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Umbraco Product Update - May 26th, 2021

Get yourself updated on the latest product development

Rune Strand
Written by Rune Strand

Proudly presenting an Umbraco product update so packed with exciting new releases and features that I’ll keep the intro short and get straight to the fun stuff 😉

Overview: 

New release: Umbraco 9 beta 3 🚀

A new product update, another Umbraco 9 beta release. We’ve had some fantastic feedback on Umbraco 9 since the first beta and now, 4 weeks later, we’re ready with the 3rd beta which includes fixes and improvements based on the feedback as well as some of the milestones that did not make it in the first rounds. It’s fantastic to see that the excitement for Umbraco on .NET 5/.NET Core is growing and the feedback is a massive help to ensure a stable and great public release later this year. Here are some of the highlights in beta 3:

  • Examine is cross platform! This means “search” and indexing is now working as intended
  • Fix for unsafe project names; these are no longer unsafe for namespaces. E.g. "Umbraco 9" will now use namespace "Umbraco_9"
  • Restart not required on install
  • Resolve virtual paths from DataEditorAttribute. E.g. "~/App_Data/...."
  • Updates to Modelsbuilder:
    • Modelbuilder modes have been renamed to better suit concepts from the underlying web framework.
    • Modelsbuilder InMemoryAuto (PureLive) output is generated in temp folder
    • It is no longer required to make changes to *.csproj when changing modelsbuilder mode from InMemoryAuto (PureLive) to another mode.
  • The latest changes from the Umbraco 8.14 release candidate have been added

And there are more changes and improvements. You can see the full list of everything included in beta 3 on Github and see the changes between beta 2 and 3 in the documentation. 

If you want to dive into Umbraco 9 but are not sure where to start you can join the Umbraco 9 learn-a-thon together with Carole Logan and Emma Burstow. Today is the 4th and final virtual meetup that provides a great forum for asking questions and has been the source of a lot of valuable feedback directly impacting this latest beta. I’m sure they’ll dive into the new shiny things in beta 3.

You can find out how to get Umbraco 9 beta 3 running in the documentation.

Released on May 26th, 2021

New release: Umbraco Forms 8.7.3

A new patch for Umbraco Forms is out and gives you some nice improvements, performance tweaks and bug fixes.

With version 8.7.3 you can now have multiple forms on the same page using reCaptcha v3, creating data source based on a web service has been fixed and a misleading warning when adding forms via the Richtext Editor has been addressed. 

And there’s more 😀  You can see the full list of issues and improvements and get your hands on the new release on the Umbraco Forms download page.

Upcoming release: Umbraco 8.14 (Release candidate is out  🎉)

It’s only a week and a bit until the release of Umbraco 8.14 and this is one you don’t want to miss! It contains several new features along with a long list of improvements and bug fixes, many of them courtesy of the community 🙌

Some of the highlights are:

  • A brand new Media Picker with improved UX, new functionality, and the ability to do image cropping locally, on a per content item basis 🤩
  • Improved validation notifications when saving items with mandatory fields. Say goodbye to the red alerts and hello to less stressful and better feedback in the UI
  • Another round of accessibility improvements from the A11Y team
  • … And much more

 

 

It’s all available to try out in the release candidate for Umbraco 8.14 which is out now! You can find more details on how to get your hands on it and provide feedback in the Umbraco 8.14 Release Candidate blog post.

Targeted release: Thursday, June 3rd, 2021 

Upcoming releases: Patches for Umbraco CMS and Umbraco Forms

Next Tuesday, June 1st, 2021, we’re releasing 3 patches for Umbraco CMS and 1 for Umbraco Forms (for Umbraco 7):

The patches address various minor issues/regression bugs, you can see the full list by following the links above. All eligible Umbraco Cloud sites will automatically be updated with the latest patch version and, for everyone else, you can find the latest version on the download page after the full release on Tuesday.

Targeted release: Tuesday, June 1st, 2021

Artistic blue cloud on white background with small blue Umbraco logo

What’s new in Umbraco Cloud ⛅

Over in Umbraco Cloud-land things are progressing nicely as well. We’re amidst the move to a new and improved infrastructure and have published several status blog posts on the subject already. You can get up to speed on the project with the latest blog post that details the migration process for existing Umbraco Cloud sites.

Status on the new infrastructure Cloud infrastructure

Over the last few weeks we’ve been verifying the migration process with both test projects and we’ve also moved several internal sites. This all culminated last week with the move of Umbraco.com, which is now running smoothly on the new infrastructure 🎉 We’re really pleased with the overall progression and performance of the new setup. We’re working together with several partners on plans to migrate sites and will have news on the schedule for all projects in the coming weeks. So keep an eye on the blog for the next Cloud status blog post.

New feature on Cloud: IDN hostname support

Part of the infrastructure is a new hostname and certificate setup that utilises Cloudflare and brings a whole host of improvements both for existing sites and opens up for new features down the line. Last week, support for IDN hostnames was enabled meaning a wider range of characters are supported and, importantly, provided automatically with SSL certificates through Cloudflare 🚀 If you haven’t updated to the new settings we highly recommend doing so. This will enable all new features and is a prerequisite for migrating your projects to the new infrastructure in an easy and safe way. You can see the Manage Hostnames documentation for more information.

Minimum versions for Umbraco CMS - you might need to upgrade your project(s)

As we get ready for the new infrastructure, we are aiming to reduce the number of versions currently present on Umbraco Cloud in order to improve security, stability, and overall experience of Umbraco Cloud which the new infrastructure enables. If you have projects on versions 8.6.6, 7.7.7, or earlier, we highly encourage you to upgrade to the latest minor and patch version and if possible, do this within the next 2 months. Minimum supported versions on the new infrastructure will be:

  • Umbraco 8.6.7 for version 8 projects
  • Umbraco 7.7.8 for version 7 projects.

So now is the time to get your projects up-to-date, so you’re ready for the move. A big thanks to all the Cloud users that have already updated their DNS settings and upgraded their projects - We know there is work involved for you in this part 🙏 Once the prerequisites are met we’ll take care of the migration itself, we’ve world hard to make it as smooth as possible. As mentioned earlier we’ll have more on the migration schedule on the blog soon and you will also receive direct communication when your project(s) have been scheduled for migration.

Updates to the Roadmap

With all the great progress across all Umbraco projects things are also on the move on the Product Roadmap. Let’s take a look at the latest changes:

Progress on existing items:

New Media Picker for Umbraco CMS

The new and vastly improved Media Picker for Umbraco is chock full of great functionality and will surely delight both developers and editors making it easier, faster, and more intuitive to select and crop images in the CMS. It’s all done and can be tested in the release candidate for Umbraco 8.14. With the final release next Thursday, the item will be moved to the Product Roadmap History page.

Tabs for Umbraco CMS

A few product updates ago it was announced that tabs are back in the backoffice and while it’s not fully done yet, it’s getting there and we’ll have more on this in the near future. For now, let’s just take a little sneak peak at what’s coming:

 

Right-click for fullscreen

As you can see, tabs have been rebuilt for Umbraco 8 and are fully compatible with groups. This means you can keep using Groups as you’ve always done in Umbraco or add tabs to the mix to provide a better overview and editing experience in the backoffice.

Migrate existing Umbraco Cloud clients to improved subscription management

We’re currently working on making the new subscription management available to existing clients on Umbraco. This will provide you with an easier way to manage your project subscriptions, all from the comfort of the Umbraco Cloud portal. Once the migration plan is finished this item will be moved to the Product Roadmap History page and all client’s will be enabled to use it over the coming months.

New items on the roadmap:

Future-proofing Umbraco’s backoffice: UI component Library in “NOW”

The UI component library for Umbraco is in full development and has recently been open sourced and is now publicly available on Github. You can clone the repository and check it out yourself and even contribute by raising issues or submitting pull requests. 

Future-proofing Umbraco’s backoffice: Define backoffice extension API in “Next”

Being able to extend the backoffice is one of the cornerstones of Umbraco. We’re working on defining how this API should look in the future. How to create a new dashboard, property editor, and is there a good and safe way to do interceptors/hijacking? No stone will be left unturned by the new Backoffice Community that was recently assembled. They will help team steward Mads Rasmussen with feedback and prototyping over the coming months - and what a team. You can read all about it in the blog post introducing the Backoffice Community Team. 

This work will result in an RFC (request for comments) along with a proposed new extension API later this year. Once the RFC is published and opened up to the broader community this item will be moved to “Now” on the roadmap.

 

Future-proofing Umbraco’s backoffice: Implement new extension API in “Later”

Following the acceptance of the RFC for the new extension API, implementation can begin together with the Backoffice Community Team. Together with the UI component library these are 2 huge steps towards a new architecture for Umbraco’s backoffice that aims to provide an improved development and contribution experience both for package authors and core contributors/developers.

Sign up for the official Umbraco conference of 2021

Want to get yourself updated on the latest Umbraco news and sneak peeks? Then you don’t want to miss Codegarden 2021! In just a couple of weeks time, the first ever virtual Codegarden will be kicking off - and you can enjoy it all online from anywhere in the world! It’s 3 days packed with Umbraco news and goodies and the program is now available on the Codegarden website.

 

 

Oh, did I mention it’s free? Check out the exciting programme and sign up today - there’s really no reason not to 😉

… Until next time

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.