Blog category

6 min

Drupal 10 is Here: New Features and Improvements, How to Upgrade

Great news for the Drupal community! The long-awaited Drupal 10 is finally released! On December 15, 2022, the 10th version of one of the most popular content management systems was rolled out and is now available for download. As a Drupal development company, we are highly excited about the news and can’t wait to discuss it with you. We hope you feel the same and wish to learn more about the release. If so, keep reading. In the following paragraphs, we describe the new features and improvements of Drupal 10 while also showing you how to upgrade from older versions. Without further ado, let’s get started! What’s new in Drupal 10 Below you will find the most prominent Drupal 10 features and improvements. So the latest release of Drupal comes with: Olivero theme Despite its responsive design and plenty of useful features, the Bartik front-end theme looks outdated today. Considering this, it should come as no surprise that Drupal contributors have decided to replace it in the new versions of the CMS. Starting from version 9.4.0, Olivero is the default Drupal theme. This innovation comes with various benefits: Better accessibility. The new front-end theme was created in collaboration with the Drupal Accessibility team and thus takes accessibility to the next level. Olivero is fully compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and its every detail (colors, fonts, buttons, typography, etc.) is created to make your Drupal site more accessible. Improved functionality. Bartik no longer reflects the back-end capabilities of the latest Drupal updates. The new theme, on the other hand, backs Drupal’s most widely used functions perfectly. Olivero is compatible with every browser that Drupal supports, can properly display right-to-left languages (Hebrew, Arabic, Urdu, etc.), compiles CSS with PostCSS to give advanced customization options to developers, and much more. Fresh look. Obviously, the Olivero theme looks more up-to-date than Bartik. Its color palette is fresh and bright, its forms and buttons are elegantly simple, and its typography is consistent in font size, line height, and spacing. Claro administration theme Another improvement coming with the new Drupal core is Claro. Claro is a concise, highly responsive, and clean administration theme that boasts a modern look and improved web accessibility. In the latest version of the open-source Drupal CMS, it replaces the old Seven theme created back in 2009. Claro is designed in accordance with the Admin UI & JavaScript Modernization Initiative and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The theme offers: colder color sets with higher contrast; touchscreen readiness due to the increased size of all form controls; front-end facing components: Toolbar, Quick Edit, and Contextual Links. CKEditor 5 CKEditor 4 approaches its end of life in November 2023, so Drupal 10.0.0 comes with the newer CKEditor 5. The latter provides a better authoring experience and more modern editing. Compared to its predecessor, CKEditor 5 offers: Enhanced UX. CKEditor 5 was designed with the end user in mind. The new editor boasts intuitive image inserting (with automated uploading), simpler linking, a new toolbar in the classic editor that remains visible when scrolling the page, and easy styling. Customizability and extensibility. CKEditor’s core enables developers to create any kind of editor with different toolbars. Due to a new data model and a model-view-controller architecture (MVC), the conversation between models and views becomes completely customizable. Also, developers gain full control over the changes they apply to a model. The CKEditor 5 Framework consists of several npm packages, with each package coming with its own repository. It allows users to focus on each individual feature separately and facilitates contribution. New data model. Compared to CKEditor 4, its modern counterpart uses a much more efficient data model, allowing for a more creative and focused development experience. This model provides more control over how the data is output and in what formats it is produced. With the data structure optimized for complex data management operations, it is extremely easy to implement various algorithms such as Operational Transformation and bring real-time collaboration features into any web application.