Introducing beta (previously, experimental) features (including parentheses)!

[grace.hong]

UPDATE: Aug 15, 2023 - These features are now called beta, rather than experimental, features! See below for an image of the new panel.

Hi everyone,

We’re launching a new experimental features UI, which you can find in the Versions tab under Settings! Big shoutout to @aless for building this out

This will allow you to play with new features that we’re exploring — with this particular launch, you’ll get a sneak peek of parentheses We want to use this interface to de-risk novel features we’re considering and gather feedback on how we might refine features before launch.

To use an experimental feature, simply check the checkbox for the feature. You should be able to use the feature in your editor and apply it to your development version. If you’d like to use the feature in your live app, you need to deploy your current version to live. Most importantly, as you play around with these features, please use the “send feedback” link to share your thoughts on the particular feature with our Product team.

Please note that these features are highly experimental and still under development. We may launch some features; we may not launch other features. That said, we recommend that you start by testing these features in isolation before moving on to other parts of your app.

In addition, for certain experimental features, your app may be altered even after you turn off the feature. For instance, with parentheses, if you create a statement like (A+B)*(B+C) while having parentheses turned on, your Bubble app will continue evaluating the expression in that order after parentheses have been turned off. You can revert to the previous state of your app by using save points as we automatically create a save point whenever you toggle on such a feature.

Hope you enjoy interacting with experimental features, and feel free to send over any feedback you have!

[jared8]

This is very exciting! Especially the parenthesis update – I’ve been needing this for a long time now!

[sam.morgan]

The parentheses feature is a game changer!

[reger-alexander]

Awesome!

[mac2]

Nice one!

[J805]

Looking forward to tryin this out. We resorted to plugins for this for so long. So glad we can do this in Bubble without the plugins now. Thanks!

[diogoteste91]

What a great time! Just tested and it solve my problem, easy peasy. It was a simple calculation of % of class conclusion filtered by courses that weren’t working before.
Tks @grace.hong

[equibodyapp]

YESSSSSSSSS!! So many hacky things/extra steps I’ve had to do when I just need a simple parenthesis (or two) in a calculation!!

[josh24]

I’m working on a stock analysis app for a client which has loads of calculations, so this is super timely. Imma go try this out right now!

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Josh @ Support Dept
Helping no-code founders get unstuck fast save hours, & ship faster with an expert on-demand

[Guru]

Yes ! No need for plugins or hidden inputs for simple math - finally!

Thanks!

[ZubairLK]

Wow. Fantastic!

Can you please share some idea about any breaking changes to these experimental features?

Are they slightly mature or very experimental?
Can we use in production?
Will any changes be communicated ahead of time?

Thanks
ZubairLK

[luke2]

Nice, glad to see parentheses come into play within the editor, I remember when this was down on the old roadmap as “Parenthesis in the expression composer”, so excellent to see and will save a lot of repetition in creating var groups.

Looking forward to seeing what else the experimental features can bring, I think this will be a safe and exciting way to soft release features, assess bubblers reactions, bug fix and scale up before a ‘official’ type rollout in the editor. Cheers

[jmalmeida]

This is really great, thanks @grace.hong!

It’d be fantastic if the UI included the expected date for the feature launch as part of a stable release

[grace.hong]

Great questions!

To start, the features we plan on releasing through this UI will range from being very experimental to more mature. For very experimental features, we’re gathering feedback to see how we can iterate on the feature and understand whether we should eventually release it (do users feel this feature is useful, etc.). For more mature features, we likely do plan on releasing the feature, and we’re using the UI as a means to test for any additional bugs our users might encounter before we fully release the feature.

While you can use these features in production (you will need to deploy to live) and we do plan on proactively communicating any changes we make to these features, ultimately these features remain experimental, so we cannot guarantee that we will definitely launch any of these features (especially in its current state as we may need to refine it). That said, we recommend testing these features conservatively to start.

[grace.hong]

Thanks for the suggestion! In our initial brainstorming, we did think about including such a release date, but we realized that it may be difficult to predict the timeline since we might receive ample user feedback that requires us to return to the drawing board for certain features. We’ll definitely continue considering how we can best include this date, especially for more mature features

[jmalmeida]

Thanks for your answer, @grace.hong!

Maybe an estimated range would be easier.

[ambroisedlg]

@grace.hong we’ve been waiting for this for a while, thanks for pushing this forward!

I have started testing it briefly - it seems the (Current Page Width + 2) * 3 works great - the parenthesis seems to be included automatically though, and I didn’t find a way to choose where these parenthesis go. For example, I’m unable to write Current Page Width + (2*3).

Maybe I’m missing something?

[grace.hong]

Yup, you’re correct. There are a few different ways in which we can implement parentheses on Bubble (which is why it’s such a challenging problem to solve). The approach we took with this prototype was automatic insertion of parentheses. Allowing users to manually designate parentheses would require a different set of interactions that also follows the precedent of how you create expressions today in Bubble. That said, we would love to hear how you might ideally work with parentheses on Bubble — feel free to submit your feedback using the “send feedback” link!

[ambroisedlg]

Thanks @grace.hong I’ll submit feedback!

@grace.hong

Allowing users to manually designate parentheses would require a different set of interactions that also follows the precedent of how you create expressions today in Bubble

To get the discussing going with others here, I guess by that you mean adding the parentheses as options we could click on, in the same way we can click on “+”, “-” etc whenever working with numbers?

With that approach we could work with very custom / complex expressions to fit any use-cases imo

[grace.hong]

Yup, that could be one potential option where parentheses would be included as something you could choose from a dropdown menu.

Also forgot to include a small explanation for the particular expression you were trying to create — you currently can’t start an expression with a constant. I’d be curious to hear why you would prefer 2*3 rather than 6.