20.0.0

We have a number of updates in this release that we hope you like, some of the key highlights include:

• Accessibility user interface updates - improved colour contrast, responsiveness and more
• Symfony 3.4 compatibility - improved security
• JQuery 3 compatibility - improved security and modern browser compatibility

Developer guidance for 20.0.0 is available in our Developer manual.

User interface accessibility improvements

We’ve been focusing on ensuring the Control Center is modern, consistent and most importantly compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA. Using various accessibility tools, we have carried out extensive testing to identify and tackle the accessibility issues that previously prevented us meeting WCAG 2.1 AA. As a result there have been subtle changes to a number of our Control Center user interfaces in this release. More information is listed below and you can view more information in this video.

List and form interfaces

Changes have been made to our list and form user interfaces to ensure a higher level of consistency between content types. Users can now apply principles they learn in one content type consistently to a second without requiring further training.

One of the key differences is the use of the “Action” menu. Most CMS interfaces now include an Action menu, which includes common tasks such as “New item” and “Delete item”. Our aim is to consolidate all actions that can be taken on a piece of content into the Action menu in the Jadu CMS Control Center, and this is significantly progressing within the 20.0.0 release.

Examples

List (before)

List (after)

Form (before)

Form (after)

Designer interfaces

Our drag/drop “Designer” interfaces have required substantial changes in order to meet the WCAG 2.1 AA requirements, as Guideline 1.4.10 Reflow requires that content can be presented without loss of information or functionality, and without requiring scrolling in two dimensions for vertical scrolling content at a width equivalent to 320px. We have also now ensured that these interfaces can be interacted with using keyboard navigation only.

Examples

Homepage designer (before)

Homepage designer (after)

Image editor (before)

Image editor (after)

Workflow designer (before)

Workflow designer (after)

Classic Galaxies designer (before)

Classic Galaxies designer (after)

Deployer integration

Deployer is an application that we created to allow you to apply Jadu software upgrades and website patches to your own servers independently. 

We want to make Deployer more readily available to our customers and are pleased to announce that Deployer is available within the core Jadu CMS, available for all customers to use. Previously, we enabled the Deployer integration on an individual basis.

If you would like to use Deployer, please note the following:

• There are set up steps required in order to use Deployer
• There are still some limitations regarding some server software that are not currently supported
• Read the Deployer FAQs to find out more information

Access blog theme

We’ve launched a new Blog theme - ‘Access’! This new theme meets the WCAG 2.1 AA requirements, and will be the default theme for new Blogs created from 20.0.0 onwards.

We unfortunately haven’t been able to make the existing Jadu out-of-the-box themes compatible with WCAG 2.1 AA requirements. These themes were developed to be compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, and as a result of the techniques used, cannot be made responsive.

We don’t want to cause any disruption to you if you use the existing themes, and have therefore made the decision not to remove them. If you are required to meet WCAG 2.1 AA requirements, we strongly recommend using the new Access theme instead.

Blog template accessibility improvements

Improvements have been made to our underlying blog templates to ensure that the HTML is compatible with WCAG 2.1 AA requirements. This includes applying ARIA roles to relevant navigation elements, assigning a language code to pages, and resolving any validation issues.

GDS toolkit Galaxies site theme

We’re happy to provide a new Galaxies site theme for our Photon template customers. This theme is based upon the UK Government GDS toolkit look and feel, and provides a simple way to deploy accessible sites, consistent with other Government websites.

Content pack retirement

A site deployed using the Jadu Galaxies module could be previously saved as a ‘Content Pack’. This created a dataset containing the website navigation structure and/or content that could be imported into another Galaxies site when it was created. 

We’ve decided to retire this feature, as the Content Pack feature was created prior to the introduction of Jadu’s continuous product releases and unfortunately the changes made by database migrations aren’t compatible with Content Packs. This can result in feature breakages or failed patches. 

We will update you should we decide to replace the feature. For more information, please read these FAQs or get in touch with any questions.

Browser support

We have long supported older versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, often beyond the support of Microsoft themselves, recognising that our customers are often tied to using these specific versions. 

Due to security concerns around the technologies we use in order to offer this support, we will no longer be supporting Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 10. Support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 had been previously dropped. 

We are happy to support Microsoft Internet Explorer 11, and Microsoft Edge. Support for other browsers remains unchanged.

Symfony upgrade

We use the popular PHP framework Symfony within our Content Management, Forms and Case Management software. In order to ensure that our customers continue to receive security updates if and when required, we have updated our Symfony version dependency to Symfony version 3.4.

As part of these changes we have removed the configuration file commands.xml, this has been replaced with commands.yml. If you have previously added custom commands to your system, you will need to manually migrate these to the new file.

If you have previously created custom functionality that relies on interactions with Symfony, you will need to check that any code you maintain continues to work following the upgrade to Symfony 3.4. A number of tools are available to help you identify any potential issues, and these are linked to in the documentation below.

Symfony 3.4 upgrade guide contains further information on the changes made.

JQuery 3 upgrade

Dropping support for older versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer has freed us to upgrade the version of JQuery that we use within our user interfaces. JQuery is a popular JavaScript library, used by many web applications to make rich, interactive sites. 

If you have created custom Control Center interfaces, you will need to check that any code you maintain that relies on JQuery 1.x functionality continues to work following the upgrade to JQuery 3. 

Deprecations and deletions 

We are not intending this release to be backwards compatible, and a number of previously retired features, including their related functions and files, have been removed within this breaking release. We recommend that any references to these files and functions are removed from any custom developments that you maintain. 

Prominent retired functionality that has now been removed includes:

• Forms standard (this does not include the separately maintained XForms Professional software) 
• ContentShare version 1 (the rewritten ContentShare version 2 accessed from “Action” menu is unaffected)
• IPSV categorisation 
• Retail module
• Xinha document editor (CKEditor document editor unaffected)
• “Basic” Galaxies site theme - Photon template customers only

Full details are available in our associated documentation.

Meteor upgrade

A new version of Meteor, our patch deployment tool, is included within this release. In order to support the upgraded version of Doctrine Migrations library, compatible with Symfony 3.4, we have released an updated version of Meteor. This should not require any action from you when deploying patches, however if you have previously written your own database migration scripts, you will need to ensure that these are compatible with the updated version.

Semantic version: 20.0.0
Continuum #122

20.1.0

• New Improves the emails sent for imported external admins.
• New Stores Sites visitor's birthday when logging in to website using a Jadu CXM account.
• Fix Adds missing "edit category" and "fields" action items to Directory category overview.
• Fix Fixes issue where delete action could not be cancelled in Internet Explorer 11.
• Fix Fixes issue causing users to get locked out of content if both user edited the content at the same time.
• Fix Fixes issue preventing image upload working correctly with multiple CKEditor instances.
• Fix Fixes issue where queue master would stall if scheduled between 23:55 and 23:59.
• Update Improves error messaging on CXM integration page, it should now be easier to identify issues when saving the integration.
• Update Corrects the loaded bundles on Photon Galaxies sites preview to match those loaded for Galaxies sites.
• Update Ensures poll answers are cleared after updating questions.
• Update Removes unused parameters from generated routes.
• Update Improves error messaging on LDAP integration page.
• Security Various security improvements.

Continuum #123

20.1.1

Fixes

• Fixed issue where widgets which where a part of a combined widget would behave unexpectedly when being moved
• Fixed issue where Widget manager would erroneously encode manually submitted code
• Fixed issue where widgets which where a part of a combined widget would behave unexpectedly when being moved
• Fixed issue where migration Version20200826093041 could fail to rollback on WISP environments.
• Fixed issue where users could get stuck in a redirect loop upon session expiry when logging in via CXM.
• Fixed an issue preventing ESRI maps from working on directory entry and event pages on classic Galaxies sites.
• Fixed an issue that caused empty HTML fields in directory records to be shown in the frontend after saving the record. A note has been added to our developer guidance regarding the action of this migration.
• Updated Version20201021104028 to ensure that database connection is closed after changes are executed.