Front End Editing with Visual Editor

"I consider these to be basic features for a Forms plugin of this type."

What type is that exactly? Because it is not the type of plugin we have been developing for the last two and a half years. There is a disconnect between what you think Gravity Forms is or should be and what it's actually designed to be.

Does Wufoo, Formstack, or JotForm provide the functionality you described? They are the type of application Gravity Forms is designed to be. Those hosted form services are our primary competition.

Yes, Gravity Forms can be used to create WordPress Posts. But the ability to create a post with Gravity Forms is just one of it's many features. Gravity Forms primary focus is NOT on WordPress Post creation. It never has been. It never will be.

Gravity Forms is a general form management tool that can be used to create and manage all kinds of forms. It's a swiss army knife. Contact forms, surveys, feedback forms, event registration forms, user registration forms, order forms for payment integration, etc. and yes... forms that create WordPress posts.

How can a free plugin offer the features you described? Easy. It's all it does. That is it's primary function and the only thing it's developer focuses on. Does that free plugin do everything that Gravity Forms does? Of course not. It isn't what it was designed to do. It's focus is strictly on front end post creation and editing.

Comparing the two plugins is comparing apples to oranges. It's like saying if Event Espresso can provide complete event registration and ticketing functionality, why doesn't Gravity Forms?

We cater Gravity Forms development to an extremely large user base. Post creation is just one of many, many, many different ways people use Gravity Forms. We devote our development efforts to features, enhancements and add-ons that are going to have the most universal appeal to our users as a whole.

If post creation was our primary focus as developers of Gravity Forms it would already do everything you have described and more.

Here is what I can tell you about our plans...

Is the ability to display posts and edit posts on the front end of the site incorporating ALL of the features in the WP User Front End plugin something we plan on introducing? No.

The first thing to be aware of is this functionality will not be added to the core Gravity Forms plugin. Far too much functionality and code will be involved to add it to the core Gravity Forms plugin when it is only going to be used by a subset of users. It will instead be introduced as an Add-On.

What we plan on introducing as far as front end display and editing goes has nothing to do with displaying and editing posts. It has to do with displaying and editing form entries. Will those form entries be associated with a post? They can be, if the form created was configured to create a post. Will editing and updating a form entry associated with a post also update the post? Yes, if you configure it to do so.

When will we be introducing this add-on? I can't give you a date other than to say that it is planned for release this year.

Another thing to be aware of is we aren't the only ones that can enhance and add functionality to Gravity Forms. Any WordPress developer can create Add-Ons for Gravity Forms and many have done so. There is a 3rd party add-on already out there that allows users to display and edit entries on the front end of your site. There is also a 3rd party add-on that allows you to use custom post types and custom taxonomies when creating posts. Many of these add-ons are available on wordpress.org:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=gravity+forms

Just like WordPress will never do everything you want but can be enhanced by themes and plugins, Gravity Forms is never going to do everything you want. But like WordPress, it too can be enhanced by plugins and even themes.

We have have never promised specific release dates for future functionality. Development priorities and schedules change. They are never set in stone.

This conversation is precisely why I don't like discussing estimated release dates for functionality that is not in active development because they are just that... estimated. They aren't promises and they aren't guarantees. They are preliminary plans.

Is this functionality we plan on introducing? Definitely.

Was this functionality originally planned for Gravity Forms v1.7? Yes. But so were enhancements that were included in Gravity Forms v1.6.2, v1.6.3, and v1.6.4.

We scrapped the original development plans for v1.7 and have opted to release more frequent incremental updates rather than extremely large updates. Which is why some of the features originally planned for 1.7 were actually included in the last 3 feature releases.

As for the specific functionality you are referring to, the decision was made not to build this functionality into the core Gravity Forms plugin and instead create it as an Add-On. It was the right decision. Developing an Add-On allows us to update, refine and enhance the functionality on it's own development cycle independent of Gravity Forms itself.

Development on this new Add-On will begin after major feature enhancements to the User Registration Add-On are completed. These enhancements are in active development and once completed the developer who is working on them will be spearheading the new front end display Add-On.