Forge 2025 Update

As we move into 2025 and look ahead, we wanted to share what we have planned for Forge in the coming year. We have a lot of exciting updates and features on deck, and we can't wait to share them with you. Let's dive in!

Forge v3

Before we get into the details of what's coming in 2025, we wanted to remind everyone that Forge v3 is available, and we encourage you to upgrade to take advantage of the latest features and improvements as soon as possible.

Please refer to the Forge v3 announcement for detailed instructions on how to upgrade your projects.

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While we encourage everyone to upgrade to Forge v3 as soon as they can, we understand that upgrading can sometimes be a significant effort. We have documentation, an automated upgrade utility, and resources to help you through the upgrade process. If you have any questions or need assistance, please don't hesitate to reach out to us on Teams!

It's very important that we all work together to keep our applications up to date and consistent. Upgrading to the latest version of Forge is a key part of that effort and the larger Tyler 2030 vision.

Major Version Updates

We understand that major version updates can be disruptive, so we wanted to share our plans for future major version updates to help give you confidence in Forge. We are committed to providing a smooth upgrade path and clear documentation to make the transition as seamless as possible in future versions.

Here's what you can expect:

• Limited or No Breaking Changes: We will do our best to avoid breaking changes in future major version updates by instead deprecating features/components and replacing them with a new implementation. If breaking changes are necessary, we will provide clear guidance on how to migrate your code seamlessly and do our best to provide tooling to automate it if possible.

• Long-Term Support: We will provide long-term support for the "current - 1" major versions of Forge. This means that we will continue to provide bug fixes and security updates for the previous major version for a period of time after a new major version is released. This will give you more time to upgrade to the latest version without worrying about missing out on important updates.

• Upgrade Guides: We will provide detailed upgrade guides for each major version update to help you understand what has changed and how to update your code. These guides will include information on breaking changes (if any), new features, and best practices to help you make the transition as smooth as possible.

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While we have an idea of what a Forge v4 might look like, we have not even reached the planning phase yet. We do not intend to release a new major version of Forge in 2025. We want to get Forge v3 into the hands of as many developers as possible and ensure that it meets the needs of our users before we start planning for the next major version to ensure a seamless upgrade path.

We want to introduce stability in the Forge ecosystem and ensure that developers can rely on Forge as a long-term solution without worrying about frustrating breaking changes.

Forge Extended

We're investing time into extending Forge's capabilities to make it even more powerful, by creating a new library of composite components that implement common patterns and best practices. This will make it faster and easier to build complex applications by utilizing larger blocks/components that are already built and tested.

Examples of these types of components might include:

• Filter Sidesheet
• Confirmation Dialog
• Side Navigation
• Table Header
• Responsive Toolbar
• ... and many more!

Any time you find yourself building a component that is a common pattern across applications, you can look to Forge Extended to see if there is a component that already exists that you can use. If you find that a component is missing, you can contribute to the Forge Extended library by creating a new component and submitting a pull request.

We believe that this will help developers build applications faster and more efficiently, as well improve consistency and maintainability across projects. This new library will be built on top of the primitive components that are already available in Forge v3, and will provide a higher level of abstraction to help you build applications more quickly.

We're excited to share more details about Forge Extended in the coming months, so stay tuned for updates!

Blocks

In addition to the new Forge Extended library, we're also planning to introduce a new concept called "Blocks" (formerly known as "Recipes") to Forge. Blocks are larger sections of UI that can be easily added to your application to by simply copying and pasting the code. This will allow you to quickly add common patterns and components to your application without having to build them from scratch, but still provide the flexibility to customize them to fit your needs.

Blocks are made up of both primitive Forge components and native HTML elements + styles, as well as components from the Forge Extended library, and will provide a more efficient way to build applications allowing developers to get up and running much more quickly.

Blocks will be available in the Forge documentation and will include detailed instructions on how to use them in your applications with examples and best practices. We'll release more information about Blocks in the coming months!

Lit-based Components

We're also investing time into improving the developer experience in Forge by adopting Lit as the base for all new Forge components. Lit is a lightweight library for building web components using modern web standards, and it provides a simple and efficient way to create reusable components with a framework-like feel.

Forge has always been built as web components, but does not rely on any abstraction libraries or frameworks which meant we needed to write and maintain more boilerplate code, leading to larger and more inefficient production bundles. By adopting Lit, we hope to provide a more performant, consistent, and modern development experience for maintainers and ease the barrier to entry for new contributors.

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This change will be transparent to developers using Forge, and you will not need to make any changes to your code.

You will likely start using the Lit-based components without even realizing it, as we will be gradually introducing them into the Forge component library over time.

New Components

We're also planning to release a number of new components in 2025 to help fill in some of the gaps that have been identified by the community.

Some of the components we're planning to release include:

• Tree: A tree component that can be used to display hierarchical data in a tree-like structure with expandable and collapsible nodes. This component will be highly customizable and provide a flexible way to display complex data structures.

• Meter: A meter and meter-group component that can be used to represent scalar values within a known range. These components will provide a simple and flexible way to visualize data in a more intuitive and engaging way. Not to be confused with linear progress indicators, meters are used to represent a value within a range (such as a gauge or thermometer), whereas progress indicators are used to represent the completion or busy state of an application task.

• Breadcrumbs: A breadcrumbs component that can be used to display a breadcrumb trail for navigation purposes. This component will provide a simple and intuitive way to navigate through a hierarchy of pages or sections in your application.

• Inline Dropdowns: This is the next evolution of how Forge handles dropdowns. This pattern will allow you to configure a dropdown declaratively and inline with the flow of your page. Built on top of the new Forge v3 popover, this will provide a more flexible and developer-friendly way to create your own dropdowns, as well as improve the ergonomics of existing dropdown-based components.

• Data Grid: A powerful and flexible data grid component that will provide more advanced features than our current <forge-table> component.

• Virtual Scroller: A virtual scroller component that can be used to display large lists of items efficiently by only rendering the items that are currently visible on the screen.

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These are just a few examples of the new components we're planning to release in 2025. We're always looking for feedback and suggestions from the community, so if there's a component you'd like to see in Forge, please let us know!

Web Features

Forge is constantly evolving, and so are the latest web features and APIs. We're always looking for ways to improve the developer experience and provide new features and components.

This is only more true because Forge is built on top of web components, which are a rapidly evolving standard that continues to introduce new features and capabilities on a regular basis. We're committed to staying up to date with the latest web standards and providing you with the tools and components you need to build modern and performant applications.

Some of the features we're looking at for the future include:

• Custom States: This new API is available on the ElementInternals interface and allows you to define custom states for your custom elements. This provides a more efficient and familiar way to use CSS for state-based customizations via the new :state(<state name>) pseudo-class.

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  This will also affect how we reflect certain JavaScript properties to attributes. We will no longer need to reflect properties to attributes for component state changes, which will improve performance and reduce the amount of boilerplate code needed to manage state changes within custom elements.

• Cross-root ARIA: Web components that make use of shadow DOM have always had a challenge with ARIA attributes that need to be applied to elements outside of the shadow root. The new Reference Target proposal aims to address this issue by providing a way for developers using web components to apply ARIA attributes to the internals of an element via IDREFs. We're very excited about this proposal and are looking forward to implementing it in Forge once it's supported in all browsers.

• CSS Relative Colors: This new syntax is already available in browsers and allows you to define colors relative to other colors in varying color formats. This will provide a more flexible and powerful way to theme Forge components and create dynamic color schemes that adapt to different contexts and environments.

• CSS Anchor Positioning: This is an exciting new feature that will allow us to use pure CSS to position floating elements around an anchor element. This will provide a more efficient and performant way to create tooltips, popovers, and other floating elements in Forge without relying on JavaScript for positioning.

and many more!

State of Accessibility

In 2024 Tyler embarked on a journey to improve the accessibility compliance across all of our applications. This initiative has been a great success, and we are seeing more and more applications becoming compliant with the latest accessibility standards.

Automated scanning tools such as ARC Toolkit, Level Access, and Axe have been instrumental in identifying accessibility issues and guiding developers on how to fix them.

Forge v3 made significant improvements to accessibility by providing better support for screen readers, keyboard navigation, and other assistive technologies. We are committed to continuing to improve accessibility in Forge and ensuring that all applications built with Forge are accessible to everyone.

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Keep in mind that automated tools can only catch a portion of accessibility issues, and manual testing is still required to ensure that your applications are fully accessible.

These tools can also produce false positives, so it's important to review the results and verify that the issues are real before making changes. We've started an initiative to document and track these false positives in Coda, and we encourage you to review this list and provide feedback if you encounter any false positives in your applications.

Please reach out to our accessibility experts if you have any questions or need assistance with accessibility in your applications.

Public Forge Website

A longer term goal for the Tyler Forge™ design system has been to make it publicly available to the world. We are seeking to further engage in the open-source world and will be transitioning Tyler Forge™ design documentation into a publicly available site in 2025!

What does this mean for you?

Not much will change for you as a Forge user. The public Forge website will provide much of the same content you're used to today. You will still be able to access documentation, components, patterns, and other resources related to Forge but without needing to log in to the Tyler network. 🎉

How will this work?

We have secured a new domain for the public Forge website, and we are working on migrating the current documentation and resources to the new site.

The https://forge.tylertech.com domain will continue to work as before and still require Tyler credentials. This will allow for us to publish internal content that is only available to Tyler employees, such as case studies, application demos/screenshots, relevant Confluence and Coda links, ...etc. Navigating to the public Forge website will be quick and easy from this internal site and can be bookmarked separately for quick access.

We're excited to share the Forge design system with the world, and it will complement the already public and open source Forge component library perfectly.

Figma Library

Our Forge Figma library is continuing to evolve to set the foundation for our 2025 design vision. With a more streamlined component system and scalable design tokens, we're ensuring consistency and efficiency across all our digital experiences. This refined library empowers our team to prototype faster, collaborate seamlessly, and adapt effortlessly to emerging design trends. As we look ahead, it will remain the cornerstone of our design innovation, enabling us to craft user experiences that are not only visually compelling but also intuitive and inclusive.

We are also exploring the possibility of making our Figma library publicly available as well to further align with the public Forge website and component library. This will allow anyone to access our design system and use it to create their own designs and prototypes.

Conclusion

As you can see, we have a lot of exciting updates and features planned for Forge in 2025, and we can't wait to share them with you! We're committed to providing you with the tools and resources you need to build modern, performant, and accessible applications with Forge, and we're always looking for ways to improve and evolve the platform.

We're excited to continue working with you to make Forge the best it can be, and we look forward to hearing your feedback and suggestions as we move forward. Thank you for being a part of the Forge community, and we can't wait to see what we can build together in 2025!

If you have any questions or feedback, please don't hesitate to reach out to us on Teams or via email. We're always here to help and support you in any way we can.

Here's to a great year ahead with Forge! 🚀