Umbraco

Umbraco Product Update

Spoiler: Umbraco 8.6 RC is out!

Rune Strand
Written by Rune Strand

If you want to try Umbraco 8.6 out, we’ve got a hot-from-the-press release candidate out. In other exciting news: Umbraco Forms releases, Cloud updates, .NET Core news on the roadmap - Let’s go!

Overview: 

  • New Release: Forms 8.3.1 and 7.3.1
  • Upcoming Releases: Patch for Umbraco 8 minors
  • 8.6 Release Candidate is out!
  • What’s new in Umbraco Cloud?
  • Updates to the Roadmap
    • New RFCs
      • Packages
    • Progress on Roadmap items
      • .NET Core items/New items on Roadmap
    • New deadlines for item/RFCs
      • Data Structure Block Update
      • Block Editor Feedback Session 


New Release: Umbraco Forms 8.3.1 & 7.3.1

A patch release for Umbraco Forms for both version 8 and version 7 was released on Tuesday, February 4th. Both versions include a fix for forms submissions when using Azure AD. 

We also had a couple of regression bugs in the last minor release that have been addressed. 

For 8.3.1, a fix has been applied for conditional logic and in 7.3.1 ReCaptcha is now working as it should. 

All sites on Umbraco Cloud running 8.3.0/7.3.0 have been automatically patched. For download and release notes see the Umbraco Forms download page.

Upcoming Releases: Patch for Umbraco 8 minors

On Tuesday, February 25th 2020, we will release security patches for version 8 minors. These address two minor issues with low severity, but we, of course, still highly recommend upgrading. 

The first issue ensures that “Reset Password” links will be properly invalidated after use. The second fix addresses an issue with anti-forgery tokens in the backoffice. You can find the details on the download page: 

8.0.3

8.1.6

8.2.3

8.3.1

8.4.2

8.5.4


All Umbraco Cloud sites running Umbraco 8+ will be patched automatically on Tuesday, and the patch will be available for other Umbraco installations through Nuget or the download links listed above. 

Umbraco 8.6 Release Candidate is out!

I’m really happy to announce that as of today, the release candidate for Umbraco 8.6 is available. This release is crammed with good stuff that will help both developers and editors working with Umbraco. It took us a little longer to get the RC out the door than what I mentioned in the last Product Update, but a few additional issues popped up that we wanted to get fixed for the RC - It’s worth the wait though ;)

We hope you’ll give it a spin and let us know if you have any feedback or discover any issues. And there is a lot to test out. Some highlights include custom validation messages for properties and media tracking, you can read more about these in the last Product Update. The full list of features and fixes on the download page linked below.


How to test 8.6

First, you need to make a new Umbraco installation from 8.6RC (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 8.6 release or submit new bug reports (click New Issue and select Bug Report), please prefix the with 8.6 RC:


How to get your hands on the Umbraco 8.6 RC

As always, installation and release notes can be found on Our: https://our.umbraco.com/contribute/releases/860

This release candidate is also available from Nuget :https://www.nuget.org/packages/UmbracoCms/8.6.0-rc


When is the full release of Umbraco 8.6?

We’re aiming for a full public release of Umbraco 8.6 in mid-Marc. This means Umbraco 8.6 will be available for upgrade on Umbraco Cloud and via Nuget or the download page.


What’s new in Umbraco Cloud?

Based on feedback from our wonderful users on Umbraco Cloud we’ve added a few “improvement of life” tweaks:


Improved Environment History

When you visit the Environment History page for one of your Umbraco Cloud environments you will now get a better overview of what has happened. This was achieved by going from a vague time indication (i.e. 1 year and 4 days) to adding the date and year instead. 

This makes it so much easier and faster to both find a specific event/deployment and identify exactly when things have taken place. You’ll also see that you can drill down on each date and get time-stamped information about events.

Updates to the Product Roadmap 

The Product Roadmap has seen quite a lot of movement over the last few weeks and there are news on a couple of RFCs as well.


New in Now

All Libraries .NET Core Compatible

Over the last few months, we’ve been working on getting the project structure in place and preparing the codebase for community involvement. It started with a few up-for-grabs issues and now includes a community team which kicked off 2 weeks ago with more up-for-grabs and an RFC, as well as a lot of progress. You can read more about Team Unicore and what they’ll be up to in the near future in Bjarke’s .NET Core team update.


New in Next

Backoffice Operational on .NET Core

With the backoffice fully operational on .NET Core, we can release a version that can be end-to-end tested for content management. The plan is currently to make an alpha release once we reach this milestone.

Frontend Rendering with .NET Core 

Being able to render content in views goes a long way towards having a usable CMS running .NET Core. With this ready, we can release a beta build and implementors/frontend developers can start using and testing the .NET Core. This milestone should produce a beta build.


New in Later

Ready for Package Development for .NET Core

Umbraco CMS is running on .NET Core and we can start focusing on the add-ons and packages that will need to be upgraded such Umbraco Forms and Deploy. At this stage, we want to get the first release candidate out and this is also the perfect time for package developers to test their package on this new version. 

We hope having these milestones will make it easier to test and contribute to the .NET Core transition. If you are interested, make sure to read this blog post on the newly formed Team Unicore.


News on RFCs

RFC for New Package Format

We want to make it easier and simpler to create and maintain Umbraco packages. Read this RFC to see the proposed approach and please do provide any feedback you may have. 

Update to the new data structure for complex property editors

As work on the Block Editor has started, we’ve updated the RFC on the new data structure to reflect some findings. This relates to how the data for the block editor (and future complex property editors) will be stored. Not a huge change but we did receive some good feedback on it, which you can see here.

 

That’s it for this update...

A large part of the work we do is inspired by the feedback we get from you. For issues and specific feature requests, you can find the issue trackers for our products on the Umbraco Github account.

If you have product feedback you’re welcome to reach out to us on product@umbraco.com, contribute to the RFCs and if you want to get personal, you can find me on Twitter (@hemraker).

… Until next time.