This is the first and only milestone of the XWiki Enterprise 3.4 version (Roadmap). We're getting closer to the end of the 3.x cycle and the goal of this release (and the following one, which will be the last of the cycle) is to improve the current features.

New and Noteworthy (since XWiki Enterprise 3.3 version)

New default color theme

Starting with XE 3.4 we added new CSS3 rules into Colibri skin and a new default ColorTheme that is aligned with these changes. These CSS3 changes plus the usage of .png files instead of .gif for our icons (XWIKI-7355) further even more the gap and compatibility with the IE6 and IE7 browsers. 

To accomodate the need for additional color variables in order to be able to have gradients, we've mixed some ColorTheme variables together. As a consequence the bundled ColorThemes are considered now deprecated (because of incompatible variable mix) and will be replaced by other new ColorThemes in further versions (XE 3.4RC1).

In order to solve this problem you have two solutions: adjust your custom ColorThemes with the new changes or don't upgrade the following files: ColorThemes.DefaultColorTheme, XWiki.AdminSheet, colibri/colibri.css. colibri/ie-all.css.

XWiki Syntax 2.1 is the default page syntax

Even though the XWiki Syntax 2.1 has been available for a long time already, it was marked experimental. We've now made it final which means no more changes will be brought to the XWiki Syntax 2.1 (any new change will be made in a new XWiki Syntax 2.2).

What it also means is that when you create a new page from now on, it'll be created in XWiki Syntax 2.1 syntax by default (you can still choose another syntax using the Syntax chooser in edit mode, see Page Editing).

As a reminder here are below the differences between XWiki Syntax 2.0 and XWiki Syntax 2.1.

Changes to the link syntax from XWiki Syntax 2.0

The query string and the anchor (URL fragment) are no longer specified in the reference section of the link syntax:

[[Link Specification>>platform:Main.XWikiSyntax||queryString="foo=bar" anchor="HXWikiSyntax2.1LinkSpecification"]]

links to:

http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/XWikiSyntax?foo=bar#HXWikiSyntax2.1LinkSpecification

The canonical representation of a link reference is prefixed with the reference type:

[[Source repository>>url:https://github.com/organizations/xwiki]]
[[Syntax Help>>doc:platform:Main.XWikiSyntax]]

InterWiki links have a dedicated reference type:

[[XWiki on Wikipedia>>interwiki:wikipedia:XWiki]]

Two new reference types: relative path and UNC (Universal Naming Convention).

[[Edit this page>>path:$doc.getURL('edit')]]
[[File system access>>unc:\\myserver\path\to\file.txt]]

See the full link specification for more details.

Changes to the image syntax from XWiki Syntax 2.0

You can pass the query string of the image URL as a special image parameter:

[[image:MyPage@myPicture.png||queryString="parameter=value"]]

You can use a relative path as the image reference. This is useful to display images from the skin:

image:path:$xwiki.getSkinFile('logo.png')

It is now possible to reference an icon from the XWiki Icon Set:

image:icon:chart_pie

See the full image specification for more details.

Delete space menu

You can now delete an entire space using the Space menu. This will move all the pages from that space to the recycle bin. Note that in case you want to restore the space you have to restore each page individually from the recycle bin. We're hoping to offer a way to easily restore the space in the next versions.

Simple space templates

You can now create simple space templates. If you go to Templates section of the wiki administration and create a new template provider you'll notice that you can choose the template type. "Space homepage" templates are used to create new spaces.

All the available space templates are listed on the Create Space dialog that you can access from the Add > Space menu.

XWiki Enterprise comes by default with a space dashboard template which can be used to create a new space whose home page is a dashboard.

Special characters in attachment name

Starting with this version, non-ASCII characters are not filtered anymore from the file name when uploading an attachment.

Minimized action menu

The action menu is now minimized when the page is scrolled. You can access it by hovering the top of the browser window.

Display macro

New display macro to replace include macro with context=new. See Display Macro for more details.

Bug fixes and improvements

• Tree view from document index should work fine in Internet Explorer 9.
• Adding users to a group through the administration should work fine in Internet Explorer 9.
• Extension manager UI has been polished.
• Created workspaces should now be stabilized and no longer report errors after an XWiki restart or in the Administration section.

For Developers

• Component manager bug fixes and improvements (including an important optimization which should bring a significant speed improvement)
• StringUtils can be accessed in Velocity using $stringtool
• #stop Velocity directive is working again
• You can now stop the execution of a Velocity macro or template using #break($macro) and #break($template) respectively. $template can also be used to find the name of the current Velocity name space (usually the name of the current Velocity template).
• Markdown syntax support added.
• The database migration code has been fully rewritten:
  • XWIKI-7006 Accessing a store that is not migrated to the lastest data version should not be allowed
  • XWIKI-1859 Do not start migrations on a clean installation of XWiki
• Oracle support improved
  • XWIKI-6368 - Exception "inconsistent datatypes" on VisitStats in Oracle 10g
  • XWIKI-7278 - Virtual mode fails on Oracle with "ORA-01435: user does not exist"
• Interface changes
  • XWIKI-7326 - now available the .png version for the icons in the Silk icons set (the .gif versions will gradually be replaced)
  • XWIKI-7307 - in order to write more easily all the proprietary declarations for CSS3 background gradients and box-sizing properties you can use the following macros: #css3_backgroundLinearGradient, #css3_backgroundIconAndLinearGradient and #css3_boxSizing 

Upgrades

The following dependencies have been upgraded:

• AETHER 1.13.1
• Groovy 1.8.5
• Hibernate 3.6.8 Final
• jdeb 0.9
• Restlet 2.0.x
• SmartGWT 3.0

Translations

The following translations have been updated:

• German
• Spanish
• French
• Hindi
• Croatian
• Latvian
• Russian
• Swedish
• Ukrainian
• Traditional Chinese

Tested Browsers

Here's the list of browsers tested with this version (i.e. browsers that we've tested as working - Check the list of supported browsers):

Firefox

9.0.1

Chrome

16

Known issues

• Bugs we know about

Test Report

You can check the manual test report to learn about what was tested and the results on various browsers.

Backward Compatibility and Migration Notes

General Notes

You may also want to import the default wiki XAR in order to benefit from all the improvements listed above.

Issues specific to XWiki Enterprise 3.4 Milestone 1

Default wiki access method changed to path-based

In virtual mode, XWiki can work in two ways: based on domain names, where each virtual wiki is accessed from a different DNS domain, like wikiname.myfarm.net, and path-based, where each virtual wiki is accessed on a different path of the same domain, like www.myfarm.net/wikis/wikiname/. Since the former mode is harder to set up, since it requires a custom DNS server, we have enabled the second mode by default in this release.

API Breakages

The following APIs were modified since version 3.3: