Umbraco

Umbraco 8.13 Release Candidate

Rune Strand
Written by Rune Strand

Umbraco 8.13 is just around the corner and as always, a release candidate is available for you to test. This release contains new features, such as a new Data Type for picking colors, and a long long list of improvements and fixes that will make Umbraco an even better and friendlier tool to work with. More than 70 features and issues have been addressed and the bulk of them by our wonderful community. Read on to see what’s what before you give it a spin 🎡

Overview:

 

What’s in Umbraco 8.13?

To help you provide us with feedback, I’ve gathered an overview of some of the items that you can help test for this RC. We have run internal testing and are very happy with the current state of the build - but extra polishing and testing is always helpful. So if you have time to help - or just find yourself super curious, feel free to dive into the 8.13 RC today. 

Copy Member Type

You can now copy Member Types in the backoffice (just like you can with other types). Prior to 8.13 the action menu for member types would only show the option to “Delete” and now you’ll see the option to “Copy” as well.

A nice tool to have and a real timesaver in sites with a lot of (similar) Member Types.

You can see the original issue here

Eyedropper Color Picker Data Type

A new default Data Type is also available in Umbraco 8.13. It allows you to add a more advanced color picker to a property. You might recognize this from the configuration of the current Color Picker Property Editor.

It makes it possible to choose any color with an eyedropper or enter the hex code and even adds options for choosing the alpha (transparency) and displaying a palette for selecting colors.

You can see the original issue here.

Content Dashboard for all

The standard content dashboard (Getting Started) has now been made available for all user groups by default.

This will not affect existing installations that upgrade to 8.13, dashboard permissions remain unchanged. In new installations, you’ll find a new AppSetting key AllowContentDashboardAccessToAllUsers, and this can be removed or set to false to revoke access. 

Performance enhancements

This release also includes some great performance enhancements:

Bug fixes

And a long list of bug fixes has also made it into the release helping to increase the overall stability of Umbraco CMS:

And much more…

That’s not all, the release contains even more than what is listed above. You’ll find updates and fixes to the API, accessibility improvements, UI tweaks and even a couple of translation updates, so there is plenty to look forward to in the release. You can find the full list of features, improvements and fixes in the release notes.

Breaking Changes

The dependency on HTML Sanitizer has been removed and is marked as a breaking change. This was introduced in Umbraco 8.8 so hopefully, there won't be an impact (e.g. coding against the dependency) but do let us know if you encounter anything during testing.

How to test

First, you need to make a new Umbraco installation from 8.13RC (links below) or upgrade an existing project, both scenarios can provide valuable feedback.

If you find things in the RC that are not working, we’d be grateful for feedback on the Github issue tracker. You’re welcome to add comments to the features and fixes listed in this blog post or under the 8.13 release label. we know it can be tricky to judge whether it’s an existing bug in 8.13 or a new one so you’re of course also welcome to submit new bug reports (click New Issue and select Bug Report), please prefix the issue with 8.13RC:

As mentioned previously, the RC is feature complete, so we’re not going to add additional features but will, of course, fix bugs that prevent a stable release.

How to get your hands on the Umbraco 8.13 RC

As always, installation and release notes can be found on Our: https://our.umbraco.com/contribute/releases/8130

This release candidate is also available from Nuget: https://www.nuget.org/packages/UmbracoCms/8.13.0-rc

When is the public release?

We’re aiming for a full public release on April 22nd, 2021. This means Umbraco 8.13 will be available for upgrade on Umbraco Cloud and via Nuget or the download page. We need a couple of days to wrap up the release so the sooner we get your feedback the better 🙂

Big H5YR 🙌 to everyone who has contributed to Umbraco 8.13 and thanks to everyone willing to lend a hand in testing it out. It means the world to get it validated by the users.

Bug reports are best handled on the issue tracker and as always, we welcome you to submit product feedback and questions to product@umbraco.com