Apostrophe 4.17.0: Widget Editing Evolved

[BoDonkey]

Hello Apostrophe Community!

The release of Apostrophe 4.17.0 includes updates to the core experience for teams, empowering editors with more intuitive widget editing and developers with tools to create more customized interfaces.

Image Widget: Streamlined Editing Path

We've improved the image widget with a more intuitive editing workflow. Previously, users had to navigate through multiple modals to adjust an image's cropping and focal point. Now, the image widget offers a more accessible menu with direct access to key functions:

• One button allows you to change the image and edit general settings (as before)
• A new dedicated button takes you directly to the crop and focal point adjustment modal

This streamlined approach reduces clicks and makes image editing more efficient. The enhancement was implemented using our new widgetOperations configuration function, which adds the adjustImage operation to the image widget. This improvement demonstrates our commitment to making content editing more intuitive and efficient.

Live Widget Preview: Now Enabled by Default

After extensive internal testing that proved its stability and value, we enabled the live widget preview feature by default for all users. This change transforms widget editing from a "save and see" experience to immediate visual feedback as you type or select options in the widget modal. The immediate visual feedback helps editors create exactly what they need faster than ever.

For those who prefer to work without live previews, you can disable this feature in your widget settings, but we encourage you to give it a try - we believe it will substantially improve your content editing experience.

Customizable Widget Operations: Extend Any Widget's Capabilities

Developers can now use the new widgetOperations cascade config property to add custom operations to any widget type. This feature demonstrates our commitment to making the platform more extensible - we've already used it ourselves to add the adjustImage operation to the core image widget!

This new property allows developers to extend any widget's editing experience by adding custom operations directly to the menu interface. Content teams can now have editing workflows tailored specifically to their needs, with operations that make sense for their particular content types.

This is also a first steps toward the creation of Sections, which will make it possible to save and re-use layouts across your site.

Looking Ahead: Enhanced Documentation for Improved Developer-Driven UX

As part of our commitment to improving the content manager experience, we're enhancing our documentation site with an expanded tutorials section in the coming weeks and months. The first wave of new documents will help developers create better editorial interfaces, covering topics such as:

• Configuring the admin bar for optimal workflow
• Adding support desk help where editors need it most
• Proper usage of tooltips and help text to guide users
• Best practices for creating intuitive editing experiences

By providing developers with better UX guidance on, we aim to elevate the quality of editorial experiences across all ApostropheCMS projects. Look forward to these short-form, focused tutorials that will help you implement user-centered design principles in your CMS implementations.

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These improvements are ready for you to explore! Update your projects with npm update and let us know what you think on our new roadmap site. Your feedback helps us refine and enhance ApostropheCMS to meet your needs.

🚀 Happy coding!

Apostrophe 4.17.0

This release addresses an oversight that briefly created an incompatibility between @apostrophecms/import-export and Apostrophe 4.16.0. Please note you will need to upgrade both modules.

Read on for everything else that was released today as part of 4.16.0.

Adds

• Support for fetchRelationships: false in applyPatch and related methods. This is intended for the use of the @apostrophecms/import-export module, so the functionality is not exposed in a way that can be accessed simply by making a web request.

Fixes

• Errors thrown on the server side by subfields of widgets are now reported in a useful form at the document level. Previously a different error occurred in the error handling logic itself, confusing the issue.

Apostrophe 4.16.0

Adds

• Uses new widgetOperations to add the adjustImage operation to the image widget.
• Adds a server validation before adding a widget to an area. Introduces a new POST route @apostrophecms/area/validate-widget.
• The new widgetOperations cascade config property can be used to display custom operations for widgets.The new widgetOperations cascade config property can be used to display custom operations for widgets. An if condition can be used to test properties of the widget before displaying an operation.
• required is now implemented on the server side as well for relationship fields. It behaves like min: 1. It was always implemented on the front end. However, note that a relationship can still become empty if the related document is archived or deleted.
• Image widgets, and others with a placeholder when empty, now restore their placeholder view when canceling the widget editor in live preview mode.
• Fixes z-index of widget controls, going above the controls add button.

Changes

• Enable widget live preview by default.
• Updates the default fields for the getMangageApiProjection() to include a more sensible base configuration and adds a true option to return the minimal default values.

Fixes

• Fixes range field type default value not being set properly.
• Fixes autocomplete and search sorting and as a consequence, fixes potential duplicates during pagination.
• Fixes all eslint warnings.
• Widget live preview is now attempting to auto-position the Widget Editor modal only if no explicit widget configuration (options.origin) is provided.

Enterprise modules

@apostrophecms-pro/cypress-tools 1.0.0-beta.21

Automated functional browser tests are an important part of quality assurance for enterprise websites and web applications. Cypress is an industry-standard, open-source library for carrying out automated functional browser tests. This module provides a collection of conveniences for testing ApostropheCMS sites and applications within Cypress. Contact us or visit our new pricing page to learn more.

Adds

• Add nested option to useWidgetControl command.

@apostrophecms-pro/multisite-dashboard 1.4.3

This extension creates the new default multisite dashboard with infinite scroll, search functionality, and the ability to save templates. This extension requires that the project also have the @apostrophecms-pro/multisite extension installed and configured. Explore our documentation to discover how this extension can enhance your project. For further details or inquiries, feel free to contact us or visit our pricing page.

Fixes

• Fixes the database orphan cleanup (task remove-orphans).

Apostrophe modules

@apostrophecms/import-export 3.2.1

This module enables import and export of pages and pieces, with or without related documents such as files, images and other related types.

Fixes

• Compatible with apostrophe version 4.17.0. Be sure to upgrade these modules together.
• Fixes the missing failed imports report modal when cancelling the import during override duplicates phase.

3.2.0 (2025-04-16)

Adds

• Adds support for translating content while importing via the Automatic Translation module (when available).
• Allow page position to be adapted when importing based on slug hierarchy.

Fixes

• Fix "include related documents" modal height.
• Fixes moduleLabel computed.
• Fixes missing call to recomputeAllDocReferences when duplicated have been overridden.

Changes

• Bumb\ps eslint-config-apostrophe to 5, fixes errors, removes unused dependencies.
• Exports attachments by default, without treating them like related documents.

Utilities

sanitize-html 2.17.0

This module provides a simple HTML sanitizer with a clear API.

Adds

• Add preserveEscapedAttributes, allowing attributes on escaped disallowed tags to be retained. Thanks to Ben Elliot for this new option.