The release of 2.2.3 marks the end of the 2.2 branch development and the Symphony Team and Working Groups are really excited on the next upcoming release, Symphony 2.3. I thought I'd take some time to outline a couple of the upcoming changes that the team and Working Groups are working towards in this release.
Symphony 2.3 aims to give a complete refresh of Symphony's backend user experience, from the theme, to the widgets you interact with everyday. The UX Working Group has been working really hard over the last couple of months meeting to discuss new concepts and ideas (which you can see a full snapshot of on the Working Group wiki) which will see the Symphony 2.3 be one of the best releases yet. Interface widgets, such as the Duplicator, Collapsible and Tags will become easier to create with additions to the Widget class, and newcomers, Drawer and Tabs will allow developers to create richer, more intuitive interfaces in their own extensions. We also hope to release a style guide, to complement our Javascript documentation, that will allow extensions to look and feel as if they were native to Symphony.
Many will be happy to know that the popular EDUI extension (or at least it's core ideas) will replace the current 'Components' pages for greater management of Events, Datasources and Utilities.
It's not all bells and whistles either, 2.3 will see a number of core improvements under the hood that will make sites easier to create and manage. Dynamic XML datasources (Remote DS is a working title) will see a number of improvements, the most notable being JSON support, but it will also including tweaks to allow you to manage the caching of the remote data. Datasources will be able to output multiple parameters (finally!) and we are also looking to improve the Datasource Filter builder to allow for more powerful and intuitive filtering.
Developers will be happy to know that significant changes are planned to the Datasource and Field classes, with the goal to expose common functionality to stop you having to repeat yourself. The Core Email API is also getting some love, with tweaks to provide better performance, flexibility and documentation.
"Wait, when is this awesomeness coming?" I hear you say? Well it's early stages so far, and anyone who's has ever built anything knows that means that the scope will probably change, but our target is to deliver a Beta at the Symposium. We're hoping to run with the momentum and release a final in December/January. It's not too late to make a difference to the 2.3 release, you can always add your idea/suggestion/bug to our issue tracker on Github.
It almost comes without saying, but as with any Symphony release, we are aiming to make the system faster, leaner and easier to understand and use for all. The team is really excited about Symphony 2.3 and the next couple of months in general with the upcoming Symposium (are you going?) and a new website (and forum) in the works. Stay tuned for more updates in the near future!
Happy developing :)