Official Foswiki Weblog

Foswiki 1.1.0 is out in the wild. This one was a rather long development cycle with a lot of work going on in various places. One of the most significant changes is Foswiki’s adoption of jQuery as its primary JavaScript framework. As a consequence we redesigned the way static files like css and js are added to a page which results in a much improved load performance of pages. So while we’ve added a wide range of new functionality to Foswiki that comes with jQuery, we also streamlined the way pages are loaded to make this feasible. Thank goes to all of the third party jQuery modules that made it into the Foswiki core for writing such great Open Source software.

We’ve got more in this release. Let me pick another two. See the full release notes below.

There’s a new macro called QUERY which leverages the query syntax known from good old SEARCH to query meta data of a topic. Think of it as FORMFIELD on steroids: while FORMFIELD was only able to retrieve a single value of a DataForm, QUERY can now return a wide range of properties bringing them in to an SQL -like query language. In other words: lots of power for your wiki applications.

The other big addition is a page cache. Foswiki can now cache pages being rendered and deliver them the next time they are requested from cache instead of computing them again. Caching pages within Foswiki itself has got the big advantage of allowing to track dependencies among the ingredients needed to render a single page from within the engine itself. This kind of deep dependency tracking mechanism takes care that wiki pages are recomputed as needed in a transparent way. Caching full wiki pages can dramatically improve performance of a single page as well as overall throughput of the site while requiring less cpu to cope with certain kinds of trafic. The implementation has already been used successfully in a couple of high end public sites running a backport of the page cache to previous Foswiki releases.

Well, folks, try yourself. We have got plans for the next 2.0 release already but are also anticipating further 1.x maintenance releases on the way.

Here’s the full release notes by Kenneth. Have fun.

Yours,
Michael Daum.

—

Release of Foswiki version 1.1.0 – 04 Oct 2010

On behalf of the entire Foswiki community I can proudly announce that
the release of the Foswiki release 1.1.0  is available for download at

Foswiki web site: http://foswiki.org/Download/FoswikiRelease01×01x00

It is a release with more than 270 bug fixes relative to 1.0.10 and more
than 680 bug fixes relative to 1.0.0. And the release adds more than 100
enhancements. Foswiki 1.1.0 introduces jQuery Javascript user interface
framework, improved topic history display, new QUERY and FORMAT macros,
better user interface for group management, much improved WYSIWYG
editor, facelift of the default skin, much improved configure tool, and
many more enhancements.

Foswiki 1.1 has many improvements that end-users as well as
administrators will appreciate. In addition Foswiki 1.1 comes with a lot
of “under the hood” improvements to the core code, with the goal of
making it easier to plug in work from other projects, such as jQuery,
KinoSearch, Solr and others. Work has been made to improve the
definition of internal APIs to allow other not-yet-written modules, such
as store implementations. Most of these modifications should be
invisible to the end user and admin, but are important to position
Foswiki for the next generation of plugins.

What’s new – highlights:

• Adoption of the jQuery Javascript user interface framework
• New macros enabled by jQuery
• Powerful new QUERY macro
• SEARCH now has a zeroresults format string and search results pagination
• New FORMAT macro
• WikiGroups have add & remove user interface
• TinyMCEPlugin updates include much better user interface, rowspan support, and autosave feature
• Testing configuration variables in %IF
• “Copy topic” now copies attachments
• Tailoring of user registration made easier
• Easy tailoring of reset/change password and change email forms
• TMPL:DEFs may now access previous (overridden) TMPL:DEF using the new %TMPL:PREV% template token
• Logging of access failures
• configure user interface revamped
• Configure file system checks added
• Newer modern Icon set for Document Graphics
• Table Plugin has been improved
• SlideShowPlugin can now use CSS based templates
• HistoryPlugin and CompareRevisionsAddOn are now included with the default plugin set giving much nicer history/changes features
• AutoViewTemplatePlugin is now included with the default plugin set
• ZonePlugin feature set has been merged to the core Foswiki code
• New page cache feature
• Several API Enhancements for extension writers

Bugs can be reported on http://foswiki.org/Tasks/CreateNewTask

On behalf of the Foswiki Association and the entire Foswiki Community:
Enjoy the Foswiki 1.1.0

Kenneth Lavrsen
Release manager

Michael Daum Release Development, features, performance, Release

Release of Foswiki version 1.0.10 – 08 Sep 2010

On behalf of the entire Foswiki community I can proudly announce the 
release of the Foswiki patch release 1.0.10 

Foswiki 1.0.10 is available for download at

* Foswiki web site: http://foswiki.org/Download

Foswiki 1.0.10 was built 08 Sep 2010. It is a patch release with more 
than 410 bug fixes relative to 1.0.0.

If you already run Foswiki 1.0.9 and you do not have any severe issues 
with it, you are recommended to stay with 1.0.9 and wait for Foswiki 
1.1.0 which we plan to release in October. We are going beta within a 
few days. Foswiki 1.1.0 is an exciting new release that you can all look 
forward to with some significant enhancements for both end users and 
application developers.

The reason for releasing 1.0.10 now is mainly that people installing 
Foswiki for the first time on Perl 5.12 are having severe issues with 
the installation. Foswiki 1.0.10 does not have any important 
enhancements compared to 1.0.9. Read the 1.0.10 release notes which are 
available at …

* http://foswiki.org/System/ReleaseNotes01×00

.. and review if an upgrade is desired

The regular version (Foswiki-1.0.10…) is the full version with all 
files. The upgrade version (Foswiki-upgrade-1.0.10…) contains the full 
file package except the files that you will typical have tailored in 
your installation and do not want overwritten when you upgrade. The 
upgrade package will upgrade any version from 1.0.0 or later to 1.0.10 
simply by copying all the files in the upgrade package on top of the 
existing 1.0.X. The exact steps are described on the download page. If 
you are at 1.0.0 there is no need to upgrade to 1.0.4 through 1.0.9 first.

Also note that many plugins and other extensions are being released or 
updated every week. Follow the Extensions News at where important news 
about extensions releases are announced.

* http://foswiki.org/Extensions/ExtensionNews

The number of subversion code check-ins near 9000 now and still more 
developers join the project.

As release manager on the project I want to say a sincere thank you to 
all the many that have worked hard on this release happen. A special 
thank you to those that tested the release candidate. Remember that you 
can upgrade also the release candidate using the upgrade package.

You should also both when you download and install Foswiki and regularly 
visit http://foswiki.org/Support/KnownIssuesOfFoswiki01×00 where we will 
list the more annoying bugs that have been found and most often you will 
find an immediate solution that you can apply.

We will be many developers that are ready to help you with the 
installation of (or upgrade to) Foswiki on the IRC channel #foswiki on 
the freenode.org network.

The special installer and virtual machine versions of Foswiki will be 
updated to 1.0.10 version within the next days. Keep an eye on the 
download page if you use one of these versions.

On behalf of the Foswiki Association and the entire Foswiki Community: 
Enjoy the Foswiki 1.0.10

Kenneth Lavrsen 
Release manager

See the whole discussion on Nabble.

klavrsen Release community, Development, foswiki, kennethlavrsen, Release

Release of Foswiki version 1.0.9, 17 Jan 2010

On behalf of the entire Foswiki community I can proudly announce the
release of the Foswiki patch release 1.0.9

Foswiki 1.0.9 is available for download from foswiki.org/Download/

Foswiki 1.0.9 was built 17 Jan 2010. It is a patch release with more
than 320 bug fixes relative to 1.0.0 and many small enhancements. This
release fixes many bugs in the Wysiwyg editor, bugs related to more
advanced wiki applications and bugs in the Plugin API. It contains
several bug fixes and enhancements related to security and spam fighting.

It is highly recommended to upgrade your Foswiki to 1.0.9.

The regular version (Foswiki-1.0.9…) is the full version with all
files. The upgrade version (Foswiki-upgrade-1.0.9…) contains the full
file package except the files that you will typical have tailored in
your installation and do not want overwritten when you upgrade. The
upgrade package will upgrade any version from 1.0.0 or later to 1.0.9
simply by copying all the files in the upgrade package on top of the
existing 1.0.X. The exact steps are described on the download page. If
you are at 1.0.0 there is no need to upgrade to 1.0.4 through 1.0.8 first.

Also note that many plugins and other extensions are being released or
updated every week. Follow the Extensions News at where important news
about extensions releases are announced.

foswiki.org/Extensions/ExtensionNews

The number of subversion code check-ins is over 6000 now and still more
developers join the project.

As release manager on the project I want to say a sincere thank you to
all the many that have worked hard on this release happen. A special
thank you to those that tested the two release candidates. Remember that
you can upgrade also the release candidates using the upgrade package.

You should also both when you download and install Foswiki and regularly
visit foswiki.org/Support/KnownIssuesOfFoswiki01×00 where we will
list the more annoying bugs that have been found and most often you will
find an immediate solution that you can apply.

We will be many developers that are ready to help you with the
installation of (or upgrade to) Foswiki on the IRC channel #foswiki on
the freenode.org network.

The special installer and virtual machine versions of Foswiki will be
updated to 1.0.9 version within the next days. Keep an eye on the
download page if you use one of these versions.

On behalf of the Foswiki Association and the entire Foswiki Community:
Enjoy the Foswiki 1.0.9

Kenneth Lavrsen
Release manager

Join the conversation also on our nabble-instance.

klavrsen Release community, Development, foswiki, kennethlavrsen, Release

The Foswiki community loves Kenneth Larvsen for releasing the next Foswiki version 1.0.7 last Monday with the following email:

Release of Foswiki version 1.0.7, 20 Sep 2009

On behalf of the entire Foswiki community I can proudly announce the
release of the Foswiki patch release 1.0.7

Foswiki 1.0.7 is available for download at the following locations

* Foswiki web site: http://foswiki.org/Download

Since the January release of 1.0.0 more than 190 additional bugs have
been fixed.

Foswiki 1.0.7 was built 20 Sep 2009. It is a patch release with more
than 190 bug fixes relative to 1.0.0 and some enhancements. This release
fixes some serious issues introduced by the CSRF fix and the redirect
cache fix in 1.0.6. Major enhancement that also fixes many annoying
editor bugs is the upgrade of the !Tiny MCE editor to version 3.2.2.

It is highly recommended to upgrade your Foswiki to 1.0.7.

You can read the full email here.

• Installers for Windows and Mac are already available on the download page just as other downloads.

Important Changes since Foswiki 1.0.6

• The Wysiwyg editor has been upgraded to using Tiny MCE editor version 3.2.2 which solves many editor related bugs. The pickaxe icon has been replaced by a “Wiki Text” button as the pickaxe was hard to guess the function of. And the editor now has a full screen editing feature. This is the biggest and most important change in that release, that you will find in Foswiki 1.0.7. A big thank you goes to Crawford Currie for making this possible.
• Several bugs fixed related to the Cross-Site Request Forgery feature.
• Cross-Site Request Forgery feature has been enhanced to also protect against unwanted attachment of files
• TablePlugin sorts numbers and dates better
• EditTablePlugin handles SpreadSheetPlugin in footer rows correctly
• Fixed a problem where Windows installations of Foswiki would create new users with non-working passwords
• “Managing webs” feature redesigned for better usability

mseibert Release community, crawford currie, Development, features, foswiki, kennethlavrsen, press release, Release, wysiwyg

Foswiki is now also available over a FreeBSD port. See the following mail vom Greg Larkin:

I just committed the initial version of the FreeBSD port for Foswiki
1.0.6: http://www.freshports.org/www/foswiki/

This port enables you to install Foswiki on FreeBSD with the simple
command:

cd /usr/ports/www/foswiki && make install clean

I’m still working on some scaffolding in the port to support
auto-generated Foswiki plugin ports. Once that’s done, I’ll add a port
for each plugin found in http://svn.foswiki.org/trunk/.

If anyone has feedback, bug reports or patches, please send them along!

If you want to make Foswiki adapt better to your needs help us to improve this open source software.

Here is, how you can help.

mseibert Development community, Development, foswiki, FreeBSD, FreeBSD port, glarkin, greg, larkin, port