Release Notes for XWiki 8.4

Last modified by Thomas Mortagne on 2017/03/24
Contents

The following regressions were found after this version was released. We recommend downloading the 8.4.1 release (when it'll be available).

This is the release notes for XWiki Commons, XWiki Rendering, XWiki Platform and XWiki Enterprise. They share the same release notes as they are released together and have the same version.

This version brings a lot of usability improvements. The WYSIWYG editor (CKEditor) has been upgraded and proposes a better dialog for the creation of links. It is also possible to configure it from the administration.

Application Within Minutes does not enforce anymore the location where the application's entries must be created, but proposes to the creator the places where and from where these entries should be. We have also get rid of the Data page where the entries where created before.

The default values of the user preferences are now better exposed to the users. The order of the applications in the application panel can now be changed by the administrator. And the users now have the ability to filter the page types when they create a page.

As usual plenty of less noticeable improvements are proposed, and 45 bugs have been fixed since XWiki 8.3.

New and Noteworthy (since XWiki 8.3)

Full list of issues fixed and Dashboard for 8.4.

For Users

App Within Minutes integration with Create Page dialog

 
We added a new step to the App Within Minutes wizard to configure the location where the application entries are created. This step generates a template provider for the application and thus exposes the application in the Create Page dialog. This means that now you can create application entries not only from the application home page (using "Add new entry") but also from other pages using the Create Page dialog.

New applications created with the new version of the App Within Minutes wizard will not use the Data page any more. The application entries will be created directly under the application home page by default. Of course, you can configure the location with the new wizard step.

AppWithinMinutes-Step3.png
AppWithinMinutes-CreatePage.png

CKEditor Integration Improvements

 
The CKEditor Integration extension has been upgraded to version 1.9 which brings a couple of improvements and bug fixes:

  • The "WYSIWYG Editor" section from the Wiki Administration has been extended to support CKEditor configuration
  • The link dialog has a new text input to specify the link label
  • The form action buttons are now available in full-screen mode
  • CKEditor has been upgraded to the latest stable version 4.5.11

ckeditor-fullscreen.png
wysiwyg-config.png
link-dialog.png

Default values in User Preferences

 
When you go to your user profile in order to changes your preferences, you now see better what are the default values (both in view and edit modes).

UserPreferencesView.png
UserPreferencesEdit.png

Ability to filter the page types

 
When you create a new page, you have to chose the type in a lot of them. To help you to pick the one you want, you can now filter them thanks to a text input.

create-page.gif

Miscellaneous

  • Editing a Flamingo Theme loads a bit faster now.

  • The Message Stream Application is now disabled by default and needs to be enabled to activate the feature. This was chosen in order to not clutter the UI by default, considering that not all users would need this feature. In the future, it should be moved as an optional extension to install.

For Admins

Language Picker

 
It's now easier to select a language in the administration for your wiki.

languages.png

Wiki initialization

 
Like the main wiki, sub wikis now have asynchronous initialization. This reduce a lot the chance that one or several initializing wikis end up eating all the farm input threads.

subwikiinit.png

Ability to re-order items in the Applications Panel

 
It's now possible to re-order the items displayed in the Application Panel, in the administration.

appbar-reorder.gif

Extension Search Button

 
Added a search button on the Extension Manager pages in the Administration, to make it more user-friendly (users had to press the "return" key before).

EM-search.png

Miscellaneous

  • Embedded core extension descriptors: All the jars packaged in the standard JAR comes with their complete Extension descriptor so XWiki won't try to find them in the repositories to get more information anymore. It will still be the case for any jar which does not provide a complete descriptor or jars that comes from the application server (but only the first time, then it's cached).

  • Extension sorted by rating: The Repository REST search API now sort extensions by Ratings when the search query is empty. This means that extensions will end up sorted by Ratings (per repository) in Extension Manager when accessing the Add Extension administration section. 

    Note that xwiki.org needs to run XWiki 8.4RC1+ to see this feature for the extensions.xwiki.org extension repository (which is the one used by default in XWiki).

  • Features of distribution are now sent by active install. This allows to have statistics on the various types of packagings that are used (ZIP packaging, DEB packaging, EXE packaging, etc).

  • Each package (WAR, Debian, installers, etc.) now has its own "environment extension" descriptor. Among other things it means they don't send the same id through Active Installs and this allows to know what packaging users have used to install XWiki.

  • A new "table" category is now proposed in the Flamingo Theme Editor, where you can change the variables concerning the colors of the tables.

For Developers

XWiki Select Widget can be filtered

 
When you use an XWiki Select Widget, you can now let the user filter the proposed options dynamically.

xwiki-select-filter.png

Miscellaneous

  • Most instances of stored ExtensionDependency, ExtensionAuthor, Version and VersionConstraint are now created through a factory to reduce duplicates in memory.

  • The Dashboard Macro now only displays a Gadget if that gadget's content is not empty when rendered. This allows Gadgets to control whether they should be displayed or not. For example, if you wish to display a Gadget only if the user has some permissions such as Admin rights, you can do that with an if in the Gadget's content.

Upgrades

The following runtime dependencies have been upgraded (they have a different release cycle than XWiki Commons, XWiki Rendering, XWiki Platform and XWiki Enterprise):

Translations

The following translations have been updated: 

Tested Browsers & Databases

Here is the list of browsers we support and how they have been tested for this release:

BrowserTest Result
Chrome30.pngGoogle ChromeNot Tested
Firefox30.pngMozilla Firefox 50Jira Tickets Marked as Fixed in the Release Notes + New and Noteworthy Features
IE30.pngInternet Explorer 10Tested
IE30.pngInternet Explorer 11Not Tested

Here is the list of databases we support and how they have been tested for this release:

DatabaseTest Result
hypersql.pngHyperSQLTested
mysql.pngMySQL 5.7Jira Tickets Marked as Fixed in the Release Notes + New and Noteworthy Features
oracle.pngOracleNot Tested
postgresql.pngPostgreSQLNot Tested

Performances tests compared to 7.4.5

This report is not ready yet.

Known issues

Backward Compatibility and Migration Notes

General Notes

When upgrading make sure you compare your xwiki.cfg, xwiki.properties and web.xml files with the newest version since some configuration parameters may have been modified or added. Note that you should add xwiki.store.migration=1 so that XWiki will attempt to automatically migrate your current database to the new schema. Make sure you backup your Database before doing anything.

API Breakages

The following APIs were modified since XWiki 8.3:

Failed to execute the [groovy] macro. Cause: [startup failed: Script1817.groovy: 9: unable to resolve class XmlSlurper  @ line 9, column 12.      result = new XmlSlurper().parseText(xml)                ^  1 error ]. Click on this message for details.

Credits

The following people have contributed code to this release (sorted alphabetically):

  • Alexandru Cotiuga
  • Clemens Robbenhaar
  • Denis Gervalle
  • Ecaterina Moraru (Valica)
  • Eduard Moraru
  • Guillaume Delhumeau
  • Manuel Smeria
  • Marius Dumitru Florea
  • Michiel Hobbelman
  • Pascal Bastien
  • Thomas Mortagne
  • Vincent Massol

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