Hi everyone,
This is our June community update. You can read last month’s here.
Starting with some exciting news! BubbleCon 2024 is returning October 1–2. Last year was our first user conference, and I’m so happy that we’re able to do it again this year: It was really incredible and inspiring to meet so many of you in-person and virtually. You can sign up here to get an email when tickets go live.
We know stability is still top of mind for you, as it is for us. If you missed it, I’m writing a weekly update on stability, which I plan to continue for at least the next month. Link to the latest is here.
Changes we made this month
Last month, I hinted at changes coming to our Bubble Developer Certification exam. I’m super excited that we’ve officially migrated it to Bubble! This was a big effort, done in collaboration with Airdev, and it’s a real testament to Bubble’s power and adaptability.
We initially launched certification on a third-party tool to learn more about what was involved in running a program like this. We learned a lot, but ultimately decided that it made the most sense to rebuild it on Bubble to grow the program the way we wanted to over the long term. The rebuilt platform has better navigation and proctoring, and it’s a lot easier for agencies to make bulk purchases for their developers. Also, if you sign up for an Agency plan (more updates on that below!) you’ll get a free certification attempt between now and September 1, 2024. You can read all about how the new platform came to be on the blog.
Last week, we released 50 new components to our component library and enabled better sorting from the menu bar. The updated library includes a number of headers, sidebars, and footers, and several sample layouts for commonly created pages. These are primarily designed for newer Bubblers who could benefit from pre-made UI elements to build more complex apps. You can read the full list here.
Thanks to your feedback, we also shipped several more small improvements to the elements tree since the last update went out early in May. When renaming a style or element in the elements tree, clicking out of the input autosaves the new name. We also removed an animation that would slide the property editor around as you clicked on different elements in the elements tree.
Finally, we updated the marketplace and plugin pages. The marketplace page got a few cosmetic updates, and we added some helpful improvements to the plugins page:
-
New filters by category, including type and price
-
New sorting options including most installed, highest rated, price, newest, and oldest
-
New featured sections for trending plugins
You can read more about the plugin improvements here. Now that this update is live, any plugins that don’t use the new responsive format have been delisted.
What we’re working on
-
Reliability: This is the #1 priority for us right now. As I mentioned above, I’m sending weekly updates on this, and you can read the latest one here.
-
Mobile: We invited a small group of external users to test the alpha version of our native mobile app builder, and we’re running research calls and usability tests to identify the roadmap for the beta. This month, the team will start building the foundation for offline support, push notifications, and multiple icon libraries. Nick, the product manager for our Mobile team, will be sharing a more detailed update on the beta roadmap and timeline in the coming weeks.To get access to the beta when it’s available, join the waitlist here.
-
Workload management: We want you to feel confident managing your workload, whether you’re migrating from a legacy capacity-based plan or already on the new workload-based plan. In the next few weeks, we’re adding two tools to help you reduce unexpected workload spikes: custom workload notifications and infinite loop protection. You can read more about these upcoming features on the forum here.
-
App privacy: We’re working on rolling out a change in the next week or two that will give you more control over your app data. You’ll be able to set permissions (ranging from no permission to view and edit) that will let you dictate when and how the Bubble team can troubleshoot your app.
-
The Agency plan: We’re adding 2FA, the ability to designate developer and non-developer user roles, and (most excitingly) access to the bulk data operations feature to the Agency plan in June. If you’re on an Agency plan already, you should have received an email about it earlier this month, but keep an eye out for the official rollout!
-
Version control changelog: We’ve paused work on this project so that its team can focus on helping improve stability, but we plan to pick it up later in the year.
From the blog
Check out these stories we published this month that you might have missed:
-
Why Gaming Powerhouse Unity Powers Up With Bubble: The team talked to a PM at Unity who used Bubble to build a knowledge hub for users, and it became one of the most-visited pages on their site.
-
How to Use the ‘:formatted as text’ Operator: A tutorial on how to use if/else statements without conditionals.
-
Developer Spotlight on Gregory John: A really insightful interview with Gregory John on how he learned about Bubble (he’s used it since 2016!) and what he’s done since.
-
Synthflow + Bubble AI: We featured Synthflow on the Showcase page a few months back, and now they’ve built an official Bubble plugin so you can incorporate their AI agents into your own apps.
New hires
We had several new hires join the team this month, as well as three new summer interns! Welcome to:
-
Dani, joining as a brand designer
-
Matthew, joining as a software engineer
-
Khemet, joining as a technical product support specialist
-
Lindsay, joining as a product intern
-
Jack, joining as a social media intern
-
Sarthak, joining as an engineering intern
We’re also hiring for several new positions. Take a look here.
That’s all for this month. Hope you have a great start to your summer (here in the Northern Hemisphere, at least)!
— Josh and Emmanuel
