subscribe to DevExtreme social networks accounts (we'll announce each pre-release)
- Subscribe to GitHub Releases RSS feed
- Use specialized notification services
Try the latest DevExtreme pre-release version and please give us your feedback, thanks!
Email: mharry@devexpress.com
Twitter: @mehulharry