Yes, I am perfectly aware of the date in the calendar! And yes, I do know that Drupal 8.3.0 was “released into the wild” on the April. Yet... I still have significantly heavy resources of enthusiasm left for all the improvements and the new features that this minor release has come “packed” with. Just like a “present” coming from the Drupal community! Have you made the update already? If not, let me delve into the key enhancements and the new more or less "surprise" features and hopefully my over-excitement is "contagious" enough to at least stir your curiosity to try them:
How have you been adapting to the Drupal community's (not so) new approach to upgrades? To the “upgrades easy forever” philosophy adopted since Drupal 8? Don't you just feel like it's Christmas all year long and not just around the major release days?
The whole idea behind this philosophy it's utterly effective, in my opinion: “portioning” all the improvements brought to Drupal 8 and releasing them throughout the year will make the whole adoption of Drupal 9 far more seamless.
By then we will have already “assimilated” lots of its new features.
But now, let's get back to the “star” of this post, Drupal 8.3.0, and run a little inventory of the improvements that it provides:
1. An Even More Improved Authoring Experience
It's no news for anyone anymore: Drupal 8 revolves around continuously enhancing the authoring experience.
And so with Drupal 8.3.0 comes a whole new set of improvements brought to its “can't live without anymore” tool for content editors, CKEditor:
- first of all, we're talking about a brand new version of CKEditor in Drupal 8.3.0: Chekditor 4.6
- the Copy Formatting plugin
- improved paste from Word
- Balloon Panel and Upload file plugins
- overhauled UI
- a more modern-looking skin, Moono-Lisa, that better matches Drupal's administration theme (Seven)
In addition to all the CKEditor's enhancements, Drupal 8.3.0 “spoils” all those in charge with content on a Drupal site with:
- the AutoGrow plugin, designed with big screen sizes in mind
- a new drag and drop image editing feature, which is pure gold for any content editor/author dealing with a load of image uploading and editing tasks on a daily basis
Content editing in Drupal 8.3.0 + Convenience at its best!
2. Empowering Site Builders and Site Administrators
Needless to add that Drupal 8's been built (and it still is being constantly adjusted to their needs) not just with content editors, but with site builders and administrators in mind, as well!
- an overhauled admin status report
- Allowed HTML tags input turned into a text area (making it easier and faster to configure HTML filters securely)
- the Views listing page has got enriched with other administrative listings, too
- Image Field accepts images only, now (so the user will no longer be “bugged” with the video upload option which, anyway, wasn't functional)
3. A New Stable and Improved Version of the BigPipe Module
The big “revelation” of Drupal 8, the BigPipe module, built to “revolutionize” caching and to turn itself into a huge site performance booster, has reached its “coming of age” in Drupal 8.3.0.
I'm not going to talk to you about its functionality in this post and or about its crucial role in handling dynamic, personalized content-holding pages. I'm 101% sure you're already more than familiarized with how BigpPipe works and that you have more than just an idea about the principles that it's been built on: to deliver the uncacheable part of a web page first and its dynamic content right after.
Since it's Drupal 8.3.0's “novelties” that we're focusing on here, I will mention that this minor release brought a stable and enhanced version of the BigPipe module which, moreover, expends its catching and performance-boosting “mission” to mobile devices, too!
4. New Features to the Apis, Extended Support for Web Services
Since everyone seems to be talking about decoupled Drupal these days, this news comes to “fuel” even more discussions around this topic: “unwrapping” Drupal 8.3.0. also means unboxing all the new improvements brought to the APIs.
This cannot but mean that Drupal's support for web services is extending, which can only mean that the future looks bright for Drupal-powered decoupled sites and applications.
Now, allow me to sum up some of these new “tempting” improvements in the APIs:
- improved response
- bug fixes
- 403 responses now are by accompanied reasons why access is denied, “shading” more light, for Drupal developers, over what they've done wrong
- anonymous REST API's performance has been boosted by 60% in the context of internal page caching
- users now get to register via REST API
- Migrate API now enters its beta stage
5. Drupal 8.3.0 “Shows Off” Its Experimental Workflows Module
And let me tell you that this Drupal 8 module, even at this experimental phase, has huge potential! “Potential” which enterprises having “troops” of content creators and dealing with complex content approval and editorial propcesses, will surely rush in to leverage!
The Workflows module comes to power up the relatively new Content Moderation module (released in Drupal 8.2.).
What it does is that it takes over the API and the workflow functionality and provides you with a super simple and intuitive UI. There you can create and control your custom publishing states and all their transitions.
An UI where you can control all your workflows which are not content publication-related!
Practically it enables you to put together all these states and transitions in a workflow! Next, the Content Moderatin module applies the workflows you will have created to the content, streamlining, this way, the whole configuration process.
And here are a few details of the “power” that you'll be invested with when using this module:
- you get to configure the publishing states of the content on your Drupal site (published, draft...)
- you can grant certain users permissions to modify these publishing states
6. New Experimental Layout Modules
Drupal 8.3.0 ships with 2 layout modules which, although still in experimental stage, worth our full attention.
- The Field Layout Module: enables you, as a Drupal site builder, to rearrange your fields on block types, content types and so on, into new regions using the very same forms provided to you by the standard field user interface
- The Layout Discovery Module: provides an API (in core) for themes or modules (Ctools, Display Suite, Panelizer etc.) to add their layouts, in addition to this module's own “collection” of 5 default layouts
And this is how my “inventory” of Drupal 8.3.0 improvements, the ones that I'm still (since April 5) so excited about, looks like! Have you taken them “for a test drive”? Have you made the update?