Overview:
- What to test in Umbraco 9.4 release candidate?
- How to test
- How to get your hands on Umbraco 9.4
- When is the public release?
What’s in Umbraco 9.4?
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 9.4. RC today.
Item tracking
Media and Data Type tracking and warnings were introduced in Umbraco 8. Now, with Umbraco 9.4, you get warnings when deleting or unpublishing Content that is referenced in other items. This can be a big help in avoiding broken links and functionality in your Umbraco projects.
Tracking in Umbraco is done by creating a relation between two items when a reference is made (e.g. by picking the item in a content or URL Picker). With this relation stored we can determine if an item is referenced in another place and use this information to provide helpful warnings when deleting or unpublishing items.
Deleting Content and Media items
You’ll see new dialogs when deleting an item that:
- Is referenced by another item
- Has descendants that are referenced by other items
The new dialog will contain information about referenced items and descendants and help predict the consequences of unpublishing the item.
Unpublishing Content items
The unpublishing dialog has also been updated to warn about potentially breaking references. It’s the same information used when deleting the item and is displayed in a similar way.
This also works for multiple items selected via a Listview both with deleting and unpublishing items.
All relations displayed on the Info app
All relations, including the ones created when referencing items, will be displayed on the Info app for a detailed overview.
This means you can see where the current item is being referenced, whether it’s from another Content item or Media and Members.
Disable delete/unpublish
It is also possible to prevent deletion and/or unpublishing entirely when references exist. This is done via two new configuration options in appSettings.json:
What to test
- We are grateful for feedback on all parts of this feature, so creating references and trying to delete and/or unpublish referenced items is valuable.
- Removing references
- Disabling delete/unpublish for referenced items
- We’d also like to hear from sites with a lot of Content and a lot of referenced items. So, if you have a site that you can run a test on and upgrade to the 9.4 release candidate, that would be appreciated.
- Wording and information presented in the different dialogs and Info apps
Feedback can be submitted to the original issue for Item Tracking Improvements
A huge thanks Dave Woestenborghs for doing a lot of the preliminary work and providing some fantastic ideas for additional functionality. HIGH FIVE YOU ROCK 🙌
File upload permissions
Ever since Umbraco version 8.14, the way media gets uploaded has changed. In the past, uploading media directly from a Media Picker would respect the permissions set on the upload folder when not using the default Media Type of "Image". In Umbraco 8.14 this changed, and even if the folder does not allow the default "Image" item to be uploaded, it still forces the uploaded image to be that type (and same with File).
This issue has been addressed during one of the weekly UmbraCollab live streams (over on the community Discord channel) and any feedback on issues or inconsistencies would be greatly appreciated.
What to test
To test this fix:
- Use any Media Picker that points towards a Media folder with specific permissions set up.
- Upload a new image
- Check that the correct Type is uploaded
If it does not find any items within the permitted children, with an umbracoFile property, it will continue with the rest of the Umbraco logic and upload to the default type.
More info and feedback can be found on the original issue: (umbraCollab) Check media Parent for permissions when setting correct MediaType
Updated dependencies
This release also includes a couple of dependency updates. These should not interfere with your Umbraco implementations but if you are using any of them in your code, you’ve now been notified and can test before the release:
- Bump follow-redirects from 1.14.7 to 1.14.8 in /src/Umbraco.Web.UI.Client
- Bump url-parse from 1.5.3 to 1.5.7 in /src/Umbraco.Web.UI.Client
- Updates babel and caniuse-lite
- Bump karma from 6.3.14 to 6.3.16 in /src/Umbraco.Web.UI.Client
How to test
First, you need to make a new Umbraco installation from 9.4RC (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 under 9.4 release or submit new bug reports (click New Issue and select Bug Report), please prefix the issue with 9.4RC:.
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 9.4 RC
As always, installation and release notes can be found on Our: https://our.umbraco.com/contribute/releases/940
This release candidate is also available from NuGet: https://www.nuget.org/packages/Umbraco.Cms/9.4.0-rc
When is the public release?
We’re aiming for a full public release on March 24, 2022. This means Umbraco 9.4 will be available for upgrade on Umbraco Cloud and via NuGet. 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 9.4 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