Drupal 7 Features to watch out for
Drupal 7 is said to have a code freeze this September and as far as I heard Dries has no plans to release Drupal 7 until all the critical issues are resolved. Till today's date there are 332 critical issues to be resolved.
But none the less I am waiting for the killer release. Having look at the new shiny dashboard and the drag and drop goodness and all the hustle and bustle about file API and fields in core I really want to try out D7 ASAP. Recently I found a presentation about the features I'm embedding below:
But the features in the change log are as follows:
Drupal 7.0, xxxx-xx-xx (development version)
----------------------
- Database:
* Fully rewritten database layer utilizing PHP 5's PDO abstraction layer.
* Added query builders for INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, MERGE, and SELECT queries.
* Support for master/slave replication, transactions, multi-insert queries,
delayed inserts, and other features.
* Added support for the SQLite database engine.
- Security:
* Protected cron.php -- cron will only run if the proper key is provided.
* Implemented much stronger password hashes that are also compatible with the
Portable PHP password hashing framework.
* Implemented a pluggable password hashing API supporting alternative
hashing and authentication schemes.
- Usability:
* Improved installer requirements check.
* Improved support for integration of WYSIWYG editors.
* Implemented drag-and-drop positioning for input format listings.
* Implemented drag-and-drop positioning for language listing.
* Implemented drag-and-drop positioning for poll options.
* Provided descriptions and human-readable names for user permissions.
* Removed comment controls for users.
* Removed display order settings for comment module. Comment display
order can now be customised using the Views module.
* Added additional features to the default install profile, and implemented
a "slimmed down" install profile designed for developers.
* Image toolkits are now provided by modules (rather than requiring a manual
file copy to the includes directory).
* Added an edit tab to taxonomy term pages.
* Redesigned password strength validator.
* Redesigned the add content type screen.
* Highlight duplicate URL aliases.
* Renamed "input formats" to "text formats".
* Added configurable ability for users to cancel their own accounts.
- Performance:
* Improved performance on uncached page views by loading multiple core
objects in a single database query.
- Documentation:
* Hook API documentation now included in Drupal core.
- News aggregator:
* Added OPML import functionality for RSS feeds.
* Optionally, RSS feeds may be configured to not automatically generate feed blocks.
- Search:
* Added support for language-aware searches.
- Aggregator:
* Introduced architecture that allows pluggable parsers and processors for
syndicating RSS and Atom feeds.
- testing:
* Added test framework and tests.
- Improved time zone support:
* Drupal now uses PHP's time zone database when rendering dates in local
time. Site-wide and user-configured time zone offsets have been converted
to time zone names, e.g. Africa/Abidjan.
* In some cases the upgrade and install scripts do not choose the preferred
site default time zone. The automatically-selected time zone can be
corrected at admin/settings/date-time.
* If your site is being upgraded from Drupal 6 and you do not have the
contributed date or event modules installed, user time zone settings will
fallback to the system time zone and will have to be reconfigured by each user.
- Removed ping module:
* Contributed modules with similar functionality are available.
- Refactored the "access rules" component of user module:
* The user module now provides a simple interface for blocking single
IP addresses. The previous functionality in the user module for restricting
certain e-mail addresses and usernames is now available as a contributed module.
Further, IP address range blocking is no longer supported and should be
implemented at the operating system level.
- Removed throttle module:
* Alternative methods for improving performance are available in other core and
contributed modules.
- Added code registry:
* Using the registry, modules declare their includable files via their .info file,
allowing Drupal to lazy-load code as needed, resulting in significant performance
and memory improvements.
- Theme system:
* Converted the 'bluemarine' theme to a tableless layout.
- File handling:
* Files are now first class Drupal objects with file_load(), file_save(),
and file_validate() functions and corresponding hooks.
* The file_move(), file_copy() and file_delete() functions now operate on
file objects and invoke file hooks so that modules are notified and can
respond to changes.
* For the occasions when only basic file manipulation are needed--such as
uploading a site logo--that don't require the overhead of databases and
hooks, the current unmanaged copy, move and delete operations have been
preserved but renamed to file_unmanaged_*().
- Added aliased multi-site support:
* Added support for mapping domain names to sites directories.
- Added RDF support:
* Modules can declare RDF namespaces which are serialized in the tag
for RDFa support.
And, those are exciting new features as always a new Drupal release has lots of things to offer.
But none the less I am waiting for the killer release. Having look at the new shiny dashboard and the drag and drop goodness and all the hustle and bustle about file API and fields in core I really want to try out D7 ASAP. Recently I found a presentation about the features I'm embedding below:Drupal 7 - Upcoming Features
View more presentations from beejeebus.
But the features in the change log are as follows:
Drupal 7.0, xxxx-xx-xx (development version)
----------------------
- Database:
* Fully rewritten database layer utilizing PHP 5's PDO abstraction layer.
* Added query builders for INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, MERGE, and SELECT queries.
* Support for master/slave replication, transactions, multi-insert queries,
delayed inserts, and other features.
* Added support for the SQLite database engine.
- Security:
* Protected cron.php -- cron will only run if the proper key is provided.
* Implemented much stronger password hashes that are also compatible with the
Portable PHP password hashing framework.
* Implemented a pluggable password hashing API supporting alternative
hashing and authentication schemes.
- Usability:
* Improved installer requirements check.
* Improved support for integration of WYSIWYG editors.
* Implemented drag-and-drop positioning for input format listings.
* Implemented drag-and-drop positioning for language listing.
* Implemented drag-and-drop positioning for poll options.
* Provided descriptions and human-readable names for user permissions.
* Removed comment controls for users.
* Removed display order settings for comment module. Comment display
order can now be customised using the Views module.
* Added additional features to the default install profile, and implemented
a "slimmed down" install profile designed for developers.
* Image toolkits are now provided by modules (rather than requiring a manual
file copy to the includes directory).
* Added an edit tab to taxonomy term pages.
* Redesigned password strength validator.
* Redesigned the add content type screen.
* Highlight duplicate URL aliases.
* Renamed "input formats" to "text formats".
* Added configurable ability for users to cancel their own accounts.
- Performance:
* Improved performance on uncached page views by loading multiple core
objects in a single database query.
- Documentation:
* Hook API documentation now included in Drupal core.
- News aggregator:
* Added OPML import functionality for RSS feeds.
* Optionally, RSS feeds may be configured to not automatically generate feed blocks.
- Search:
* Added support for language-aware searches.
- Aggregator:
* Introduced architecture that allows pluggable parsers and processors for
syndicating RSS and Atom feeds.
- testing:
* Added test framework and tests.
- Improved time zone support:
* Drupal now uses PHP's time zone database when rendering dates in local
time. Site-wide and user-configured time zone offsets have been converted
to time zone names, e.g. Africa/Abidjan.
* In some cases the upgrade and install scripts do not choose the preferred
site default time zone. The automatically-selected time zone can be
corrected at admin/settings/date-time.
* If your site is being upgraded from Drupal 6 and you do not have the
contributed date or event modules installed, user time zone settings will
fallback to the system time zone and will have to be reconfigured by each user.
- Removed ping module:
* Contributed modules with similar functionality are available.
- Refactored the "access rules" component of user module:
* The user module now provides a simple interface for blocking single
IP addresses. The previous functionality in the user module for restricting
certain e-mail addresses and usernames is now available as a contributed module.
Further, IP address range blocking is no longer supported and should be
implemented at the operating system level.
- Removed throttle module:
* Alternative methods for improving performance are available in other core and
contributed modules.
- Added code registry:
* Using the registry, modules declare their includable files via their .info file,
allowing Drupal to lazy-load code as needed, resulting in significant performance
and memory improvements.
- Theme system:
* Converted the 'bluemarine' theme to a tableless layout.
- File handling:
* Files are now first class Drupal objects with file_load(), file_save(),
and file_validate() functions and corresponding hooks.
* The file_move(), file_copy() and file_delete() functions now operate on
file objects and invoke file hooks so that modules are notified and can
respond to changes.
* For the occasions when only basic file manipulation are needed--such as
uploading a site logo--that don't require the overhead of databases and
hooks, the current unmanaged copy, move and delete operations have been
preserved but renamed to file_unmanaged_*().
- Added aliased multi-site support:
* Added support for mapping domain names to sites directories.
- Added RDF support:
* Modules can declare RDF namespaces which are serialized in the tag
for RDFa support.
And, those are exciting new features as always a new Drupal release has lots of things to offer.
Let's wait for the Day Drupal 7 is finally released.