The latest release of Avada — version 7.7 — adds several features and enhancements as well as bug fixes. Without a doubt, the key feature of this release is the website wizard (not related to Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore) – an easy step-by-step process to help set up a new website. The primary audience for this will be people that have never used Avada before and in a matter of minutes, they will have the foundation of a new website. The upside is getting people up and running quickly with minimal friction. In my opinion that is both a strength and a weakness. I suspect the Theme Fusion team likely wrestled with this and felt this was the best solution to get new customers up and running — only time will tell. In addition to the wizard, Avada Studio has gotten some enhancements, again targeting newcomers.
There were several other new features added (about 30 classified as new) and these are my five favorite new features:
System Fonts
For me personally, the addition of system fonts to the font selection was a little overdue, but this is a great addition for performance, privacy, and as a fallback, if you use web fonts. The only downside is that they didn’t add font weights to the options (feature request submitted). As an aside, this site uses system fonts only.
Semantic HTML
Since the introduction of the flexbox, you have been able to change the outer container from the default div to a section, article, header, or other semantically appropriate elements. Unfortunately, this option was not available to columns — how many sections would be an aside? This has now been added to the column and nested columns so now asides and nav elements can be semantically correct.
SVG Support
Native SVG support has been added with Avada. No longer is a third-party plugin or security hack required to upload SVG images safely.
Object-Fit for Postcards
If you are familiar with object-fit, this should be a great addition for images in the post card layout. It is listed as an option in the changelog, but it is not optional as far as I can tell.
Edit Live Labeling Enhancements
This is not a structure panel per se, but it does bring a polished view of all the layout items on a page and direct links to edit them
There have already been two patches released (at the time of this post), so make sure you update the update.
Resources
Originally published on April 14, 2022
