Receiving numerous compliments and accolades for its 10th major release, Drupal maintains its seamless journey into the future. Making its debut this June is Drupal 10.1, a minor version highlighting current advancements. Meanwhile, the path forward holds promises of even more innovation. It's prudent to stay abreast of Drupal's enhancements, which have the potential to enhance your website's workflows and functionality.
Thus, we're here to provide you with a comprehensive overview of recent developments and the exciting prospects from Drupal 10 to Drupal 11.
A glimpse at the journey from Drupal 10 to Drupal 11 Drupal 10 has introduced significant improvements, including CKEditor 5, updated PHP and Symfony versions, the Claro admin theme, the Olivero front-end theme, modern JavaScript components replacing jQuery, Views Responsive Grids, and more. The minor releases of Drupal 10, such as the recently launched 10.1 and the upcoming 10.2, 10.3, etc., are gradually implementing the roadmap for Drupal 11, slated for release in either August or December 2024.
The primary objective for Drupal 11, first announced at DrupalCon Portland 2022 by Drupal's creator Dries Buytaert, is to establish Drupal as the preferred tool for ambitious site builders on the Open Web. Recently, Dries shared an updated plan for Drupal 11, developed after discussions with Drupal committers. This plan focuses on three key areas: Improving site builder tools for easier usage. Enhancing content editor tools for improved usability. Simplifying Drupal's upgrade and maintenance processes.
Now, let's delve into the details of the newly adopted and anticipated advancements in the Drupal core that contribute to realizing the Drupal 11 plan. The key innovations on the way to Drupal 11 Automatic Updates are almost here It will soon be super easy to keep websites up-to-date! According to Adam G-H (phenaproxima) and Ted Bowman (Tebow) at DrupalCon Pittsburgh 2023, Automatic Updates are almost in the Drupal core. They mentioned in their session that their main goal is to keep Drupal sites as secure as possible. Indeed, whenever security updates are released, Automatic Updates should help more websites get them without delay.
Automatic Updates will provide an easy update process, with both the attended mode (with a few clicks of a button) and the unattended mode available. You can run security updates, all patch updates (e.g. from Drupal 10.1.0 to Drupal 10.1.1), and minor updates (such as from Drupal 10.1 to 10.2, etc.).
However, according to Adam and Ted, minor updates are only possible in the attended mode for security reasons Project Browser is getting ready to help you find modules In Drupal, there exists a vast repository of contributed modules and themes that can extend a website's functionality limitlessly. However, the process of discovering and installing these extensions often presents a learning curve.
Fortunately, the forthcoming addition of Project Browser to the Drupal core aims to address this challenge. With Project Browser, users will gain access to a dedicated "Browse" tab within their Drupal admin dashboard. This feature will enable users to search for modules or themes using keywords or categories, which are currently being reorganized for enhanced user-friendliness. Users will also have the ability to peruse short, non-technical descriptions of the projects.
Moreover, only high-quality projects—ensuring security, stability, and compatibility with the website's core version—will be recommended on this page. Easy-to-use feature sets “Recipes” are underway The Drupal core will have Recipes — a new solution meant to help you use prepackaged starter kits of features to jumpstart your website. It is built based on Drupal distributions but is more flexible and with fewer limitations. Recipes were one of the things that received a lot of attention at the OHO online conference for Healthcare Marketers where Tim Lehnen, Chief Technology Officer at the Drupal Association, and C.J. Pagtakhan, Digital Experience Solutions Architect from our team, discussed the future of Drupal.
CKEditor 5 has expanded the range of its features The upgraded text editor, CKEditor 5 in Drupal 10, has now introduced the highly anticipated autoformatting feature. It is already available in Drupal 10.1. With autoformatting, you can swiftly format your content on the fly, without interacting with the toolbar. Instead, you’ll use Markdown-style shortcodes. Some examples include: if you type __ or ** around some text, you’ll make it bold if you start a line with 1.
followed by a space, you’ll create an ordered list if you start a line with - followed by a space, you’ll create an unordered list
Single Directory Components revolutionize the theming experience
Here is an innovation that's generating significant buzz within developer circles. Single Directory Components (SDC) have been added to the Drupal 10.1 core as an experimental module, poised to transform the theming landscape.
In essence, SDC groups all files for rendering a UI component within a single directory. Twig, YAML, CSS, JavaScript, and other relevant files coexist within this directory. Moreover, SDC automatically generates a library and initiates its loading when a component is called. This advancement streamlines development workflows by improving file discoverability, providing seamless component reuse across projects, simplifying refactoring processes, and offering a range of other benefits.
In upcoming developments, the goal is for Drupal modules to automatically detect SDC components and generate corresponding forms. Additionally, there will be potential for seamless integration of SDC components into platforms like Storybook.