The long awaited JCE 1.5.8 has been released as a beta version for testing exclusively to JCE Subscribers.
The decision was made to release a beta version because of the significant changes made to the Administration Component and, new features introduced and complete changes to the Languages in JCE 1.5.8. A pre-release beta will give interested a chance to try out the new features, report any bugs found and fro translators to prepare new Language packs.
Whats new?
Administration Component
The JCE Administration Component has been given a bit of a make-over with the most notable changes being
- Groups have been renamed to Profiles. Groups was arguably never a good name for the feature and the concept of the Profile, a term more commonly used in relation to assigning features and parameters on a per user or usertype basis, seemed to fit the bill.
- The Plugin Manager has been removed. This was no longer required as all plugin management is done in Profiles
- All features of the Installer are now grouped on one page in the Add-ons Installer. Related Joomla! Extensions like JCE MediaBox can now be installed and removed from here too.
- JCE MediaBox parameters can now be set from within the JCE Administration Component. If JCE MediaBox is installed and enabled an icon will appear in the JCE Control Panel.
- The Profiles (formerly Groups) screens have been re-organised for clarity.
- A Profile can now be restricted to the Joomla! front-end or back-end
- The Editor Layout in Profiles, now with the Features tab, has been flipped so that the Current Editor Layout is at the top.
- Editor CSS files can now also be set in a Profile with the option to override or add to those set int he Global Configuration.
- New Tabs options have been introduced to set parameters for the new JCE Editor Tabs
- A number of new Parameter Widgets have been introduced to help with setting certain parameters.
- Parameters for List Size and Allow Root Access have been added for the File Browser in 'Manager' plugins.
- Compression options have been added to the Global Configuration
- A Preferences dialog has been added to the Control Panel for setting Administration area preferences.
- An Updates dialog has been added fro updating the Editor, Administration Component and Plugins.
Editor Plugin
A number of new features and improvements have been made to the Editor Plugin and some of the included plugins
- A new uploader engine has been added that allows for multiple file selections using either HTML5 (in Firefox) or Flash.
- One file in the upload queue can now be automatically selected after uploading
- Links can be made with AdvLink without making a selection first.
- The new Editable Select List makes editing the Relationship Page To Target field easier in AdvLink when creating popups.
- The Paste plugin has been improved with new parameters for easier setup and with some cleanup improvements.
- The Emotions plugin has been improved with new icons and parameters to set a different icon path and icons.
- A Fullpage plugin has been added to allow for full page creation / editing, ie: editing of the HTML, HEAD and BODY elements of a document. Great for newsletter components.
- A new Colour Picker has been added.
Installation
Installation of the package is recommended as usual and will update previous versions. The existing installation instructions can be used for this version.
A forum has been created for bug reports and general comments on this beta. It is hoped that the beta period for JCE 1.5.8 will be short and that a stable release will follow soon. This version will also be converted to work with Joomla! 1.6 over the next few weeks.
UPDATE
I will be blogging about the new features over the next few days. Some videos from the development process are already available in the Development Blog