Feathers UI beta.3 preview build on Haxelib

April 12, 2021

Today, Feathers UI beta.3 is now officially available on Haxelib. This is the latest of multiple preview builds that are planned before the first stable release in early 2022. Since we're in the beta stage, the core framework architecture has settled down, and breaking changes are much less likely to happen. Developers who don't mind a few rough edges here and there should consider Feathers UI ready for starting development on new projects!

Feathers UI is an open source framework of user interface components for creative, cross-platform projects. Using the Haxe programming language, Feathers UI is built on OpenFL — a user-friendly library for rendering, input, networking, and more. Deploy native apps to iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux (and even publish your project to the web!) using the same Haxe codebase.

🚨 Please note that this is a beta version of Feathers UI. Some components and features may still be missing, and occasional bugs should be expected.

Feathers UI has reached this milestone thanks the very generous support of all of the backers from the Feathers UI Kickstarter campaign, which completed successfully in the summer of 2019. A big, enthusastic thank you to everyone who has supported the project, whether you are a backer, shared the Kickstarter with your friends on social media, or simply encouraged me (Josh) to keep up the good work!

What's new in beta.3?

Let's take a look at some of the new UI components and features that are included with Feathers UI beta.3

New UI Components

Alert displays a message in a modal pop-up dialog with a title and a set of buttons.
ButtonBar displays a grouping of buttons based on a data collection.
Form and FormItem display a set of form controls with labels, including the ability to assign a specific submit button.
Header display a title in the center and two optional views on the left and right sides.

A big release

This build also includes a ton of minor improvements. Here's a few worth highlighting:

Support for horizontal scrolling in the GridView component when the content width exceeds the container width.
Separate branchIcon, branchOpenIcon, branchClosedIcon, and leafIcon styles on the TreeViewItemRenderer component.
A maxChars property for TextInput and TextArea.
A new setPadding() convenience method was added to all classes with paddingTop, paddingRight, paddingBottom and paddingLeft properties. It sets all four value at once.
A new Application.topLevelApplication static property that makes it easy to access the root Feathers UI application object.
ArrayHierarchicalCollection is a new implementation of IHierarchicalCollection that's a bit more flexible than the existing TreeCollection.
New filterFunction and sortCompareFunction properties on IHierarchicalCollection to match the same properties on IFlatCollection.

For complete details, check out the beta.3 CHANGELOG.

Install Feathers UI beta.3

Feathers UI may be installed using the haxelib install command in your terminal.

haxelib install feathersui

If you already have the library installed, and you simply want the latest version, run the haxelib update command instead.

haxelib update feathersui

Be sure to take a look at the complete installation instructions for details about installing required dependencies, along with links to step-by-step tutorials for setting up supported editors and IDEs.

Documentation

The Feathers UI Getting Started guide provides the most essential links for creating your first Feathers UI project and learning about all of the features and UI components that are available in the framework.
The v1.0.0-beta.3 API Reference includes descriptions of all APIs available on Feathers UI components, layouts, utility functions, and more.

Community

Start a thread in the Feathers UI Community forum to ask for help.
Join the Feathers UI Discord to chat with Josh and others in the community.

Questions or comments?

Everyone, I just want to say thank you again for your support. I'm looking forward to hearing what you think of the new Feathers UI so far. If you create anything with this build — even a simple prototype — I'd love it if you could share your experiences (and maybe even a screenshot 🖼!).

I've created an official beta.3 discussion thread in the community forums. Head over there to leave a comment!