Sitefinity 8.2 Beta Announced

Posted by Community Admin on 05-Aug-2018 06:20

Sitefinity 8.2 Beta Announced

All Replies

Posted by Community Admin on 25-Sep-2015 00:00


Sitefinity 8.2 Beta 
is available for download on this link.

This version contains Personalization per widget, Froms MVC widgets support, Performance and Upgrade improvements, extended Cloud Support for Azure Websites and more. 

Please, take a look and let us know what you think!

Important Note
: Sitefinity 8.2 Beta is not production ready and should not be used on live sites. Upgrades from and to it will not be supported.

What’s New

Online Marketing

Personalization on Widget Level
(documentation)
When editing a page or page template users can personalize on a widget level without having to create a new personalized version of the page or page template. This speeds the creation of personalized areas and eases the management of changes over time.

Personalizing widgets in page templates empowers users to reuse personalized blocks across numerous pages. Personalization support will be offered for the following widgets: Content block, Image, and Custom widgets.


Personalization by Multiple Segments 
When a user in multiple segments loads a page, she sees all widgets personalized for those segments, and not only the widgets personalized for the highest priority segment, as it is now. In the backend, users previewing personalized pages can filter by more than one segments to see how the page will display to users in multiple segments. 

Project Feather

Forms MVC Support 
(documentation)
Users can create forms that leverage the look and feel of an MVC website. Developers have full control over the markup of all form elements and caneasily customize and develop new custom forms widgets following Feather conventions.

The following features are included:

  • Form widget on MVC
  • Form Builder widgets on MVC: Textbox, Multiple choice, Checkboxes, Paragraph text box, Dropdown list, Section header, Instructional text, File upload, Forms Captcha, and Submit button
  • Form Builder layout widgets as in the Feather resource package

Unification of the Grid Widgets
The Page toolbox now dispplayes only one set of grid widgets, instead of separate section for the each packages. The templates of the grid widgets are loaded dynamically depending on the package on which is based the page.

(Note: NuGet packages are available on http://nuget.sitefinity.com. The packages are beta version with number 8.2.5870.0, so you need to switch to "PreRelease" version of NuGet Package Manager)

Cloud Support

Deployment to Azure Web Apps
(documentation)
Admins can easily deploy Sitefinity projects to Azure Web Apps using Visual Studio or PowerShell scripts.  Redis is used for NLB communication.

Features include:

  • Support for Azure WebApps (former Azure WebSites)
  • Support for Cloud Auto-scaling in Azure
  • Automatic configurations for Azure

 

Upgrades

Data Base Schema Changes Log 
(documentation)
Updates to the database schema done during upgrades are logged in the UpgradeTrace.log. This adds visibility into the upgrade process, and provides detailed info, which can be used for troubleshooting. 

Eased Upgrades in NLB 
(documentation)
Admins upgrading a website in NLB can use a new setting which will allow them to upgrade one of the instances and its database model, while the other instances continue to run without throwing an exception.

Performance

Performance Optimization Page 
(documentation)
In the Backend, a new page provides an overview of common settings that affect website performance. Administrators can use it to view the current state of these settings and the overall degree to which the website has been optimized. 

SSL Offloading 
(documentation)
By using SSL offloading, Administrators can transfer the processing of SSL encryption and decryption from the webserver(s) to the load balancer or other device. It is useful when you have many HTTPS requests.

Dev Tools and Frameworks

    What’s Fixed

    Analytics
    • Changing a site domain and not updating Analytics data generates an error in the error log that cause performance issue (FP)
    • Filtering the analytics dashboards by visitors, languages, devices, etc creates an error log (FP)
    • Navigating to Marketing->Analytics after having active analytics connection generates error log (FP)

    Core

    • Changing library root URL causes sitemap problems. (FP)
    • Widget Templates search doesn`t open the selected widget template. (FP)
    • The user activity is not updated when changing the user type from a backend to a frontend. (FP)
    • Replacing a picture with another one when using Azure blob storage provider cause an error "The specified blob does not exist" (FP)
    • Thumbnail Generation should not fail on missing file (FP)
    • Reordering: Generated duplicate ordinals (FP)

    Comments

    • LDAP users do not see their names on comments. (FP)
    • Custom field of type "Number" with decimal places rounds the entered number (FP)

    DataAccess

    Email Campaigns

    • Email campaigns are sent with wrong hyperlinks when The Host property is not set (FP)
    • Campaigns in Multilingual: Issue cannot be send if the page contains News widget with selected option <One particular news item only> (FP)

    AuditTrail/Search - Elastic   

    • Add failover support for Elastic clusters to eliminate single point of failure.
    Ecommerce 
    • Shopping cart persists items between sites when they use the same domain
    • Navigating to a page with checkout widget with empty shopping cart throws Object reference
    • Shipping/Payment methods: translation status disappear when method is set to inactive
    • Requests to payment provider are always sent in the default currency (FP)
    • Overwrite the default ShoppingCartAdder (FP)

    Events

    • Events with timezone different than UTC will be shown incorrectly in iCal on iPhone devices (FP)
    • Exporting all day events to Google calendar/Outlook/ICal (FP)

    Feather

    • Using webforms widget on a hybrid page based on Bootsrap template throws ScriptManager object is not set to a reference
    • Feather assemblies that come from official distributions are signed.Since version 1.3.300.1 all feather packages contains signed assemblies. We updates some of the packs on the http://nuget.sitefinity.com and you might need to clear your NuGet cache in case you have already downloaded one of these packs.
    • Fixed issue with nuget ugprades of ResourcePackages when the folder and its content is not included in the csproj file.

    Field Controls
    • Automatic migration of all TextFields of type NUMERIC and CURRENCY in order to continue to function properly after an upgrade to 8.1. Details: If you have a non-required custom field of type number after an upgrade to Sitefinity 8.1, leaving the field empty results in error “The value cannot be parsed as the type 'decimal'” and the content item is not saved.

    Forums
    • Forum attachments of posts/threads are not deleted (FP)
    • ForumsBreadcrumb: Selecting "Include full path starting from Home page" in the Forum widget designer doesn't work in multisite environment 

    Inline Editing

    • Editing link is broken, when "Page from this site" option is selected and page from different site is chosen.

    Login/Security

    • Add a configuration that allows to use frontend login page instead of backend login page.
    • Forms authentication doesn't allow access to Sitefinity/Public and Sitefinity/Frontend to everybody.

    Pages

    • Additional urls redirect to the default one option does not work correctly when configured for pages
    • External redirect pages are not listed in the navigation.
    • Wrong SiteMapNode Description in Multilingual (FP)

    Module Builder

    • Moving configurations to database breaks the export of dynamic modules structure for modules created before configs are moved to database (FP)
    • Dynamic content items links are not resolved in search results after reindex (FP)
    • When exporting the dynamic content items Deleted items are also exported to the Excel file.

    MVC
    • Page based on layout file will not be indexed if the Description and/or the Keyword properties are set
    • Html.RenderAction() throws and error when page is cached in some cases. (FP)

    Personalization
    • Location criteria doesn`t include the state of the City selected (FP)
    • Can not change the SEO title of personalized page(FP

    SiteSync

    • SiteSync, Multisite: Related media and related data items are not visible on target server if they are limited to only one item (FP)
    • Sync all sites skips the sites that are on the second page of the sites list (FP)

    Scheduling

    • ScheduledTasks: LastExecutedTime is not set (FP

    Taxonomies

    • Taxonomy synonyms are the same for all languages (FP)
    • Synonyms for tags do not appear in autocomplete (FP)
    • Tag synonyms doesn't work when your synonym is more than one word(FP)
    • Deleting flat taxonomy synonyms throws an exception.
    • Deleting single tag synonym duplicates it.

    Translations

    • Importing Xliff file with translation in Target section results in empty translation

    Other

    • File not found in jquery.ui.theme.css (images/ui-bg_flat_75_ffffff_40x100.png)
    • Hyperlink manager modal window has wrong styles
    • Getting resource throws an error - Object reference (FP)
    • Exposed DiscountCalculator
    • Improvements in Sitefinity installer and ProjectManager regarding trial installations of the product.

    Posted by Community Admin on 29-Sep-2015 00:00

    1) Would be great in the personalization console to have inline editing disabled by default

    2) Created a new site, new page, based it on a feather template (havent even opened visual studio btw).  Added a new segment to my IP, content block to the page, personalized the widget to that segment.
      - Personalization console doesn't show me the segment change, just previews as if I was the default user.
      - Publish->View live throws the below error (video too: screencast.com/.../bfxbGuRUuun)
    Server Error in '/' Application.

    ScriptManager object is not set to a reference.Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

    Exception Details: System.Web.HttpException: ScriptManager object is not set to a reference.

    Source Error:

    An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.
    Stack Trace:

    [HttpException (0x80004005): ScriptManager object is not set to a reference.] Telerik.Sitefinity.Modules.Pages.PageManager.ConfigureScriptManager(Page page, ScriptRef scripts, Boolean throwException) +625 Telerik.Sitefinity.Personalization.Impl.PersonalizedViewWrapper.AddClientSideRenderingScripts() +431 System.Web.UI.Control.EnsureChildControls() +115 System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +55 System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +204 System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +204 System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +204 System.Web.UI.Control.PreRenderRecursiveInternal() +204 System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +3789

    Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:4.0.30319; ASP.NET Version:4.6.79.0

     

    FORMS:

    - The default "Body" is too thin, it's thinner than a container which is IN the toolbox (weirdly...can't see the benefit of that being there)

    - If I'm using bootstrap, I expect the backend forms editor to load the bootstrap styles at the very least, not fugly defaults (attached)...subsequently "Preview" is pointless.  I thought the backend layouts would allow us to do more like what we see on the Bootstrap forms page, like inline forms and such.  I see your "hack" here to just rename the regular sitefinity 50-50 widget to be "grid-6+6" :p  Why can't we edit in our native framework of choice here?  I can't put a bootstrap class on something and have it do anything.  I understand what's happening...it takes the data elements and "transforms" the ghetto editor into your framework, but I thought this was supposed to be updated.

    - Does it NEED to render comments? <!-- InputCssClass class variable -->

    - Empty <p class="text-muted"></p> is rendered out on the widgets,since it's wrapped in a <p> it occupies space and there's no class there to even denote it's empty so we could manually style it out (please just kill from the server)

    - Captcha implimention is not good!  When you click submit without entering it, it responds with "Entry is not valid!" and wipes the form clean, instead of keeping the form visible and just erroring out.  Can we somehow make this pluggable so we can use google recaptcha instead? ...why reinvent the wheel, when the free wheel is industry standard (and looks awesome)

    - I had a textfield widget on there (with captcha), entered WAYYYY too much text into it, with a valid captcha the form returns Exception occured while executing the controller. Check error logs for details.


    PERFORMANCE:
    - See attached, I think you have this in reverse...debug mode SHOULD be off, it being off shouldn't be a warning.

    - The "Releated Data" note of "Related data can affect the performance of your site

    The use of related data can slow your website, because related data generates additional requests to the database. For each related item, Sitefinity creates a database request. For example, a list of 20 items where each item has two related items would generate 40 additional requests to the database." ...what seriously?  This should be your issue to solve and optomize, true releated data is supposed to be a feature not a "stay away" thing.

    - The profiler throws an n+1 on a blank project, blank bootstrap page with native forms widget on it begin update [voa_keygen] set [last_used_id] = 0 + [last_used_id] where [table_name] LIKE '#guid#%' ; select [table_name], [last_used_id] from [voa_keygen] where [table_name] LIKE '#guid#%' order by [table_name] ; end ;
      In fact in ONE second I have 52 SQL queries for a simple form with 2 inputs, a checkbox, and a captcha?

    Posted by Community Admin on 01-Oct-2015 00:00

    I have heard through a support ticket that the FancyBox upgrade to v2.1.5 does not resolve the issue with the Video gallery widget when using Thumbnails + lightbox.  We are attempting to upgrade from 5.4 to 8.1 and this is a major showstopper that we cannot use this video gallery type.  The issue that is a known bug occurs when you click on the video for a second time.  It loads the first time, but not any time after that.

    Posted by Community Admin on 01-Oct-2015 00:00

    The problem is with the version of jQuery SF uses with the very old fancybox version.  The fix is to use fancybox-1.3.8.min.js, worked fine and resolved the issue for the 2 users of my widgets that had this issue.

     I see you also posted in my feedback portal issue...and I also see that telerik included fancybox 2.1.5 now with 8.2... which I can't guarantee will fix anything (which sounds like it doesnt).

    Even stranger is that fancybox v2 requires a LICENSE to use, so what did telerik go buy a license for it now?

    Posted by Community Admin on 01-Oct-2015 00:00

    Good question on thelicense for v2.  Based on a response I got in a support ticket they still see existing issue with my project with Beat 8.2.  I have not tested that, but what was just told to me.  How did you go about using fancybox-1.3.8?  Is there a way to override the version (1.3.4) Sitefinity uses?  I would love to know a workaround as their support team the only workaround is to NOT use the lightbox, which is not an option.

    Posted by Community Admin on 01-Oct-2015 00:00

    Okay well if you go to the backend advanced settings I think like Pages->ScriptManager it should list all the scripts and where they come from.

    I've attached the file to this reply (rename to just .zip, remove the .png, just to hack around the radupload extension restrictions)

    So you should see fancybox in that list, open the node and it should be like Telerik.Sitefiniy.Resources.Scripts.fancybox.js (or something)

    Put the new file somewhere in your project and set its Build Action to be EmbeddedResource, and build.

    Now open JustDecompile and find that file in your SitefinityWebApp, get the path and put that into the backend advanced settings instead.  Might have to restart the app pool, but if done correctly that should be all there is to it.

    Posted by Community Admin on 01-Oct-2015 00:00

    Well it will not let me download the attachment.  It only opens it up.  I can surely find this file online somewhere.  I did see where the file is located in Advanced Settings, Pages - Script  Manager - Script References - JQueryFancyBox

    I will try your workaround and see what happens.  Thanks for the information!

    Posted by Community Admin on 01-Oct-2015 00:00

    Still trying to figure out what to update.  I have attached the settings for the jQueryFancyBox Script Reference.  

    Posted by Community Admin on 01-Oct-2015 00:00

    Right, so if you drop the file in your root and set it to embedded, then it would be

    SitefinityWebApp.jquery.fancybox-1.3.8.min.js

    (Assembly to SitefinityWebApp)

    ...?

    Posted by Community Admin on 01-Oct-2015 00:00

    Yellow screen of death error, see attached

    Posted by Community Admin on 01-Oct-2015 00:00

    This is why I said change it's build to EmbeddedResource, build, then use JustDecompile to validate that you see it in there.

    Posted by Community Admin on 01-Oct-2015 00:00

    The build action is set to Embedded Resource.  I do not have JustDecompile to confirm it is present, see attached

    Posted by Community Admin on 13-Oct-2015 00:00

    It would be great if you could add the ability to send dynamic emails, basically be able to load in more than just first name and surname that then could be dynamically pulled onto an email such as URLS.
     Also the ability to SEARCH when on email campaigns also.

    This thread is closed