Now that our new component library, Remarkable Pro, has reached a strong, stable point in its development (and there’s still a lot more to come), we’ve decided it’s time to begin the sunsetting process for our original component library, Vanilla Components.
This means that version zero, the “Clone from the repo” version, which was already in maintenance mode, will hit end of life at the end of Q1. The git repository will be archived, and we won’t be providing further updates to the components.
Version one, the NPM package version, will move to maintenance mode, meaning it will only be touched if there are major bugs, with the goal of taking it to end of life at the end of Q3. That will be the same process: archiving and no further updates.
This doesn’t mean you have to stop using either version! Vanilla Components will continue to work with Embeddable, because they’re just React components, and the whole point of Embeddable is that you can bring any component you like to it. We just won’t be able to provide direct support in the form of changing the component code. If you’re currently using a set of components that were based on Vanilla but which you’ve heavily modified, you can continue to use them for as long as you like.
That said, Remarkable Pro is pretty amazing and provides a lot of flexibility and features that Vanilla Components don’t! For those who want to upgrade, we’re providing this guide to moving from Vanilla Components to Remarkable Pro. It’s not a complicated process, but it does involve a lot of recreating dashboards. We’ve done all we can to make that easier for you. Want to test before making a move? We’re happy to set up a second workspace for you (in fact, we recommend it! See below). Waiting for Dashboards as Code? That’s coming in Q2!
Remarkable Pro and Vanilla Components are completely separate code bases. Remarkable Pro was built from the ground up, using all the lessons we learned while developing Vanilla Components. It has better and more robust theming, built-in internationalization, superior date handling, more chart control, and is more solid under the hood. It has a dedicated team at Embeddable working on it every week.
Making the switch from Vanilla Components to Remarkable Pro is not difficult, but it does require a significant amount of effort on the user’s side. Because Remarkable Pro is not a one-to-one analog with Vanilla Components on a code or design philosophy level, there’s no way to do it programmatically. You’ll need to rebuild each dashboard using Remarkable Pro. Fortunately, the two libraries can be used together in a single repo, which will facilitate this process for some users.
Previously, Vanilla Components and Remarkable Pro were incompatible, so users had to choose one or the other. That meant that users trying to make the move needed two workspaces: their original Vanilla workspace, and a Remarkable workspace. They could then begin replicating their dashboards in the new Remarkable workspace.
This is no longer necessary. We have now created a repo that contains both Vanilla Components and Remarkable Pro:
This means you can publish that repo to your dashboard, and it should make all Remarkable Pro components available while having no impact on your existing Vanilla Components, provided you haven’t made changes to them - if you’re created custom components or broken out Vanilla Components and updated them, you’ll need to copy those over to the combined repo while you’re making the transition.
The upside to this approach is that you can quite literally rebuild the dashboards component by component, with the Remarkable Pro component right next to the Vanilla component for reference. The downside to this approach is that the repo is fairly messy (all the Vanilla Components have to be kept in code, rather than as an NPM package) and it opens up the possibility of accidentally publishing something live that you don’t want to publish, as you’ll be using your current workspace.
For that reason, we still recommend a second workspace. It’s straightforward to keep your current Vanilla Components workspace in one tab or browser window, and your new Remarkable Pro workspace in a second tab or browser window. You can then switch between the two, using the values from the inputs in your Vanilla Components repo to rebuild them in your Remarkable repo.
This would allow you to avoid using the combined repository and instead just use our Remarkable Boilerplate Repo, which is extremely minimal and clean. If you do decide to go with the combined repo, we strongly recommend duplicating any given dashboard before you begin replicated the components with Remarkable Pro, and naming it something like [Dashboard Name] - R-Pro Version
Ultimately, though, it’s up to you!
This is the part that gets a little tedious. You will need to rebuild every dashboard that you need (ie all live ones, all in-development ones, and any test/etc ones that you want to keep) in Remarkable Pro. Users find this idea daunting, but those who’ve gone through it have reported that it’s quite straightforward and, depending on the complexity of the theme changes you made to Vanilla Components, relatively quick.
The first step is establishing a Remarkable Pro version of your theme. We have complete documentation on theming Remarkable Pro and, of course, Customer Success is happy to answer any questions you have about it. We recommend building out a quick sample dashboard with remarkable before you begin theme changes, so you can see what’s changing. You should also definitely check out our Remarkable Showcase, which will give you significant insight into all of Remarkable Pro’s CSS variables.