Drupal 8 is on the verge of release with additional new features, which were available as separate modules in the earlier versions. Without any hassle of additional installation, it will deliver better tools for developers and more value for customers.
I have listed below some of most important features of Drupal 8, we have been waiting for :
Managing your content- from Mobile
Any person who ever administered a website better knows that, it’s best supported on Desktop or laptop rather than a Mobile. That why! Drupal 8 is being developed with Mobile First Architecture. The Drupal 8 Mobile Initiative is a group effort to have a platform suitable for smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.
In Drupal 8, special care has been taken to make all built-in-themes more responsive. Also, with simple administration page and admin toolbar, it is easier for you to make changes from any mobile or tablet with ease.
The tables shrink properly, so that the contents get scaled to fit into any mobile device. So it provides better user experience for not only the administrator, but also the users.
As you all know HTML5 plays key role in making websites fully functional and compatible on mobile screens. The happy news is that this industry standard is now included in drupal 8.
Multilingual Capabilities
Even though earlier versions of drupal including Drupal 7 supports multilingual functionality, Drupal 8 will have more. With Drupal 8 multilingual functionality, it is possible to translate anything in the system.
The multilingual functionality provides language configuration, assignment and detection functionality. It also provides a user interface to the existing backend support for automatic software translation. Now it’s more easier to translate contents with the build-in user interfaces.
New Configuration Management
In drupal 8, the configuration management settings will not be stored in the database anymore. Instead, it will be stored in the master folder. Thus the configuration management will be kept away from the database.
Whenever you enable the module, the system copy the default setting into the master configuration folder. Now, when you modify the configuration settings, the new settings get stored in the master configuration folder. It even lets you use version control for your configuration and makes it easier to push configuration changes from staging to production.
Thus In Drupal 8, configuration will be managed efficiently in a professional way.
Accessibility Integration
Till date drupal 7 was the most accessible content management system available. But the upcoming Drupal 8 is going to top the race with additional big enhancements. One such enhancement will be the adoption of WAI ARIA (Web Accessibility Initiative Accessible Rich Internet Application) suite.
By using WAI ARIA, you can make Web content and Web applications more accessible to people with disabilities. Thus it allows more consistent and predictable experience for all users.
Drupal 8 can be used to address accessibility issues also like color contrast, size, list elements and blocks, comments and book pages etc and specific problems with browsing on firefox, safari and iphone.
Better user experience
Drupal 8, use advantage of Jquery UI’s autocomplete and modal dialogs for providing better user experience. Jquery UI’s autocomplete make entering information much easier and modal dialogs display clean, elegant messages in a simple way.
Drupal 8 has additional features for content editing like Inline editing, CEK Editor, WYSIWYG etc which improves user experience and is made with web security in mind.
Built-in Web Services
In Drupal 8, with build-in web services, you can allow external applications to read, and update information on your site through the web. You can authenticate a client with HTTP authentication, to provide username, password and other fields as required, to allow external applications to access and use information from your site without accessing your code. REST is one of the popular ways of making web services work in Drupal 8.
Fast theming
In Drupal 8, you will get an additional feature called Twig, which is the flexible, fast and secure template engine for PHP. With Twig, templates can be written as easy to learn syntax. Which in turn brings simplification and greater security to Drupal powered sites.
Designing, beautiful and functional Drupal sites will be much easier with Twig.
Views, out of the box
As you all know, Views is one of the most commonly used contributed module in Drupal 7. Views enable you to easily customize the front page, listing blocks and more in your drupal powered site. Also it allows you to simply create custom admin pages and customize the filters and action.
With the increase in demand for this module, drupal community has now planned to incorporate views into the core CMS in Drupal 8.
If you want to have more insight on the new features available in Drupal 8, do go through the following articles -
https://dev.acquia.com/blog/ultimate-guide-drupal-8-episode-5-front-end-developer-improvements
https://www.drupal.org/node/1912118
https://www.drupal.org/documentation/modules/rest
https://www.drupal.org/community-initiatives/drupal-core/usability
https://www.drupal.org/about/accessibility
https://dev.acquia.com/blog/ultimate-guide-drupal-8-episode-4-multilingual-improvements
https://www.drupal.org/documentation/administer/config
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