Umbraco 11 – All About Release Candidate and Upcoming Final Version
Umbraco 10.3 was released on October 20, 2022, and another updated version Umbraco 11 release candidate issued on October 21, 2022. Its final release date is set to December 1, 2022, which means you have more than a month to test the release candidate in order to prepare your current system for the upcoming version.
The new version is updated to run on .Net 7, which is the latest version of this language. Umbraco 11 will display more improvements in terms of performance with a new Property Editor – the Block Grid Editor. It also has got a ton of new features due to C# 11 and a new version of TinyMCE added as well.
Let’s read more about the release candidate and features that you might find in the forthcoming release of Umbraco 11.
You can also learn about Umbraco 10.2 version if you haven't read it yet.
What will you find in Umbraco 11?
The upcoming Umbraco version 11 release will amaze you with its exceptional performance and features, especially the elements built on .Net. And the icing on the top is, this is the easiest Umbraco major upgrade yet.
1. Performance boost due to .Net 7
Umbraco 11 has upgraded the target framework to .Net 7, which brought amazing performance improvements to this platform. The makers have also updated C# to its latest version which is C# 11.
Since .Net 7 has been used with Umbraco 11, you also get a new version of the web framework in ASP.Net Core 7. It will be interesting to see many more other new features associated with .Net 7.
There are more than a thousand performance-focused PRs that are incorporated in the release. You can check the technical side of the improvements as well in release note.
2. Block Grid Editor – New Property Editor
The new Property Editor will supersede the popular and previous Grid Layout Editor. The reason behind this change is to bring layout and content structure functionalities to editors. It is built on vogue and future-proof technology, which will provide an out-of-the-box experience to Umbraco developers.
Though the new Block Grid Editor has many of Grid Layout Property Editor’s features intact that made it popular among developers, it has Element Types and Blocks as the basic building blocks as well. It implies you have a range of exceptional editors, enhanced flexible settings, and an array of features. Umbraco 11 is built on the Block Editor Technology so that you can recognize many of the Block List Editor’s features and it also has some unique new features.
3. Getting started with Block Grid Editor
Documentation for Block Grid Editor is available thereby you can easily start working on it. You will also find its introduction in the Umbraco 10.3 release candidate documentation and get an idea about what to focus on while you test Block Grid Editor.
It was originally scheduled to be released with Umbraco 10.3 but postponed for Umbraco 11, so now you have a chance to test and give feedback on it. You can play around with sample configuration, layout, or replicate a more advanced setup with the old setup you have created using Grid Layout Editor.
4. TinyMCE 6 into updated Rich Text Editor
Backoffice of Umbraco CMS is powered by TinyMCE 6 now, which is a JavaScript framework. TinyMCE is an exceptional engine that has the ability to wrap a range of HTML and show them to content editors. Thus, content editors can update their content and be ensured that TinyMCE will save and protect their edits as HTML in the database.
The previous versions of Umbraco were using TinyMCE 4. But Umbraco 11 got the culmination of TinyMCE with the release of its version 6. Therefore, now you can expect its latest updates with Umbraco 11.
TinyMCE 6 has robust API changes with a modern UI theme and new in-built features. Though it is not known yet how long its version 6.2 will be supported, however, it is expected to get support till 2024. If you want to know more about its features, then visit TinyMCE product pages.
5. Migrating to TinyMCE
Existing HTML content custom styling, media, links, and macros all will continue to work, there are no breaking changes with these existing HTML elements. However, on the JavaScript side, you can expect a few changes. Now Umbraco is coming with TinyMCE 6 for AngularJS, which supports the new APIs of TinyMCE 6.
If you wish to customize TinyMCE, you should follow the migration guide from TinyMCE itself. It is a straightforward process of migrating from version 4 to 5 and then from version 5 to 6.
Testing Umbraco 11 release candidate – what to focus on?
When you test the release candidate, the most important thing to test is whether the HTML content works well with the new version of TinyMCE if you are switching from an older Umbraco version.
Moreover, if you are extending TinyMCE configuration with JavaScript, then you must keep below mentioned points in mind to test.
1. Buttons
To add buttons to the Rich Text Editor, you need to rewrite a few codes.
Previously:
editor.addButton(name, config)
Now:
editor.ui.registry.addButton(name, config)
Also, note that the config object has changed such as ‘onclick’ has been renamed as ‘onAction’ and there is a new ‘onSetup’ callback to use.
2. Plugins
Some features like ‘hr’ and ‘paste’ are now part of the core of TinyMCE, which were previously added as plugins. This is for your information if you have installed third-party plugins or/and load in plugins from TinyMCE manually.
3. Stylesheets
Umbraco’s deserializer for stylesheets incorporated in the rich text editor got a few optimizations. However, your styles will still appear in the ‘Formats’ dropdown and work similarly.
4. Configuration
If you use RichTextEditorSettings object in app settings, it is important to test that it still works. Because the ‘plugins’ config may have changed, many configuration keys have been renamed or removed in the ‘CustomConfig’ object and are being forwarded to TinyMCE.
5. Decoupling dependencies
One of the dependencies of Umbraco is ImageSharp for image manipulation, which has been moved out, so it works like a package. This breaking change makes it easier to upgrade to future major versions of ImageSharp in Umbraco 11+ independently of Umbraco versions. Similarly, some classes are moved as well into the Umbraco.Cms.Persistence.SqlServer assembly.
6. Breaking changes
Updating dependencies has brought most breaking changes such as changes in .Net 7 and ASP.Net Core 7.
The update to .Net 7 incorporated a breaking change that broke ModelsBuilder in InMemoryAuto mode. Umbraco handled this change well and made ModelsBuilder work again as it used to do. Along with documented changes, there are also a few method signatures that are changed to support Nullable-Reference-Types.
As mentioned above, the breaking changes in TinyMCE are documented in the migration guides for TinyMCE versions 4 to 5 and versions 5 to 6.
Removal of some classes, methods, etc. (which were marked obsolete in Umbraco 9) has brought other breaking changes in Umbraco 11. Some classes and methods have moved and changed namespace.
Decoupled dependencies are documented in the announcement repository. If you want to have a full list of APIs, then check its documentation and further details can be found in the respective PRs link from the release notes.
7. Known issues
ASP.Net Core 7 RC2 and .Net 7 RC2 are the two dependencies for Umbraco 11 RC1 currently and they will get updated to their final version before the official release of Umbraco 11.
Moreover, Block Grid Editor gets a few tweaks with a sort mode, an improved drag and drop feature, and an inline editing mode will also be added.
Other significant updates and fixes will be added in further release candidates as declared officially (RC2, RC3, etc.). Thus, you can test them as well before their final public release.
How to test Umbraco 11 release candidate?
This release candidate is available on NuGet just like the other previous minor version release candidates.
Most importantly, note that .NET SDK 7.0.100-rc.2 is a prerequisite to test Umbraco 11 release candidate and if you want to use Visual Studio, you need to use the Visual Studio Preview version.
To use Umbraco 11 release candidate, you can install the new Umbraco dotnet template:
dotnet new -i Umbraco.Templates::11.0.0-rc1
After installing the Umbraco template, you can create a new project using your preferred Integrated Development Environment (IDE) or continue using the Command Line Interface (CLI):
dotnet new umbraco -n MyCustomUmbracoSolution
The new project can be created by navigating to the newly made folder and running the build command:
cd MyCustomUmbracoSolution dotnet build
And then the project is ready for execution
dotnet run
This command will boot the project and write the log to the console. You can see the website running on the Kestrel Server and it will be available on the ports written in the console.
How to provide feedback? - During the execution of the website, if you find any issues that are not reported by anyone, you can submit them on GitHub tracker by selecting ‘Bug Report’ or following the link.
Wrapping up
It is considered that this release must be feature complete, however you can expect more changes, which might be minor bug fixes as of now based on the testing and feedback. Makers will focus on creating HQ packages as well such as Umbraco Forms, besides fixing potential bugs in the Umbraco CMS. Also, there are chances that Umbraco 11 will be available on Umbraco Cloud when released.
Thus, start testing Umbraco 11 release candidate and report your feedback to get the unerring new version. If you are facing any problem while upgrading the version or want to hire Umbraco developer, then you can contact Skynet Technologies. We provide Umbraco web development including API development, mobile app development, enterprise level Umbraco solutions, RESTful application solution, maintenance, support, migration, upgrades, and more. Get in touch with us at [email protected] or submit the following request free quote form.
Source: Umbraco 11 release candidate
