Hello to all you fantastic people! Our latest 5.31.0 update brings news of some tweaks we've been doing to improve our web forms experience. Let's dive in.

A new loading indicator for forms

When a form URL was visited, a "skeleton" page is displayed while the connection is made to the form — after which the welcome screen is displayed.

Previously, a blank screen with the usual green background would be displayed while the connection was made. Most of the time this didn't matter as forms load pretty quickly — but on a mobile connection this could take a few seconds.

So, we've introduced a new loading indicator that is displayed as soon as the page is loaded, while we wait for the connection:

A new "please wait" page

We do a lot behind the scenes to make sure that our forms feel as snappy as possible — including caching our forms.

This simply means: instead of having to go to the database each time someone requests a form, we get them all from the database when the server boots — and keep them in a place that can provide them quickly upon request.

If someone happened to be requesting a form immediately after the server booted (for instance after we deployed a new version) — it used to display a "form not found" page:

The patient would thus think that the form URL they were sent was incorrect, and would have to go back to the clinic to ask for the "right" one. That was extra work and frustration that wasn't needed.

With this new update, we now direct patients to a waiting page if form caching process hasn't yet completed:

This page automatically reloads when their form is ready — meaning no extra work and frustration.

While this wasn't a common occurrence, it did occur occasionally and was worth sorting.

More modern browser requirements

Browsers are getting better and better at keeping themselves up-to-date. With each subsequent update, bugs are fixed, security is improved and new features are added.

We had previously tried to maintain compatibility with very old browsers. This meant having to convert a bunch of the new code we were using into code that was compatible with these older browsers. This increased both the surface area for errors to occur, and the download size of each of our form pages.

As the vast majority of our users are using quite recent versions of the major browsers, we decided it was time to support a much more modern stack.

If you, or one of your patients, is running a browser that is out-of-date, they will be notified and won't be able to fill out the form until they switch to a more modern browser. We support pretty much everything released in the last couple of years.

That's all for now, but we've got lots more on the way in 2023 so watch this space! 😊

Cover image by Caleb Russell.