Umbraco 8.7 Release Candidate

This is your chance to kick the tires on a bunch of new features and improvements coming to Umbraco very soon. To help you provide us with feedback, I’ve gathered an overview 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 really helpful. So if you have time to help - or just find yourself super curious, feel free to dive into the 8.7. RC today.

How to test

First, you need to make a new Umbraco installation from 8.7RC (links below) or upgrade an existing project, both scenarios are valuable.

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 under 8.7 release or submit new bug reports.

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.

What’s in Umbraco 8.7?

Below you can find a few pointers if you don’t already have an idea of a specific solution or things you want to test.

New Features

• Block List editor
• Segments
• Content Apps for Document Types

Performance Enhancements

• Moving/recycling large amounts of content
• Migrating from 7 to 8
• NuCache performance

Accessibility 

•  Lots and lots of UX/styling improvements for accessibility 🎉

 You can also see the full list of features and fixes on the 8.7 download page. The download page has recently had an overhaul so it should be way easier to see what’s in a release and find the things that interest you.

Block List Editor

The Block List editor is a new property editor for Umbraco. It lets you manage blocks of content in several different ways and even allows for detailed customisation of the editing experience if needed.

There are many things to highlight about the new property editor - here 3 good ones, just to pique your interest:

1. New configuration flow
   The Block List editor takes full advantage of infinite editing when you are configuring it. This means that you can start directly in the document type editor and set up the entire thing, complete with element types and data types without having to go out of the flow or jump between sections.
   
   
2. Inline or overlay editing
   You choose whether it makes most sense to edit a block inline (similar to Nested Content) or open an overlay for a more focused editing experience (similar to the popular Stacked Content package).
   
   
3. Complex validation
   The Block List editor supports per property validation within each block. This is a massive step forward compared to previous complex editors, allowing you to provide an even friendlier experience for content editors.

With the release candidate, you can try out the Block List editor by adding it as a data type to a document type. If you hit any blockers or find bugs we’d be grateful for a bug report. 

There are even more exciting features in the Block List editor than mentioned here. We’ll have more information and documentation available for the final release. If you want a little more help, you can find WIP documentation for the Block List editor here (pssst, you can contribute to the docs as well 😉 ).

Segments

In 8.7, it is now possible to configure segmentation for your content. It uses the same concept as Language Variants, meaning you’ll be able to create variants of a content node for different segments (i.e. mobile and desktop users). One thing to note is that while you can now allow types to vary by segment and edit segmented content, you cannot create segments in the UI yet. This has to be handled through the API layer for now. You can find details on how to set it up in the PR description.

Thanks for all the help

8.7 has been a long time coming and we’ve been working really hard to make it a great release BUT we couldn’t have done it without the help of all the community members and partners that have contributed. There are too many names to mention all but there are some that should get an extra high five you rock (H5YR!): 

ProWorks, a long-time Gold Partner, has contributed with both development resources and a lot of experience and real-world examples to the Block List editor. This has been instrumental in getting it ready for release and ensuring it covers, not only what was laid out in the RFC, but also a number of developer and editor workflows and features that you learn about from doing a lot of Umbraco implementations. 

Another shout out goes to our friends at Perplex for contributing a massive amount of work in getting segments in a usable state. It’s been a great collaboration and we’re excited to see it used for A/B testing in the new version of their uMarketing suite package. If you haven’t seen it yet, you really should check it out.

Finally, the Accessibility team have continued their fantastic work to make Umbraco even more user friendly to everyone. No less than 27 updates and fixes to enhance accessibility are in this release alone. Amazing work!

How to get your hands on the Umbraco 8.7 RC

As always, installation and release notes can be found on Our: https://our.umbraco.com/contribute/releases/870

This release candidate is also available from Nuget: https://www.nuget.org/packages/UmbracoCms/8.7.0RC

When is the public release?

We’re aiming for a full public release of Umbraco 8.7 on September 10th, 2020 (updated). This means Umbraco 8.7 will be available for upgrade on Umbraco Cloud and via Nuget or the download page. 

Big H5YR 🙌 to everyone who has contributed to Umbraco 8.7 and a premature 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 on product@umbraco.com