---
title: "Future of D8 Dev with Acquia Lightning"
date: "2019-05-13T16:48:20+00:00"
summary:
image:
type: "article"
url: "/acquia-cloud-platform/help/88876-future-d8-dev-acquia-lightning"
id: "f19c4631-d0e9-451b-8639-6acf50ade0c4"
---

With [Acquia Lightning](https://www.acquia.com/products-services/acquia-lightning), site-builders or developers can build an authoring experience from the ground up in only a few hours.

Think of Acquia Lightning as Drupal Core with afterburners.

Development tasks that used to take days or weeks are condensed to a matter of minutes.

At Acquia Engage 2016, **John Kennedy**, Open Source Product Manager at Acquia, and **Adam Hoenich**, Acquia Software Engineer, gave a detailed, technical exploration of Lightning for Drupal 8 and a preview of what's next for Lightning.

It's an energetic session because it contains both a presentation and a report on a speedrun that the Lightning team did, live, at DrupalCon Dublin. This speedrun showed exactly how fast one can build an authoring experience using Lightning.

The Pokemon-themed site featured in this speedrun was assembled in 45 minutes. Impressive.

Along the way, you'll learn what's in the newest version of Acquia Lightning: improved layout components with a library that bundles up the drag n' drop-compatible layouts that ship with Panels. (The Panelizer module makes it incredibly easy -- and safe -- to entrust authors with some degree of layout control.) In addition, new workflow capabilities now help users simplify Drupal's editorial workflow process.

And coming early next year: the Lightning team will introduce the concept of workspaces, where users can separate content entities into semi-isolated groups for easy organization. New preview features will allow users to view everything exactly as it will appear when live on a websiteeven multiple versions at once.

Watch the full presentation, D8 Lightning - The Future of Drupal Development, below: