Top 10 New Features in XWiki 9.x

31 Jan 2018 5 min read
Written by the XWiki Team

In this post, we take a look at the new features and improvements that were introduced in the 9.x XWiki Cycle.

1. Notifications

For quite some time we’ve wanted to improve the way notifications worked in XWiki and now we’re very excited to announce the long-awaited feature is here.
When trying out the latest XWiki, you’ll notice a bell icon in the top bar, which is, in fact, the new notifications menu. By clicking on the menu you’ll see the latest happenings on your wiki. The number of notifications is displayed in the top menu, just above the bell. You can subscribe to be notified about any event and you control the level of detail and the pages you'd like to be updated on. For example, you might choose to be notified only when comments are added on the blog. Furthermore, updates can be sent periodically via email, according to your preferences.

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2. CKEditor improvements

Several improvements have been made to CKEditor in the 9.x cycle, including more supported styles, office import directly from the editor and improved support for macros.
On a related note, the editor has also been upgraded to the 4.7.3 version which brings extra improvements and bug fixes.

CKEditor.png

3. Better Administration

The Administration has been reorganized. An accordion and a search input are now available at the top of the Administration page. This means now it’s quick and simple to filter the administration categories and sections. The new consistent style and the addition of more hints for the configuration options, make the experience more seamless than before.

4. Protection against accidental deletion

Another feature that has been largely requested is protected against accidental deletion. System and Extension pages are now protected against accidental deletion. When you try to remove these pages, XWiki will be listing all concerned pages and will ask you to confirm the operation.

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5. Restore a batch of deleted pages

On a related note. if you have deleted multiple pages at the same time, it’s now possible to collectively restore all the deleted pages, to their original state and location. 

6. Attachments improvements

If you go to the attachments tab at the bottom of any page, you’ll now be able to see attachment previews. Similarly, the Attachments tab from the Page Index also shows a thumbnail preview for image attachments. Several improvements were also added to the Attachments Selector, with support for attachments that are bigger than 2GB and many other Filesystem attachment enhancements.

AttachmentIcon.png

7. Additional Livetable filters

XWiki Livetables now have user suggest and date filters, while multi lists are now filterable.

8. Syntax Highlighting and Blame View

Working with the syntax has become much easier. The Syntax Highlighting Application is now bundled by default. Developers will be happy to find out that a new blame view has been added to the code viewer.

9. Flavors

XWiki now provides the "XWiki Standard" flavor, instead of the old "XWiki Enterprise" package. When creating a new wiki, Administrators can now choose which flavor they want. A flavor is a bundle of extensions that serve a particular use case. This paves the way for additional flavors to be built by the Open Source community on top of XWiki. Using flavors you can further customize your XWiki. You can imagine an XWiki specifically tailored to your team in the smallest of details.

10. More usability improvements

From improving the menus to bundling more useful applications for newcomers, we are constantly improving the usability of the XWiki interface.

With over 1000 issues closed in XWiki 9.x, teams can truly take their collaboration to the next level. Have fun exploring these new features and feel free to contact our team if you need more information.

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