ITS is happy to announce the immediate availability of UT Drupal Kit 2.7, the seventh maintenance release for our University distribution since the inclusion of the Forty Acres theme and the Page Builder module.
This release includes major changes to several contrib modules that are integral to the Drupal Kit’s “Page Builder” system, a new feature to support responsive images, and several contrib module security updates and small bug-fixes.
MEDIA AND MEDIA CKEDITOR UPDATES
The contributed Media module is a widely-adopted approach to multimedia in Drupal, and integrates with the CKEditor WYSIWYG library, providing media library browsing and insertion into rich text areas.
Integration between these two contributed solutions underwent significant re-architecting in the last year, and had a number of unresolved issues that required ITS to provide a patched version of the module with the UTDK distribution. Chief among these issues were a bug that caused multiple media-inserted images in a single WYSIWYG area not to display [1, 2]. The patched version also limited the functionality of the Media module.
Thanks to a series of recent updates to Media, we have now moved ahead with updating Media to the latest production release. This update will allow sites to use the standard method of Media behavior, which comes with a number of advantages over the legacy approach we had been supporting.
WHAT’S CHANGING
UTDK 2.7 now allows Media to store media elements in WYSIWYGs using a “tokenized” approach instead of raw HTML. The advantages of this approach include:
- File paths no longer render as absolute URLs, avoiding environment-specific references that make syncing and migration more difficult.
- Raw HTML is not inserted into the database, reducing the likelihood of malicious code being executed (e.g., via iframes)
- Files are referenced relationally via their File ID, meaning that if that image is replaced/edited via the administrative file interface, those changes take effect across all referenced instances (rather than leaving orphaned references to direct file paths)
- Video file formats now render correctly (previously, the <video> tag was inserted, which would not render at all in most cases)
- Compatibility with the separate “Media Vimeo” and “Media Youtube” modules is restored
For a fuller explanation of these changes, please review 2.7 Release : Update to Media Module on the UTDK documentation wiki.
RESPONSIVE IMAGE SUPPORT
While the Forty Acres theme has always provided basic responsive design features, previous versions of the UT Drupal Kit did not include any functionality to selectively load different image resolutions depending on screen size. This limitation meant that images sized for desktop screens would also be loaded on tablets and phones.
In UTDK 2.7, we have added a feature to two specific Page Builder fields/content widgets—Hero Image and Background Accent—to create and load lower-resolution image derivatives on smaller screens. These two fields are “high impact” in the sense that they support larger images than any of the other Page Builder fields, so we can get the most “bang for the buck” by implementing responsive behavior on these fields. The behavior itself is provided by combining Drupal’s built-in Imagestyle functionality with Foundation’s Interchange library.
This enhancement takes the form of a new module called “UTexas Responsive Images,” which is bundled with the Page Builder module, and requires very little configuration in order to get started. For more details, please review Using Responsive Images on the UTDK documentation wiki.
OTHER IMPROVEMENTS AND BUG-FIXES
- The Views module has been updated to version 7.x-3.15, which is a security release (release notes).
- Please note that there is a newer 7.x-3.16 release available for Views, but the release notes indicate that this version includes API changes that have not been fully tested with the UTDK distribution, so we have deferred that update until the 7.x-2.8 UTDK release.
- The Metatag module has been updated to version 7.x-1.21, which is a security release (release notes).
- A bug in some custom JavaScript that could cause the layout of the node edit form for the Standard Page content type to break under very specific circumstances has been fixed.
- The responsive table behavior provided by the Tablesaw library can now be disabled on a per-table basis by adding a
no-tablesaw
class to table markup.
- Several unused files related to the News add-on feature were removed from the Forty Acres theme directory.
- A small CSS change in the Forty Acres theme addresses a known issue for Chrome users viewing embedded Tableau objects.
HOW TO UPDATE THE UT DRUPAL KIT
Complete instructions and download links for updating a UT Drupal Kit site are available on the documentation wiki. Pantheon site dashboards that use the UT Drupal Kit distribution should see the upstream updates available now; see the Pantheon documentation for more information on applying upstream updates.
Please review the release notes thoroughly, and always make backups of your code, files, and database before proceeding with an update!
