In the past few months, Twitter Bootstrap and ZURB’s Foundation 4 have arguably become two of the most dominant front-end frameworks available. In the past month, Twitter Bootstrap has upgraded from version 2.3.2 to Bootstrap 3. This is significant because in version 3, Bootstrap has officially become “mobile-first”. If this sounds familiar, it’s because that’s what Foundation has claimed to be for quite some time. This progress from the Bootstrap team has had me wondering recently what we can expect in Foundation 5.

If you’re like 90% of web developers I know that use Foundation 4, you’ll be a bit surprised to know that there are version numbers past “4”. Okay, let me rephrase that. *I* was surprised that there were version numbers past 4. Look on their website and it’s all Foundation 4, all the time. The only two ways I know of to tell what version number you’re running is to look at the download folder, because it includes the entire number, or read the changelog file, which I know you haven’t because it’s incredibly hard to find on the Foundation web site.

If you’ve downloaded Foundation before the middle of July, you’re likely on version 4.2.1. But since July 18th, Foundation has been on version 4.3.

Foundation 4.3 contains some neat new additions. And all three of these additions will be included in Foundation 5. In version 4.3, there were three major updates:

1. Foundation 4 now includes Abide, a form validation javascript library.
2. The jQuery image slider, Orbit, has been updated with a handful of new features
3. Most significantly, a medium grid has been added

Let me say that again: THERE’S NOW A MEDIUM GRID IN FOUNDATION 4.3.

ZURB is quick to point out that it’s still in beta and only available to people who use SASS. If you haven’t worked with SASS before, now would be a good time to level up your skills. Or, if you care to wait, the grid will be fully available once Foundation 5 is released.

I reached out to the Foundation team at ZURB to find out more about what we can expect in Foundation 5. Here’s what I heard back:

What’s New in Foundation 5

• The medium grid that was released in Foundation 4.3 will be completely integrated into Foundation 5
• The Foundation core will have a better initializer; instead of having to call $(document).foundation() for each configuration, you will be able to pass an object as the first parameter that specifies each plugins configuration on load.
  • ex. $(document).foundation({section: {deep_linking: true}, orbit: {stack_on_small: true});
  • this example will both configure the plugins and initialize all plugins loaded on the page.
• Interchange will now support other types of content other than images; markup, video, audio, most anything.
• Reveal will now fully support data-options configuration.
• The documentation is being completely redone from the ground up; separating out the Getting Started into a separate section and having the API thoroughly documented and searchable with demos.

Curious about a release, all I could get out of them is that it’s likely to be out in the next few months.

Until then, if you haven’t updated your version of Foundation yet, grab Foundation 4.3 here.