Release Notes for OpenCms 10

March 23, 2016: OpenCms 10 - X marks the spot. Being the greatest OpenCms update for years, version 10 brings a vastly improved user experience that combines the intuitive "Direct Edit" approach of OpenCms with a new, well integrated Lauchpad app center. OpenCms 10 also ships with the new, responsive Apollo Template. Based on Bootstrap, the Apollo Template is fully customizable without coding.

New in OpenCms 10

  • # Modernized the look & feel of the overall user interface
  • # New ready-to-use responsive Apollo Template based on Bootstrap
  • # Introduced the Launchpad as the central app starting place for the user
  • # Drag and Drop of images directly in the web page editor
  • # New file explorer with support for column sorting, filtering and large folders
  • # Developers can now export and import modules through a SMB network share
  • # New Git app allows pushing and pulling of module content directly from the workplace
  • # New <cms:search> tag combines SOLR based resource collection and full text searches
  • # New <cms:display> tag generates the output for a single resource with a selected formatter
  • # New <cms:edit> tag allows editing of arbitrary resources based on UID
  • # Reuse groups allow reusing nested container structures on several pages
  • # Copy groups allow creation of boiler plate layouts with text / images
  • Users are identified with an identicon or a personal image in the toolbar
  • Improved the template editor with support for inherited and disabled templates
  • Added a "reset password" option to the login dialog
  • Nested container structures can now be copied using the clipboard
  • Macro formatters allow to quickly compose new formatters from existing JSP
  • Support for system configuration change sets based on XSLT
  • Modules are exported with a reduced manifest.xml to avoid merge conflicts

Items marked with # are considered important improvements in this version.

Improved in OpenCms 10 Final over 10 Beta

  • Added user info dialog and quick launch menu to Page and Sitemap editor toolbar
  • Added editor to allow individual customization of the quick launch menu
  • Added option to upload a personal image in the user info dialog
  • Improved workplace dialog key bindings with 'Enter' and 'Esc' shortcuts
  • Improved binary and image file indexing for all configured locales
  • Improved error dialog in direct edit view with "Copy to clipboard" function
  • Improved site selector paging in the Explorer
  • Improved copy/move dialog to preset target folder to current folder
  • Fixed issue with role checks and permission for the new workplace apps
  • Fixed issue with visibility check in explorer context menu in case of multi selects
  • Fixed issue in permission dialog where it was not possible to add role based entries
  • Fixed issue in permission dialog where inherited entries where not displayed correctly
  • Fixed issue with "Create new" dialog where resources where created to early
  • Fixed issue in the Page editor where elements where wrongly marked as new
  • Fixed issue with invisible scroll bars in select boxes on Mac OS

General OpenCms features

  • The page editor allows WYSIWYG inline editing of web pages and arrangement of content by drag & drop.
  • The form based editor allows editing of structured content in a well defined form mask.
  • The sitemap editor allows to create new pages and re-arrange the navigation tree by drag & drop.
  • Responsive demo template based on Bootstrap 3.
  • Content creation for mobile devices with preview and device specific content control.
  • Structured contents can be defined using a simple XML schema.
  • Easy to use "Online / Offline" workflow, changes must be approved before they become visible.
  • Link management for all internal resources with broken link detection.
  • Integrated image scaling and cropping.
  • SEO features with automatic sitemap.xml generation and page alias support.
  • Full featured user management that supports the concept of "Organizational Units" (OUs).
  • Allows management of multiple websites within one installation.
  • Contents can be served dynamically or exported to static HTML files.
  • Direct access to the OpenCms content repository over a shared network drive.
  • CMIS and WebDAV access to the OpenCms content repository.
  • Integrates Apache SOLR for powerful content searching and noSQL like queries.
  • Full text search for web pages as well as in office documents like PDF, MS Office and Open Office.
  • Extensions can be added through a flexible module system.
  • The "time warp" feature allows to view resources which are expired or not yet released.
  • JSP integration for dynamic functionality in templates, dynamic forms etc.
  • ... and many more

Backward compatibility

OpenCms 10.0.0 is fully backward compatible with all 9.0 and 9.5 versions. Templates and other OpenCms developed code from these versions should work "out of the box" with version 10.0.0.

Notice for users of Alkacon OCEE Users of Alkacon OCEE require a new OCEE version for OpenCms 10. The update is free for Alkacon customers with a valid OCEE update subscription. Please contact Alkacon to receive the new version.

Compatibility with Java versions, servlet containers and databases

OpenCms 10.0.0 has been written and tested for Java 8 and Java 7. We have tested with ORACLEs JDK as well as OpenJDK. OpenCms should run with all compliant JVMs.

We have tested this release on the Tomcat servlet engine. OpenCms works "out of the box" with Tomcat 8 or 7, which we recommend. Others have reported deploying OpenCms successfully on other servlet containers like JBoss, WildFly, WebLogic, WebSphere, GlassFish and Resin.

On the database side, we have tested with MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MS SQL Server, DB2 and HSQLDB.

Regarding version numbers and build tags

The main OpenCms Git repository is available on Github at github.com/alkacon/opencms-core.

In case you want to get the most current OpenCms 10.0.0 sources from Git, please check out branch_10_0_x. The 10.0.0 release is tagged build_10_0_0.

How you can help

Contributions to the OpenCms core development are most welcome. Please send us your pull requests directly on GitHub.

Please report issues found in OpenCms using our GitHub issue tracker.

Thank you for using OpenCms and have fun with OpenCms 10 :-)