Plone Web CMS Update - What's Coming in v4

By Dee-Ann LeBlanc | Published Jul 16, 2009

It's been a busy summer for the Plone (news, site) project. In particular, they put out a call for Plone Improvement Proposals (PLIPs) for Plone 4. They also split the initial vision for Plone 4 into a more do-able Plone 4 for this year and a more far-reaching update for Plone 5 slated for next year.

Following the PLIP process, the Plone 4 Framework Team has polished off their list of what's to be included in this release.

Even with scaled back plans the Plone 4 team chose to include a record 40 improvement proposals.

According to Matthew Wilkes, a member of the Plone Foundation, "While Plone 4 was initially planned to make already implemented features of Plone 5 available significantly sooner, the improvement proposals accepted also include brand new features and improvements."

Criteria for accepting new features included considering different types of Plone users, in the desire to accommodate end users, integrators and add-on product developers.

New features include:

A default skin based on the current Plone.org
The ubiquitous TinyMCE editor instead of Kupu
Improvements to the collections, search and portlet management interfaces
New control panels to help integrators upgrade easier to Plone 5
Control dashboards for groups of users
Customize site roles and member data without modifying templates
Python 2.6 for increased speed and better developer flexibility
Fix XHTML to validate errors for logged-in users
Patches integrated into the core to make third-party product code cleaner and more understandable

Plone 4 is slated for release on December 1, 2009. Preview versions should be available for Plone Conference 2009. Stay tuned here as the next versions evolve.