This blog post is the first in a series of Umbraco 8 posts as we gear up to the big launch. In these blog posts, we will introduce you to all the new Umbraco 8 features and functionality so you know exactly what to expect - and what to look forward to! So read on, and stay tuned for more updates soon:
What is Umbraco 8?
Umbraco 8 is a new major release of Umbraco CMS that will set new standards for the next generation of websites powered by Umbraco and the experience of working with Umbraco for both developers and content editors.
Umbraco 8 is in many ways an extension of the successful and powerful Umbraco 7, continuing the focus on stability, usability and simplicity.
In this new version of Umbraco, you will find great improvements to the editor experience as it will be a lot simpler to work with the Umbraco backoffice with the introduction of Infinite Editing. Umbraco 8 also includes native support for multilingual content with Language Variants, and you will also find a new extension concept called Content Apps allowing for easy content-aware functionality to be added to Umbraco. On top of this, Umbraco 8 includes several technical improvements including a brand new cache system, great performance enhancements and upgrades to the codebase to make it even easier to contribute.
In this blog post I’ll introduce you to Infinite Editing.
Infinite Editing - a frictionless editing experience
The core philosophy for the user experience of Umbraco’s backoffice is that it should support the natural editing flow of content editors and feel frictionless. When you don’t notice the user interface but instead use your energy on creating great content - we’ve succeeded.
Creating great content in digital solutions is becoming less of a linear process and increasingly a composition of reusable blocks configured for different purposes. This provides real challenges for a friendly content management user experience.
At Umbraco, we’re excited to announce a new editing feature for Umbraco 8 that supports modern content creation without compromising the editor’s workflow. We call it Infinite Editing.
The experience of Infinite Editing is a fluent support for “zooming” into every detail of each content element without ever losing the big picture. Whether you're creating advanced landing pages that combine blocks of content with personalized media assets or building flows of content for a chatbot, Infinite Editing will be your friend and ensure you’re neither limited nor lost in the jungle of content.
As with any feature of Umbraco, Infinite Editing also provides an API that allows developers to utilize this feature in their own extensions as well as tailoring of the Umbraco backoffice, making it easier to include rich details and complex configurations without risking that the user will get lost in all of it.
We’re extremely excited about the potential of this feature and can’t wait for you to experience the next chapter of frictionless editing in Umbraco 8.
When can you get your hands on Umbraco 8?
We don’t have a fixed date for the final release of Umbraco 8 yet, BUT as Umbraco is open source you can get your hands on it today from our GitHub repository.
Given that we are in the late stages of completing Umbraco 8, we are also now introducing fresh nightly builds of the project! This means that you can access the latest pre-build version of Umbraco 8 directly from the download page.
The nightly builds will be your pre-release option for testing Umbraco 8 before the final release. We are not releasing any beta versions or release candidates, instead, we’ll keep the nightly builds running right up until the release day of Umbraco 8.0.
That’s it for this first official pre-release post on Umbraco 8. We are super excited for the opportunity to finally bring you the next major Umbraco version, and as we approach the finish line, we’ll continue to bring you updates on all the great new functionality for you to look forward to in Umbraco 8.
