Great New Features for Site Builders in Drupal 10.1
Drupal 10.1 is set to drop on June 21st, 2023 (subject to change of course). This minor update comes with some great enhancements for the “Ambitious Site Builder” (view the post about this term Dries coined here: https://ostraining.com/blog/drupal/ambitious-site-builder-in-drupal/).
Here are the main ones, in no particular order:
- CKEditor 5 now respects the field widget’s row value.
- Claro’s bulk operations form has been redesigned.
- Block permissions by block type (not just “Administer Blocks”).
- Development Settings for Twig Debug mode and Caching.
- Editors/Users can now be given permission to delete any file not just their own.
- Date field can be displayed as “Time Ago”.
- The CKEditor code block is now configurable, allowing the list of languages that can be input to be changed in the editor configuration.
Let’s take a look at each one.
CKEditor 5 now respects the field widget’s row value
With in the introduction of CKEditor 5 in Drupal 10, the body field (or any other text area field using CKEditor 5) was reduced to one line. Of course, as you added text the box expanded and a lot of users actually liked this.
Until Drupal 10.1, setting the number of rows and summary rows in Manage Form Display had no effect at all.
This is now rectified and the body field will be displayed with the number of rows and summary rows that you specify.
A redesigned bulk operations form for the Claro administration theme.
If you use Claro, the default administrator theme for Drupal 10, you’ll most likely be very pleased to see this change. Until now, the bulk actions appeared at the top of the list of nodes, and the default was Delete content! (I’ve always disliked that!)
With the advent of Drupal 10.1, Claro bulk operation are moved to the bottom of the window, are much more subtle and “Delete” is not visible.
Thanks to Mike Hershel for these first two: https://herchel.com/articles/two-new-user-experience-wins-coming-drupal-101.
Block permissions by are expanded beyond “Administer Blocks”
Until now, the only permission for Block management was “Administer Blocks”. This of course meant that you could not effectively restrict anyone by block type. Custom block types in Drupal 8+ was a huge improvement but the permissions were all or none.
With Drupal 10.1, Block types now have their own menu under Structure and a “Manage Permissions” tab, just like the Content and Taxonomy entities!
This update allows a site builder to define permissions per block type for any user role.
For more information see https://www.drupal.org/node/3346838.
Development settings for Twig Debug mode and Caching
When Dries introduced the idea of the “Ambitious Site Builder”, he noted that this person would be comfortable in the code “once in a while” as opposed to a dedicated front or back end developer. This update will help tremendously for site builders who need to do a little theme work.
This page is found at Configuration -> Development -> Development Settings. From here you can turn on Twig Debugging (a must have for template overrides) and caching. You won’t need to edit the services.yml file anymore!
For more information see: https://www.drupal.org/node/3359728.
Users can now delete any file not just their own (Permissions)
Another great update to the permission system in Drupal 10.1 is the setting where users can now be given permission to delete ANY file, not just their own.
If you use the Media manager for images, documents and remote video, this probably isn’t an improvement you’ll worry about – those permissions have been in the Media entity since its introduction. However, a lot of older Drupal sites still use the upload field for images and other files, so this will be a very welcome addition.
For more information see: https://www.drupal.org/node/3324270.
Date field can be displayed as “Time Ago”
Another field display update allows a site builder to display a date field as “time ago” – or how long since the date until now. There are a lot of applications for this kind of display and it’s a welcome addition!
You’ll access this for any date field under the Manage Display tab.
For more information see: https://www.drupal.org/node/2993639.
The CKEditor code block is now configurable
If you use the Code block feature in CKEditor, you can now update the block allowing the list of languages that can be input to be changed in the editor configuration. You’ll do this under Configuration -> Content Authoring -> Text Formats and Editors.
Out of the box, most of the common languages are enabled by default. You can add/delete languages to suit your site. Note, you’ll add the “machine name” and label separated by a “|”.
Bonus!
One of the more confusing (temporarily) updates is the move of Block creation and lists to the Content menu. You still place blocks in Structure -> Block Layout (and you can still create them there), but the block list is now under Content.
Summary
There are a bunch of changes under the hood in Drupal 10.1 (of course), but the features we’re getting for Site Builders are particularly welcome!