The Backdrop community is proud to announce our 100th release 1.16.1! 🎉
We've come along way and there are many enhancements from the v1.0.0 days of Backdrop. Many new features, new faces, and new initiatives. All and all we are a growing, learning, and thriving community. Have a quick glance at a fresh install of v.1.0.0 next to an install of 1.16.0.
There's a pretty big contrast! Alright, enough with the nostalgia -- let's dig into some of the major new features in Backdrop 1.16!
Configuration Overrides
Any configuration value can be overridden in settings.php: backdrop/backdrop-issues#2805
This is a great DX improvement. For example if you are in development of a Backdrop project, you generally do not want caching of your CSS and Javascript, as you are frequently changing things and need to observe the results. Now you can turn that caching off for your development environment in a settings.local.php file:
// Caching
$config['system.core']['cache'] = FALSE;
$config['system.core']['preprocess_css'] = FALSE;
$config['system.core']['preprocess_js'] = FALSE;
These overrides work for any config value not just the three shown. Very powerful! So, for example if you have a production stripe API key and a test one, you can override your local to always hit the test API, without corrupting production data.
Autocomplete Link and Path fields
Autocomplete is now available on all link/path fields: backdrop/backdrop-issues#3764
This is a great feature for content editors! When adding a link to your content, you will notice that several options start showing up as you start typing in the link destination. You can use these options as a shortcut to point to existing content on your site.
Custom Author and Date Displays
Author and Date display can now be customized individually for each content type: backdrop/backdrop-issues#2379
This nifty feature allows us to customize the Date and Authoring information per content type. Visit Structure → Content types → Post → Configure for example:
Quite handy!
Consolidated text filter configuration UI
Text filter configuration has been moved into modals: backdrop/backdrop-issues#1032
Notice how previously you had a separate section for enabling text filters for a text format, a separate section following it for specifying the order of the enabled filters, and then yet another section for configuring any filters that provided settings? What a mess! 🙄
The various sections that were being repeated for the same things in that page have now been merged into a single compact table. Don't you just love how tidy everything is now, in a single place? 😍 This means less scrolling on this form, which provides a much better UX overall.
Other Usability improvements
- Double dashes in the menu parent select list have been replaced with a middot backdrop/backdrop-issues#4218
- The password field is now hidden when the Notification checkbox is checked on the user account creation form backdrop/backdrop-issues#4266
API additions
- A
removed_blocksproperty has been added to theLayoutclass backdrop/backdrop-issues#4209 - A new
theme_has_color_support()function has been added backdrop/backdrop-issues#4044 - Content can now have an active revision that is not the most recent revision (no UI included) backdrop/backdrop-issues#4354
- Cacheing is now enabled for the core entity types, and available for all others backdrop/backdrop-issues#74
It has a been a busy cycle! Upgrade or try Backdrop CMS 1.16 today!