Overview:
- What’s in Umbraco 8.13?
- Copy Member Type
- Eyedropper Color Picker Data Type
- Content dashboard for all
- Performance enhancements
- Bug fixes
- And much more...
- Breaking changes
- How to test
- How to get your hands on Umbraco 8.13
- When is the public release?
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:
- Unbind listener in variant content editor
- Improve speed and reduce allocations by implementing logger overloads to avoid params allocation
- Improve performance, readability and handling of FollowInternalRedirects
- Change scope to only acquire distributed locks once in a scope chain.
- Fixes and Updates for DB Scope and Ambient Context leaks
- Scope locking rework
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:
- Orders member type grouping of members alphabetically, matching the listing of member types.
- Handle Invalid format for Upgrade check
- Allow underscore in alias of image cropper property
- Align datatype sidebar box properties
- Updating danish translations
- Don't focus on nested content node at page load
- Make sure to set mculture after switching sections
- Keep custom claims that are flowed during security stamp validation
- The Value() method for IPublishedContent was not working with the defaultValue parameter
- User manager related updates
- Fix dead lock with TypeLoader
- Removed unneeded check for HttpContext
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