I’ve somehow skipped the Divi Public Alpha 17 almost completely, and it’s solely because I’ve simply didn’t have the time or strength to deep dive into it. I’ve upgraded it on this very site a week ago, but that was it. So what did Divi 5 Public Alpha 17.2 bring to the table (or desktop, should I say)?
Table of Contents
Divi 5 Public Alpha 17.2
Since Divi 5 ALpha 17 and up to Divi 5 Public Alpha 17.2, we’ve got many fixes, as well as some very important (and some less important) new features. Here’s a shortened list of fixes and additions from Divi 5 Public Alpha 17 to 17.2 from Elegant Themes’ website.
New features
- Introduced Relative Colors & HSL, including a brand new color field and color picker. (Divi 5 Public Alpha 17.1)
- Introduced Find and Replace modal with scope-based targeting and module type filtering for efficient bulk editing across Visual Builder elements. (Divi 5 Public Alpha 17)
Improvements
- Added support for setting the builder version when adding new sections, rows, and columns in the Visual Builder. (Divi 5 Public Alpha 17.2)
- Updated Row module to support new Flexbox-based column structure selector and improved grid data handling. (Divi 5 Public Alpha 17.2)
- Added a script command to streamline the process of updating JSON files for D5 conversion tests, ensuring more reliable and accurate module conversion. (Divi 5 Public Alpha 17.1)
- Added support for conditional field visibility in Page Settings modal via a visible prop (boolean or function) on field props. (Divi 5 Public Alpha 17.1)
- Added support for meta query filters in Loop Group settings, enabling custom field-based content filtering. (Divi 5 Public Alpha 17.1)
- Improved global color picker to show disabled circular color references with explanatory tooltips instead of hiding them completely.
- Migrated woocommerce modules’ markup passed to VB on page load. (Divi 5 Public Alpha 17.1)
- Added a new tutorial documenting how to add sub-tabs (tabbed UI) to a custom options group in a Divi 5 module. (Divi 5 Public Alpha 17)
- Added a new tutorial to add a custom options group to a Divi 5 module. (Divi 5 Public Alpha 17)
- Added the ability to disable the AI button from the Group settings. (Divi 5 Public Alpha 17)
- Created New Tag Input Component To Support Multi-Select Input Tags. (Divi 5 Public Alpha 17)
- Implemented REST API for fetching cart notice HTML from VB. (Divi 5 Public Alpha 17)
- Implemented REST API for fetching product add-to-cart HTML from VB. (Divi 5 Public Alpha 17)
- Implemented REST API for fetching product reviews HTML from VB. (Divi 5 Public Alpha 17)
- Implemented REST API for fetching related products’ HTML from VB. (Divi 5 Public Alpha 17)
- Improved code editor active line highlighting by using a more subtle color that’s easier on the eyes. (Divi 5 Public Alpha 17)
- Introduced a new capability to add a custom panel to the module settings modal. (Divi 5 Public Alpha 17)
- Update Divi 5.0 Developer Roadmap items. (Divi 5 Alpha 17)
- Updated all WooCommerce module’s REST routes to use POST instead of GET. (Divi 5 Alpha 17)
Bug Fixes
Bug fixes were many, and I don’t think you want to read them here. It’s a fact that Divi 5 Public Alpha is improving every day and I’m terribly sorry that I can’t catch up with everything. My plan was to test everything as it comes out, but… That train is moving too quickly. 🙂
Divi 5 Public Alpha 18
The most important thing that was announced in Divi 5 Public Alpha 18 IMHO is the vastly improved backward compatibility.
Divi 5 Backward Compatibility
Why is this so important?
Almost every Divi 4 site depends on some added functionality that Divi 4 by itself does not support. For this, a vast pool of 3rd party solutions exists, delivering the needed modules or functionalities to the solution. Among these are also my websites, and they – in a mixed variations – depend on many functionalities brought to Divi 4 by developers like DiviLife, Divi Engine, Divi Pixel, DiviLover and PeeAye Creative.
Without them, many of my sites would not exist in a form they do now, or would be much less functional at least.
Since these developers are still working on many details needed for the plugins to work seamlessly inside Divi 5, there’s not many of them offering full Divi 5 compatibility. Which is perfectly reasonable, because Divi 5 Public Alpha is just changing daily.
The solution, of course, was to try and use Divi 4 plugins and modules. The results are not very assuring, unfortunately – there are just too many differences in the core code. So in some conditions they worked, in others they didn’t. And it’s definitely not something you’d put out on the web, especially if it’s for a client.
Divi 5 Public Alpha 18 is bringing us much improved backward compatibility, which should enable more Divi 4 modules to work inside Divi 5. It’s really great news, and I can’t wait to test this with the modules and plugins I use most.
Here’s Nick’s short video about Divi 5 Public Alpha 18 release.
There are also Woocommerce modules inside this announcement, which brings Divi 5 to a whole new level of usability. If anyone have already tested this, I’d sure like to hear about it in the comments.
Conclusion
While Divi 5 Alpha keeps evolving really fast, it’s already clear it will shake the Divi world strongly. With improved backward compatibility, which brings older Divi 4 modules in our reach, it’s a completely different product suddenly. Much more complete, much more likely to serve live websites, because some of the basic functionalities were missing so much. Among these, Woocommerce support is by far the most critical, but not the only one.
Divi 5 seems to be getting really close to a Beta release. As promissed, this should happen as soon as Elegant Themes sort out the Woocommerce modules – this was announced as a development breakpoint. So we’re eagerly awaiting the announcement, but in the meantime we can improve our existing Divi 5 sites tremendously by adding the needed Divi 4 modules for certain functionalities.
The statement Elegant Themes is holding on is that Divi 5 Alpha is safe to use on new sites, while the migration functionality is not perfected yet. I can agree so far, although – like I said in the begginning – I have troubles following every change in Divi 5 Alpha releases that keep coming.
My recommendation would be somewhere on the same line: if you’re building a completely new site, use Divi 5 Alpha. Right now, you have the option to fill in with Divi 4 modules if needed, so there’s much less possibiltiy you’d get stuck on a missing functionality. Nevertheless bear in mind that Divi 5 Alpha is prone to constant change and your site could just behave different tomorrow. It’s a fact, but we’ve been warned.
In any case, if you haven’t already, take a look at what Divi has to offer.
Happy Divi-ing!
