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Contao 3.3.RC1 is available

2014-05-02 11:29 by Leo Feyer – Announcements

Contao version 3.3.RC1 is available. Please do not use beta versions for productional websites! Download the release to check whether your website or custom extension needs adaptation.

Please also read the version 3.3.beta1 announcement to learn more about the new features.

Form widget rework

The form widgets in the front end (classes start with Form, templates with form_) have been reworked so the HTML markup is now in the tempates and can be adjusted there. The methods generate() and generateWithError() are no longer used.

In addition, every widget now uses its own template, which can be overwritten by a custom one if necessary (see "Overwriting default templates").

Template inheritance

The templating system has been enhanced with inheritance à la Twig, where you can override blocks defined in a parent template in a child template.

<!-- Template fe_page.html 5 -->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="<?php echo $this->language; ?>">
<head>
  <meta charset="<?php echo $this->charset; ?>">
  <title><?php echo $this->title; ?></title>

  <?php $this->block('meta'); ?>
    <meta name="robots" content="<?php echo $this->robots; ?>">
    <meta name="description" content="<?php echo $this->description; ?>">
    <meta name="keywords" content="<?php echo $this->keywords; ?>">
    <meta name="generator" content="Contao Open Source CMS">
  <?php $this->endblock(); ?>
</head>

You can then e.g. make the following adjustments in a child template:

<!-- Template fe_page_custom.html 5 -->
<?php $this->extend('fe_page'); ?>

<?php $this->block('meta'); ?>
  <?php $this->parent(); ?>
  <meta name="author" content="Leo Feyer">
<?php $this->endblock(); ?>

<?php $this->charset = 'ISO-8859-1'; ?>

Here is what the output of the template would look like:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="ISO-8859-1">
  <title>My website title</title>

  <meta name="robots" content="index,follow">
  <meta name="description" content="">
  <meta name="keywords" content="">
  <meta name="generator" content="Contao Open Source CMS">
  <meta name="author" content="Leo Feyer">
</head>

Template markers in debug mode

In debug mode, the beginning and end of each template will be marked with a HTML comment in the source code of the page. In the comment you can also see the template source (module folder, theme folder or templates/ directory).

Flexible back end theme

A second back end theme named "flexible" has been added, which adjusts to the screen size of the device. We have made changes for wide screen monitors, tablets and mobile devices.

Drag'n'drop file upload

Besides the default uploader, there is now a second, JavaScript-based one, which allows to upload files to the server by dragging and dropping them.

Theme import/export permissions

Importing and exporting themes is no longer allowed by default but has to be explicitly enabled in the user or group settings.

Deferred page indexing

So far, front end pages have been indexed automatically before they were rendered. In the future, this will be done with a deferred Ajax request to optimize the loading time of the website.

Also see: GitHub tickets | GitHub compare view | Contao changelog | Release overview