Summary of the XWiki 8.x Cycle

CKEditor by default

• We have a new default WYSIWYG editor: the CKEditor. The integration with CKEditor was already available as an extension and now this extension is bundled with the standard XWiki distribution.
• The old WYSIWYG editor is still available and if you want to switch back to it you can do it from the "Edit Mode Settings" section in the Wiki Administration.
• The "WYSIWYG Editor" section from the Wiki Administration has been extended to support CKEditor configuration.
• The XWiki integration has been improved to support automatic link creation when dropping a non-image file over the editing area. 
• Creating a link to a non-existing wiki page has been simplified.
• CKEditor has been upgraded to version 4.6.0 which brings a new flat skin and a lot of improvements and bug fixes.
  

New Homepage

We replaced the Dashboard application from the main Homepage and added introductory steps as wiki syntax. This change will make it simpler for new users to edit the Homepage content, while also benefiting from some basic help concepts. The left panels area also showcases now the 'Navigation' panel, while the right panels area contain a 'Need Help?' panel.

Tour for Homepage

• A tour has been created to present the existing UI elements from the home page. Every user will be guided through this tour in order to become familiar with XWiki.

Default Templates

• We added 4 default templates that will appear in the Create step. Their purpose is to showcase the template feature, by providing pre-created page structures that can be used immediately. The templates added are: Article, Encyclopedia, Meeting Report and Simple Page.

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.

Display recommended extensions in the Extension Manager

Extension Manager is now displaying only recommended extension by default.

You can still switch to All Remote Extensions. If no recommended extension is can be found for the provided search, the result for All Remote Extensions is displayed.

Application Index

We removed some applications from the AppBar (like Scheduler, Invitation, Panels, etc.) with the intention to simplify the interface and promote a smaller number of applications inside the AppBar panel. In order for the applications to still be discoverable, we added in the Drawer an Application Index.

Drawer menu has changed

The drawer menu has changed to display the "scope" of the displayed items. Items are ordered regarding if their scope is "local" (i.e. it affects only the current wiki) and "global" (i.e. it affects the whole farm).

The change have been made after users complaining the old menu was not very clear, and after a poll sent on the mailing list.

Some items like "Home", "Create Wiki" and "Delete Wiki" has been removed from that menu, in order to focus on frequent operations that really deserve a place in this important menu. We offer other means in the UI to achieve these operations.

XAR Children Export

It's now possible, for HTML and XAR formats, to export selected children along with the current page.

Not Found Suggestions

We have added suggestions for the "document not found" and "attachment not found" error screens. The suggestions address minor typos and misspelling (including lower case vs upper case), but also bad location requests.