eZ Publish 4.3.0alpha1 released

We are happy to announce the release of eZ Publish 4.3.0alpha1. This release contains several improvements and bugfixes for the kernel, and is accompanied by several new extensions. A few highlights are provided below.

eZ Publish kernel improvements

• General improvements to the LDAP login handler
• Fetch function for shop orders
• Simplified creation of new RSS feed from a node
• Better support image/media/file in RSS export (<enclosure> and <description>)
• smtp class has been replaced with ezcMailSmtpTransport
• Add class attribute category field for data map grouping
• Added object states for content/remove policy
• Added possibility to have help / description text on class and class attributes (editing guide)

Admin interface refresh

"Admin2", the new admin re-design is the biggest visual change in this release.
Efforts have been put into making the design lighter, more modern, faster, more extendable, more consistent and only show the elements the current user has access to.

Additionally several key user interface operations have been given some love with focus on letting both editors and power users be more efficient on day to day task. For instance, ajax on moving class attributes up / down, focus on added class attribute, an extra toolbar in top of content & class edit interface, inline search on relation datatypes, a more compact tabbed interface for node details, and while not only admin2 related, the help / description text on class and class attributes.

While alpha1 is not 100% the final result, and some tweaking is still needed, it should give you a possibility to test out all the new features.

New default bundled extensions

In the upcoming 4.3.0 release several new extensions will be part of the standard distribution:

eZ JSCore provides core functionalities for: Ajax, integration of JS frameworks like YUI and jQuery and also utility functions for CSS and JS files

eZ Script Monitor provides a way to register script for background processing. Long running processes from the GUI can now be sent to the background. An example of such feature is the ability to defer the modifications of content objects that need to be updated when their content class got changed. This can be achieved by overriding the ContentClassEditHandler entry ([ContentSettings] section from site.ini) to eZContentClassEditDeferredHandler.

New and major updates of stand-alone extensions

eZ Teamroom

eZ Teamroom is an extension that facilitates collaboration of teams, possibly geographically dispersed. It has an easy to use, Ajaxified GUI and customisable dashboard. It is also an excellent foundation for intranets and extranets, as it provides document management, project management, wiki's, file sharing, calendar (with recurring events) and more..

The extensions comes bundled with three other extensions that will be certified within the scope of eZ Teamroom: eZ Event (recurring events), eZ Lightbox (a flexible container) and eZ XML installer (a tool to configure and modify new and existing installations of eZ Publish)

eZ Find

eZ Find got a major update to allow for better multi-lingual handling, facets, performance enhancements, powerful functions to be used in filtering and boosting and many bug fixes.

eZ Comments

eZ Comments is an extension that provides a high traffic commenting system for eZ Publish content. The features include: a dedicated storage area (outside the ezobjects/eznode tables), dedicated permissions system, notifications, show/hide of comments and more.

Misc

eZ Multiupload, eZ Survey also got several bug fixes for stability and compatibility

Known issues in this alpha release

Currently eZ Publish will try to write a cache file into its var directory, before the setup wizard has been able to verify the file permissions, in order to avoid getting a warning message about this, the file permissions can be adjusted manually before starting the setup wizard, so that the web server has proper write permission on the var folder.

Notes on backwards compatibility

For more in-depth information on these changes have a look at the dedicated document for this: backwards compatibility information

Changelogs

Full changelog is available via the link: changelog 4.2.0 to 4.3.0alpha1

Upgrading

We don't recommend upgrading any production site to eZ Publish 4.3.0alpha1 yet. However if you want to give it a try in a testing environment, you need to replace the distribution files and run the database upgrade scripts in:

update/database/mysql|postgresql/4.3/unstable/dbupdate-4.2.0-to-4.3.0alpha1.sql

In addition make sure to consult the documentation for any extension for specific instructions.

Downloads

You can download the release of eZ Publish and extensions at this URL:

Download eZ Publish and extensions

Also check out the official press release on ez.no, as well as the technical announcement (reprinted above).