Umbraco

Umbraco 10.1 Release

The first minor for Umbraco 10 is here!

Bjarke Berg
Written by Bjarke Berg

The first set of new features for Umbraco 10 is here. In this first minor you’ll find some great features for enhancing the developer experience with the introduction of Runtime Modes. The backoffice has also received some fantastic additions to make working with Language Variants and Dictionary Items easier and more intuitive. And that’s just a tiny bit of what you get with Umbraco 10.1 - let’s take a look 👀

Overview

  • What’s new in Umbraco 10.1
    • Runtime Modes
    • Import/Export Dictionary Items
    • Localized Search
    • Telemetry Settings in Installer
    • Updated Dependencies
  • Community Contributions
  • How to get your hands on Umbraco 10.1

 

What’s new in Umbraco 10.1

Some great new features are available as well as a long list of improvements and fixes.

 

 

Check out the Unboxing Umbraco 10.1 video for demos of the release, dive into the release notes, or see the description of features and how to get your hands on the release below.

Runtime Modes

A new tool for developers to manage developer experience and optimize Umbraco for different environments. Out-of-the-box Umbraco is configured mainly for development scenarios and this new setting aims to make it easier to set up and maintain different configurations for different environments.

Runtime Modes is a new configuration that helps configure and validate settings for environments such as development and production. Currently, there are 3 options:

  • BackofficeDevelopment (default) - Leave everything enabled to allow for rapid development (including doing all development from within the backoffice);
  • Development -For development using an IDE such as Visual Studio, Rider, VS Code, or the dotnet CLI (e.g. using dotnet watch). It is recommended to use Development mode if you want to use Production mode for your live/production environment.
  • Production - Optimized for stable and quick deployment, and enforcing settings for optimal performance/security.

It is possible to customize the modes themselves if there for example are certain settings you don’t want to be applied in a specific mode. You can read more about the specific of each setting and how to make optimal use of (and customize) them in the Runtime Modes documentation

And this is only the beginning! This is the first pass at Runtime Modes in Umbraco and primarily acts as a validation of various settings. More options and settings will be added and will pave the way for using and supporting more advanced .NET features such as using ‘dotnet watch’ with Umbraco CMS.

Import/Export Dictionary Items

Dictionary Items in Umbraco are very useful for a wide range of tasks. From translating captions in Razor views to making localized descriptions for properties in the backoffice, and a whole lot more. As a consequence of this utility, the number of Dictionary Items can grow quite quickly, and it’s not a reach to think it might be useful to share these items between environments or indeed projects. 

That has now become a lot easier with the new Import/Export Dictionary Items feature, which lets you export your “dictionary”, including folders and nesting, and import in a separate installation directly from the backoffice - nice, simple, and easy.

 

Screenshot: Exporting Dictionary Items

 

Exporting Dictionary Items can be done from the Context Menu (right-clicking on an item) and then choosing whether to export a single item or include child items. This means you can easily export many items at once. The item(s) will be saved in a single .udt file that holds all the exported items. 

Importing is just as simple. Open the Context Menu for the Dictionary Tree (right-clicking on Dictionary) and select Import. From here you can select the .udt file to import and you can even choose where to add them if you have existing items.

 

Screenshot: Importing Dictionary Items

 

On Umbraco Cloud, all Dictionary Items are automatically synchronized between your environments when you run a deployment. You can still use the Import/Export feature to move Dictionary Items between your Cloud projects, or if you want to import from a separate installation. Once imported the items are immediately picked up and part of your Cloud deployments.

A great addition to Umbraco CMS made by Johannes Lantz who is also responsible for the ability to move Dictionary Items introduced in Umbraco 9.5 - massive HIGH FIVE YOU ROCK to Johannes for his contributions 🙌

Localized Search

If you are using Umbraco’s Language Variants feature for one-to-one translations, Umbraco 10.1 delivers a great enhancement to backoffice search by taking the currently selected language into account. 

Previously search results would always be displayed in the default language which might not make sense for someone working in a specific language. So even if you typed in the translated name for the page, it would always show up in the default language.

Now the search results will show the variant corresponding to the language selected. 

This feature is also a community contribution and calls for a HIGH FIVE YOU ROCK to Kenn Jacobsen for making multi-lingual work in the backoffice more intuitive 🙌

Telemetry Settings in the Installer

Telemetry settings were added in Umbraco 9.5 with an Analytics Dashboard in the Settings section where adjustments can be made post-install. As promised this has also been added to the Umbraco Installer.

 

Screenshot: Installer With Telemetry Settings

 

When installing Umbraco 10.1+ you are now presented with the option to adjust telemetry settings in the install wizard. It is presented similarly to the dashboard, with 3 levels, Minimal, Basic, and Detailed. You can of course adjust the settings at any time in the Settings section; note that the dashboard has been renamed to Telemetry Data to keep things consistent

All this information is fully anonymized, we’re not interested in collecting data that can compromise data policies for anyone using Umbraco. We hope to see as many installations as possible choosing the “Detailed” level. This will help both HQ and the broader community going forward. Hopefully, you'll help us collect some valuable data that can increase our understanding of how Umbraco is used and help improve it going forward.

Updated Dependencies

In this release, you’ll only find a single dependency update but it’s one that can be quite helpful. A while back an issue was raised for images with special characters in the filename not being cropped correctly. With the update to ImageSharp 2.1.3 this has now been resolved and all your images, regardless of special characters, should be handled correctly.

 

Community Contributions

Of the 43 bug fixes and feature additions in Umbraco 10.1.0, a total of 28 of them have been contributed by the community, by 16 unique contributors.

We’re welcoming 5 brand new contributors who have made their first pull request for Umbraco CMS; they’re marked with a star below. Welcome to the contributor club Austin Gilbert, Dennis, Mehrdad Babaki, Daniel Andersson and Wilmar de Hoogd 🏆

Bjarne Fyrstenborg - 6 PRs

 

Erik-Jan Westendorp - 4 PRs 

Matthew Care - 3 PRs

 

Arul Prabakaran - 2 PRs

Mehrdad Babaki - 2 PRs 

 

Matt Brailsford - 1 PR

Daniël Knippers - 1 PR 

 

Jeavon Leopold - 1 PR

Kenn Jacobsen - 1 PR

 

Johan Runsten - 1 PR

Johannes Lantz - 1 PR

 

Austin Gilbert - 1 PR

Dennis - 1 PR

 

Daniel Andersson - 1 PR

Wilmar de Hoogd - 1 PR

 

Rasmus Østergård - 1 PR

⭐ = First pull request to Umbraco CMS

And of course, as a thank you, we’ve just added another bunch of trees to our growing plot for today’s 10.1.0 release to celebrate your contributions! 🌳🌲🌴

 

How to get your hands Umbraco 10.1

As always, from today, all new Umbraco 10 projects on Umbraco Cloud will be running 10.1. For all our Umbraco Cloud customers with existing projects, this upgrade is only 2 minutes away:

We’ve wrapped it all up for you, so all you have to do now is follow these steps:

  • Add a Development Environment to your project, if you do not already have one (Add a Development environment by clicking “Manage Environments” in the project view)

  • Make sure you also restore the content to the Development Environment from your Live.

  • When the Development Environment is all set up and you’ve made sure you don’t have any pending changes on the Development Environment - you are all ready to upgrade to Umbraco 10.1!

  • It's as easy as clicking a button - like, literally clicking the "Upgrade Available" button on the Development Environment. The auto-upgrader will take care of everything from here! 🚀

  • Once it's done, check the Development Environment to make sure everything is looking right.

  • When that's confirmed, you are ready to deploy the upgrade to the next environment - Live or Staging, and start taking full advantage of all the new features.

As always, installation and release notes can be found on Our: https://our.umbraco.com/contribute/releases/1010

This release is also available from NuGet: https://www.nuget.org/packages/Umbraco.Cms/10.1.0