The Joomla Project is pleased to announce the availability of Joomla 4.3.0 Release Candidate 2 for testing.
What is this release for?
There are two main goals for release candidates:
- Providing developers with the basis to test their extensions and reporting any issues well before the final release
- Allowing users to discover the new features introduced to Joomla 4.3
For a complete list of known backward compatibility issues for version 4.3, please see Potential backward compatibility issues in Joomla 4 on the documentation site.
What is this release NOT for?
This release candidate version of Joomla 4.3 is not suitable for production sites. It is for testing only.
Where to get it?
Download Joomla 4.3.0 Release Candidate 2
To always use the latest build of Joomla 4, we invite you to use the nightly build packages (updated every night).
To make it easier for newcomers, you can launch a free Joomla 4 website for testing at launch.joomla.org.
When is the final release due?
Joomla! 4.3 (general availability) is due to be released on or about 18th April 2023. The planned milestones are:
Alpha releases
Where new features are added and many changes are made.
- Alpha 1: 29th November 2022 - Done
- Alpha 2: 27th December 2022 - Done
- Alpha 3: 24th January 2022 - Done
Beta releases
In the Beta stage, we are making a freeze on what features can be added, but minor changes to what is already in can be made.
- Beta 1: 7th February 2023 - Done
- Beta 2: 16th February 2023 - Done
- Beta 3: 21st February 2023 - Done
- Beta 4: 7th March 2023 - Done
Release candidates
When in the release candidate phase no more can be added or changed, we are testing and bug fixing making the product stable for launch day.
- Release candidate 1: 21st March 2023 - Done
- Release candidate 2: 2nd April 2023 - This release
- Final release: 18th April 2023
This whole process relies on people coming forward to help make it happen.
Please note that dates may be subject to change depending on the availability of volunteers and circumstances beyond our control.
What’s new in Joomla 4.3.0 Release Candidate 2?
- Media Manager Revamp
- Ordering
- Image thumbnails
- SVG file previews
- Media path fix for Windows systems
- Showing Drag and Drop option for empty folder
- Workflow
- Workflow transitions user improvements
- Smart search
- Frontend dropdown filter
- Menu
- Filter menu items by component
- Admin menu can be filtered by parent
- Rebuild the tree after saving a menu item
- URL type menu item can now be selected as base item in mod_menu
- Content
- Use article's browser page title parameter before article title
- Custom Fields
- Conditional fields for custom fields
- Allow to select the edit layout for subforms in custom fields
- When filtered by category, when creating new field, pre-select the category
- Tags
- Single tab view fixes
- New com_tags router
- Disallow non-existing tags
- Users
- LDAP fixes
- API updates
- API articles can be filtered by tag and featured
- Dashboard
- Quickicons: missing icons
- Template
- template diff view improvements
- Creating names with .min.css
- System
- Adding support to the NEL header to the core httpheaders plugin
- During installation provide hint for table prefix
- Mass mail validation fix
- Select column tables missing in Discover and template overrides
- RTL improvements
- Character Counter for Input Fields
- Pattern attribute for 'tel'
- Command Line Installation of Joomla
- Messaging login/logout in the frontend
- Captcha moved to end of form AFTER custom fields
- Support for avif, webp, heic and webp2 in the image list field
- Bootstrap
- Upgrade to Bootstrap 5.2
- PHP
- PHP 8.2 improved support
- deprecated PHP 8.1 code
- Guided Tours
- A feature to help guide new users through administrative tasks.
To learn more about our development strategy, please read this article.
How can you help Joomla 4.3?
To help ensure the 4.3 release and our major features are “production-ready”, we need your help testing releases and reporting any bugs you may find at issues.joomla.org.
Most of all, we encourage extension developers to roll up their sleeves, seek out bugs and test their extensions with Joomla 4.3 and communicate their experience.
Where can I find documentation about Joomla 4?
There are some tutorials to help you with Joomla 4. You can find the existing ones, like creating a Plugin or a Module for Joomla 4, namespaces conventions, prepared statements, using the new web asset classes and many more in https://docs.joomla.org/Category:Joomla!_4.x
We encourage developers to help write the documentation about Joomla 4 on docs.joomla.org to help and guide users and other extension developers.
A JDocs page will help developers to see the existing documentation, and the documentation still needed.
We invite you to check it regularly, update it and provide the missing content: https://docs.joomla.org/JDOC:Joomla_4_Tutorials_Project
Most of the feature documentation is now needed as we have reached the release candidate stage.
Should I plan to upgrade to Joomla 4.x?
Joomla 4.x is Joomla’s latest major version.
Joomla 3.10 was released alongside Joomla 4 as the last minor release of Joomla 3 (see this article).
Joomla 3.10 will continue to be supported until August 2023 although as its now over 16 months since the release of Joomla 3.10 and 4.0 Joomla 3 will only get security releases.
You should be planning or in the process of migrating to the latest version of Joomla.
We provide resources to help with the migration on the documentation site.
Related information
If you are an extension developer, please make sure you subscribe to the general developer mailing list, where you can discuss extension development. News that may affect custom development will also be posted there from time to time.
- Working with the Joomla Feature Tracker
- General developer mailing list
- Joomla developer network
- Joomla 4 compatibility layer
- Joomla and UI framework