On May 1st Drupal 8.7 was officially released. See why this is a substantial upgrade for Marketers, Creatives, and Site Administrators.

The Updated Layout Builder

The new Layout Builder in Drupal 8.7 allows Administrators to create new pages from templates. This introduces flexible drag and drop capabilities, allowing non-technical team members to design structured layouts adhering to the standards of the entire site. Users can customize how content is arranged on a single page, or across multiple types of content. This is critical when working with websites that have large amounts of content that need to be visually consistent. Drupal 8.7’s Layout Builder also provides exceptional accessibility and is fully usable by keyboard, designed for Site Administrators with specific accessibility requirements.

Updated UI for Media Library

Originally an experimental module in 8.6, Drupal 8.7 also included the release of a stabilized Media Library. Built on top of the stable Media module, the Media library allows usage of reusable Media in your Drupal site. This allows Site Administrators to insert or change images and video more efficiently than ever. This release improves the design and accessibility of the UI and provides a visually appealing interface for browsing through all pages of your website, providing an easy way to quickly upload multiple media assets to your Drupal site.

End of Support for PHP 5.5 and 5.6

As of March 6, 2019, Drupal 8 support for PHP 5.5 and 5.6 will end. Drupal 8.6 was the last version to support PHP 5.5 and 5.6. Those who are still using these versions will have to upgrade to PHP 7.1 or higher.

Internet Explorer 9 and 10 Will No Longer Be Supported

Workarounds for the style sheet limit in Internet Explorer 9 and earlier have been removed. Drupal 8.4 originally dropped support for Internet Explorer 9 and 10, but Drupal 8.5 and 8.6 retained a workaround to allow 32+ stylesheets to be included. This workaround has now been removed in Drupal 8.7.

JSON:API Added to Drupal Core

The JSON:API module was added to Drupal 8.7 as a stable module, marking another milestone towards making Drupal API-first. This module is easy to use with powerful out-of-the-box support and simple setup, creating a quick and easy way to build decoupled applications.

If you want to learn more about Drupal 8.7, click here for a full list of release notes and please reach out if you have any questions!