We’ve started work on CF7 Skins Visual – a drag and drop visual editor for Contact Form 7 forms.
We believe many WordPress users would like to use a visual drag and drop interface similar to that available in other WordPress form plugins.
We decided to give people an option to use a drag and drop visual editor within CF7 Skins as a quick and easy way to create Contact Form 7 forms.
CF7 Skins Visual works right within the normal Contact Form 7 interface
Provides all Contact Form 7 tags
Edit Contact Form 7 tags quickly & easily
Includes support for CF7 Skins unique innovative features & Add-ons
CF7 Skins Visual works with the other innovative features championed in CF7 Skins including Templates & Styles as well as integrated support for Fieldsets & Lists within your Contact Form 7 forms.
Built using React
We’re very excited to be using React to build this extension to CF7 Skins. We are building it from the ground up to take advantage of what the React.js JavaScript library has to offer.
So far we’ve found React.js to be a terrific tool for building a visual interface within a WordPress plugin. Already we’ve seen very significant improvements when compared to using jQuery to add JavaScript functionality to our CF7 Skins plugins.
In particular using React JSX allows us to experiment quickly & easily with changes to the interface using something that feels very much like simple HTML.
Plus using React Components lets you focus on small discrete parts of the interface. Using modular CSS also keeps things contained & separated.
We also found Redux ideal for maintaining state in the JavaScript interface. What we’d previously found increasingly cumbersome & confusing when using jQuery is amazingly simple with Redux (once you know what you are doing) and so far it’s remained just as simple as we’ve added more complexity to the interface.
CF7 Skins Visual is built from the ground up to take advantage of what the React.js JavaScript library has to offer.
Works with CF7 Skins other innovative features
CF7 Skins Visual is great for simple forms but it really shines for more complex forms. Especially when you combine this with the convenience offered by CF7 Skins other innovative features.
Templates
Each TemplateTemplate CF7 Skins Templates are the structure of your form, providing the content and layout. They act as an easy to follow guide that can be adjusted to your particular needs. acts as an easy to follow guide, which can be quickly adapted to your particular requirements:
– start off by choosing a CF7 Skins Template with matches your required form
– quickly add or delete fields using the Visual Editor
– then use the drag and drop interface to adjust the form to suit your requirements.
Styles
CF7 Skins provides a wide range of compatible Styles that cover the full range of Contact Form 7 form elements plus other important innovative elements supported by CF7 Skins like Fieldsets or Lists.
With CF7 Skins you can use the easy to use Visual Editor, together with a range of compatible Templates and Styles, to make creating & styling of Contact Form 7 forms much easier.
Fieldsets & Lists
The CF7 Skins Visual Editor makes building of CF7 Skins forms, including Fieldsets and Lists, even easier by the use of a simple drag and drop interface.
Using these important form elements supported by CF7 Skins enhances form usability and allows significantly more detailed styling of your forms.
Why we use Fieldset, Legend & Lists in CF7 Skins
Making your form easy to read by using Fieldsets
CF7 Skins Add-ons
Plus you also get an integrated visual interface for all our CF7 Skins Add-ons. For CF7 Skins Pro users each CF7 Skins Add-on can be operated via the visual interface.
This is a big project for us that’s going to take some time to finish. However we wanted to involve existing CF7 Skins users as early as possible to get ongoing feedback.
