Highlights from PAB - September 2018

Hi,

We recently held a PAB-meeting. It stands for Public Advisory Board and is the place where we evaluate all incoming feature requests and prioritize them. We don’t always report from the meetings, but now is the time for such a report.

We released 6.15 this summer, and now we’re working hard on 7.0. Main focus this PAB was to prioritize for 7.0, 7.1 and a slightly slimmer 6.16 containing only things needed to make the jump to 7.0 smoother. The work for 7.0 have been going on since after the summer, and the plan now is more or less set for what will go into this version. The release is aimed for late autumn, but since this is a very big change we will test it thoroughly first and not stress the release.

Here’s a rough selection from our updated focus based on this PAB-meeting. We’ve split it into short term (next version) under the headline Next, and then long term (releases during 2019) under the headline Future. Bare in mind that items might be rescheduled as we draw close to a release.

Next

Breaking changes:

The purpose of 7.0 is to make some much needed breaking changes, here’s a shorter list of them.

  • Rename all Roles in our tools.
  • No longer permit pasting of scripts, iframes, outside of macros in HtmlArea.
  • Update to newer version of ElasticSearch.
  • Upgrade to Java 10 or 11 (Java 11 to be released in September).
  • Native support for ECMAscript6.
  • Remove mandatory root path /content/ from JS queries.
  • Restrict selection of any contents to current site by default (in ContentSelectors, ImageSelectors, etc).
  • Run /status on separate port.

General changes:

Some items benefit both editors and developers as it affects the entire platform.

  • Content Studio to be disconnected from XP core, so that it can be updated independently.
  • Ability to show widgets without context (without any content being selected).
  • Widgets panel inside Edit mode for contents - fully pluggable.
  • Automatic data model upgrades between XP versions - upgrade minor versions with ease, even when data structure changes.

For editors:

  • Translation app (widget).
  • User permissions report.
  • Site roles (who can add apps, configure apps, use Page Editor, etc).
  • Handle reference-content inside the HtmlArea when publishing.
  • CSS-adjustments for Content Studio - more material-like.

For developers:

  • Should-filters in ElasticSearch (6.16).
  • Kubernetes configuration (6.16).
  • Remove mandatory name-attribute for fieldsets.
  • APIs to access versions for each content, and change active version.
  • Request scope - add custom data models to the response object, shared for all controllers in the same request.
  • Application data upgrade scripts (way to handle data model changes in your own apps).

For Enonic Market:

  • PWA-starter improvements.
  • AI chatbot.
  • Index viewer.
  • IDporten (OpenID connect) ID Provider.
  • E-commerce integration with Magento.
  • SiteImprove app.

Long term

Our plan for the time after the release of 7.0, into and throughout 2019. These are our long term priorities, not grouped. Some of these features might also be released in stages (like we’ve done with Publishing Issues, a feature that improves for each release). An example of such a feature will be our new translation capabilities being built as a stand-alone Enterprise app for 7.0.

General:

  • Improvements to the Tag input type - filter tags per site, content type, and more.
  • Checklist support on content API - custom tailored scripts that can validate content before being allowed for publishing.
  • Project mode to group sites inside the Content Studio grid.
  • New APIs for plugging into Content Studio, like creating native modals.
  • Market app - overview, upgrade, downgrade, all apps via Market, directly from XP interface.
  • Settings for where images uploaded in a ImageSelector should be placed. Default is underneath each content.
  • New and improved search panel in Content Studio.
  • Pluggable input types (create your own!).
  • Custom CSS classes inside the rich text editor (HtlmArea).
  • Custom styles for images for setting fixed widths, filters, etc.
  • Custom sizing of images added into the HtmlArea.
  • Enonic Cloud GUI.

For Enonic Market:

  • Angular PWA starter.
  • React PWA starter.
  • Audit-tool and lib.

That’s it for now, if you have suggestions for improvements in Enonic XP, please post in the Features category here in our forum.

Thanks!

2 Likes

Disabling versions when updating content is included in 7.0 I hope?