The State of Drupal 8: After Feature Freeze
Over the last year, we’ve been covering the Drupal community’s progress towards releasing Drupal 8.
Planning for Drupal 8 started years ago, but new features were added up until this weekend when “Feature Freeze” finally arrived.
In our first update in November, we showed that the core file structure has changed, plus there were over 15 new modules including Views.
In the second update in December, we pointed out a new toolbar, inline editing, cleaner interfaces and improved multi-lingual features. Now that the feature freeze has passed, let’s take another look at the state of Drupal 8.
Creating Content
Drupal 8 has a new content creation interface. If you’ve used WordPress or Joomla before, this will feel very familiar. Whereas the Drupal 7 content settings where underneath the content, they’ve now been moved to sliders on the right-hand side.
There’s now a WYSIWYG editor in the Drupal core. CKEditor has been added.
As you can see from the screenshot above, CKEditor is not yet turned on by default. It can be enabled by going to Configuration > Text formats and editors.
Once turned on, the editor looks like this:
Only 9 buttons are turned on by default, but in the Configuration you can add many more:
There’s now an image button in the editor, although there’s still no way to access previously uploaded images:
Fields
There are five new fields available in Drupal 8:
- Date
- Entity Reference (allows linking to other content, users and more on your site)
- Link
- Telephone Number
As with Drupal 7, you can add fields to content, users, comments and taxonomy. However, in Drupal 8, you can also add fields to contact forms and blocks.
With blocks, you can create block types and assign fields to them. Blocks now have revisions as well:
Modules
Over the last few blog posts we’ve covered a lot of the modules that have been added to Drupal 8.
Let’s close by showing you some small but useful extra features.
On the Modules (now called Extend) page there is a new search box. This was added because it was often hard to find a module in a large Drupal 7 site.
There’s also a Tour module that can be activated by a link in the toolbar.
At the moment the Tour module is only visible when editing a view, but it will soon be available throughout the Drupal core and 3rd party modules.
The Tour works in sequence. You click the Tour button and are then taken through a series of pop-ups which explain what’s happening on the screen.
FWIW, there’s an issue open to have WYSIWYG enabled out of the box in Drupal 8. Should be landing any day now. 🙂
Typo – when is Drupal 8 due?
I think you have a small typo in your least segment about when Drupal 8 is due.
end of the 2012.
@Cameron – Thanks, that’s great to know.
@MacRonin – Thanks, fixed.
It would be great so see what didn’t make it in before the feature freeze. I know this might be a big list but for example, the media module didn’t make it in and that’s huge IMHO.
Thanks for the summary!
I tried playing around with D8 a few months ago but ran into walls too quickly. Your post moved me to try it again; I found D8 is finally at a point where site builders can really start to understand it.
So my advice to all who haven’t made the leap yet is: Now’s the time! (Note that it might not work in Acquia Dev Desktop yet — use another AMP stack, such as MAMP, WAMP, or XAMPP.)
@Nigel Yes That would be an interesting list. Perhaps one list of the things that just missed the cut like Media and another of things that weren’t even close like a new default theme or an automatic core updater.
@tom Yes, I had issues trying to get D8 onto my localhost too. I ended up having to use a web server.
Ah yes, an “automatic core updater” still not in core is sad. While I prefer to use drush, a UI to do this owuld be nice for others.
For taking D8 for a test drive. Use [url=http://www.simplytest.me]www.simplytest.me[/url]
DrupalCon Prague is in September and my dreams are to release two weeks after that.
Thanks chx. I added this line to reflect that, “The most accurate current guess is that Drupal 8 will launch in or close to the fourth quarter of 2012.”
@tom Geller: I’m using Acquia Dev Desktop daily to develop for Drupal 8. It has settings so can switch PHP versions as needed. Settings > Config > Default PHP version
Very nice and interesting tour around the new version. Great job on the blogpost, and great job all the rest of you who has helped with D8 so far.
Thank you so much. Loving Drupal 8 new features.
Just … Unfortunately Bartik theme still has problems on Right-to-Left pages 🙁
Nice overview, Steve. Would you mind changing the release year to 2013 to avoid confusion?
Thanks Olav. Sorry, I made another change based on feedback in the comments and introduced that change. Should be fixed now.
Drupal 8 will be a blast! Can’t wait to work with it. Blocks with fields… you guys know what makes me happy! 🙂
Thank you soooo much for every small & huge improvement in D8, dear Drupal 8 team. You guys truly rock!
when fully released in drupal 8
Based on the fundamental changes and our custom module development, we’re going to wait until +12 months to try D8.
So… it’s January 2015… basically.
When is D9? 😉