Publii bugfix stop-gap release
Bob MitroIt's been a while since our last release, but we're going to have to ask our users to hang on for just a bit longer! Since the release of the last Publii beta at the end of 2017, our team have been hard at work making some major changes to how Publii works internally. More specifically, we've been rewriting Publii's frontpage to use the Vue.js framework, which will give us an expandable base to better manage Publii as we expand its features and functionality, as well as eliminating a large number of bugs and inconsistent views that occasionally crop up in the current releases.
Initially, our intention was to start 2018 off with a bang, releasing the rewritten Publii this month as the first major release of the year. However, despite our efforts there's still a bit more work to be done. Since we didn't want to go quiet for another month, we decided instead to release a stop-gap version of Publii in the meantime which introduces plenty of bugfixes and new developer tags for the technically-minded users among us.
Bugfixes, minor improvements, and a few new tags for developers. However, we're all still beavering away at the rewritten Publii release, which we hope to get out to you soon. Once that's released, we'll look to publish the first Release Candidate version (RC1), before aiming for the first full, out-of-beta, super-stable release around April of this year!
So there's a lot to look forward to, but for now, let's have a look at the fixes and improvements included with the bugfix stop-gap release:
New Windows Installer Package
Since the start of the Publii beta the Windows installer has been rather weighty, and by default installed in the hidden AppData folder, which made it a little irritating when users wanted to uninstall or modify the installation. In this release, a new Windows installer has been added which reduces the total size of the install package by 33%, and defaults to installing the Publii app files (not the site files, which will continue to be kept in the Documents folder) in C:/Program files/Publii.
This new installer will install a new copy of Publii that uses the existing site files, so the older version of Publii using the old installer will need to be manually uninstalled. The site files in the Documents folder will not be deleted, but it is still recommended that you ensure that you fully back-up your sites prior to installing the new version to minimize the risk of lost data.
New regions added to Amazon S3 configuration
With the Paris (eu-west-3), Asia Pacific Osaka-Local (ap-northeast-3), China Beijing (cn-north-1) and China Ningxia (cn-northwest-1) regions added to the configuration options for Amazon S3 hosting in Publii, you have even more options for setting your endpoint to something closer to home.
For developers: new tags
For experienced developers that like playing around with Publii, we've added some new tools for you to put to good use; a meta generator tag, and new handlebars tags for creating hidden post listings.
Other improvements
Little improvements help keep your site ticking along; this time around we've added the following:
- Added option to enable/disable to prevent removing the HTML comments during HTML compression
- Added styling for scripts in post editor and modified a post editor configuration to allow an email obfuscation scripts
- Publii now uses Electron v.1.7.12.
- Improved editor styles for tables.
- Added missing post__image CSS class for the paragraph surrounding an image when it doesn't use a figure tag.
Bug Fixes
We've had plenty of opportunity to squash bugs while working on rewriting Publii, so you find the latest release has a lot of fixes added:
- Fixed problem with wrongly updated post counters for authors and tags
- Fixed issue with main author disappearing when the post list only contains draft posts.
- Fixed a validation issue with the Open Graph description meta tag when it contains double quotes.
- Fixed issue with the application crashing when the user tried to add/upload new files after setting a custom sites location.
- Fixed issue with potential duplicate tag creation (with the same slug).
- Fixed issue with empty states and backup location; previous lead to some inconsistencies.
- Fixed problem with validating galleries in AMP mode (missing width and height attributes).
- Fixed problem with disappearing alt and caption values when changing image order in the gallery popup.
- Fixed issue with incorrect image ordering when uploading images to a gallery.
- Fixed issue with thumbnail creation not skipping when a GIF is used as the featured image.
Whew! That's quite the list of fixes. We hope the little improvements in this release help tide you over for now, and we hope you'll join us when the next big Publii release hits soon; make sure to keep an eye on our social media and blog for any updates!
Thank you
Our sincere thanks this month to our donators: Mathias Van Aken, Walter Lesicar, Christoph Weed, Stamina, Ryazanov Sergey, Erik Holmquist, Edelbert Rösch; your support means a lot to us and will help keep us in coffee as we continue adding to Publii!