ReleaseNotesXWikiEnterprise2xCycle

Version 1.10 by Sorin Burjan on 2010/12/21

Top 10 Features introduced in 2.x cycle

1.User Interface Improvements

Colibri skin

XWiki 2.0 introduces a new, lightweight, easily customizable skin. The main goal of the Colibri skin is to provide the proper support for fast and easy modifications of the look and feel of the wiki.

home-small.png

See Colibri skin documentation for more details.

Color Theme Editor

The new editor allows fast and easy modifications for the look and feel of the wiki. You'll find in this editor 

  • A new way of displaying themes on the "Color Themes" space home

    AvailableThemes.png

  • The ability to create a new theme from the "Color Theme" space home

    CreateNewTheme.png

  • A palette for each area you are editing with a popup listing everything you can customize at this level

    EditMenu.png

  • A dialog where you can make the desired changes

    EditMenu1.png

  • The possibility to undo the latest modifications or reset all changes

Read more about Color Themes on the dedicated application page.

New Search Interface

  • The default search page UI has been improved to be easier to understand and use.newsearchui.png

Preliminary optional accessibility stylesheet

Moving further on the quest for better accessibility in the XWiki platform, we introduced a preliminary stylesheet which makes the skin slightly more accessible to people with visual disabilities: bigger fonts by default, and underlined links to make them more easily distinguished by colorblind people. This stylesheet can either be activated globally in a wiki, or individually from each user's preferences.

  • Enabling the special stylesheet:
    a11y-enable.png
  • Bigger fonts and underlined links:
    a11y.png

More consistent use of user avatars

Avatars now come in three default sizes:

  • small avatars, 30px wide, used in secondary actions and where there's very little space available
  • medium avatars, 50px wide, the preferred and most frequent display option for avatars
  • large avatars,120px wide, to be used where a large version of the avatar must be displayed (for example in the user profile)
  • Accordingly, the wiki dashboard has been changed to use the medium avatars, and as a new feature user avatars are displayed in the comments area.
    comment-avatars.png

Four new velocity macros have been added for making it easier to display avatars:

  • #smallUserAvatar('XWiki.username')
  • #mediumUserAvatar('XWiki.username')
  • #largeUserAvatar('XWiki.username')
  • #resizedUserAvatar('XWiki.username', 100) which allows resizing an avatar to a custom size
  • User avatars are also displayed in annotations.
    annotation-avatars.png

UI for Deleted documents & attachments

While deleted documents and attachments have been stored in a trash instead of being completely deleted since XWiki 1.2, there was no general interface for viewing the contents of the trash. This has been remedied by the introduction of two new tabs in the wiki's Document Index, Deleted Documents and Deleted Attachments.

  • trash1.png

Both use the livetable, thus allowing filtering and ordering for easier browsing. A document from the trash can be viewed, permanently deleted, or restored if the location is still available.

  • trash2.png

The attachment trash contains only attachments deleted from a document, and not attachments that were deleted together with their owner document; in the latter case, the attachments are kept together with the document in the document trash. For attachments, there is no restore option yet, it will be implemented in a future release.

  • trash3.png

Further improvements to the edit UI

After the improvements to the object and class editors introduced in 1.8 and 2.4, the wiki and WYSIWYG editors also see some enhancements in this release, bringing in some of the proposed changes from an older proposal, with some additional improvements. Specifically:

  • A new label for the content area in the wiki editor:

    edit-header.png

  • A more descriptive label for the version summary field
  • Better positioning of the "minor edit" option
  • Better positioning and display of the "autosave" option
    edit-footer.png

2.Annotations

The scope of this feature is to allow users to annotate text in a XWiki document. With the new feature you can:

  • Make annotations by selecting the text and pressing

    Ctrl + M (Meta + M)
    NewAnnotation.png

  • Show annotations on your page

    ShowAnnotation.png

  • See an annotation for a text item by hovering over the yellow icon next to it

    HoverAnnotation.png

  • Edit and delete annotations straight from the page

    EditAnnotation.png

  • Manage annotations from the "Annotations" tab

    AnnotationsTab.png

You can find a more detailed description of the annotations feature on the documentation page.

3.Improvements to Action Menus

  • New Add menu: Use the "Add" menu to create new spaces, pages, add attachments and comments.

    AddMenu.png

  • Improved Wiki and Space menus: You may now access the document index straight from the wiki & space menus.

    WikiMenu.png        SpaceMenu.png

  • New Page menu: Integrates the Watch, Copy, Rename and Delete actions.

    PageMenu.png

  • The Edit, Export, More actions and Profile menus also benefited from a refresh.

Visible content menu when scrolling down

When scrolling down on a document, the content menu will follow, so the user will not have to scroll up on top of the page in order to access it.

ActionMenu.png

4.Anonymous commenting with Captcha

Now thanks to the captcha module you can require unregistered users to solve a captcha in order to post comments. To require guests to solve a captcha simply go to the "Rights" section of the Administration Application for the wiki or just the space, and check the box saying "Require unregistered users to solve a captcha when posting a comment on a page". Note This box does not give guests permission to comment, it only adds a requirement for commenting if they already have permission.
This feature is documented here.
Sample:

CommentCaptcha.png

Easier development of configurable applications using XWiki.ConfigurableClass

If you are developing an application and you need to provide your users with a way to configure it from the Administration Application you are in luck. All you need to do is create a custom class holding all of the configuration for your application, then add an object of your custom configuration class and an object of XWiki.Configurable class. You will be able to configure your application from the administration interface.
The following is an image of the administration interface with additional applications to be configured (you can customize the icon used).

AdministrationPanelExtraIcons.png

Note the current user does not have permission to edit one of the configurable applications.

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