5.5.0 Release Notes

Feature Updates

Completely revampled, overhauled and refined interface in the front-end and in the dashboard. Too many improvements to list here.
No more scrapbook! Simpler, streamlined, faster clipboard for copy and paste, and "Stacks" for managing global areas, with support for version control and block reordering.
Improved Installation that lets you specify your admin password, an installation language, gives you more access to sample content.
Comprehensive white-labeling support, including the ability to specify alternate install packages, an alternate logo.
Deleted pages now go into the trash for easy restore or bulk deletion.
Better Page Attributes, including the ability to define attribute sets for page attributes, including reordering. Attributes can also be used with page defaults. Much better interface for choosing page attributes.
Better marketplace integration, including the ability to read full descriptions, better search, a more attractive and fully informative informative, and the ability to purchase items directly from your website.
Beautiful new "Greek Yogurt" Theme, installed with the sample content.
New bulk commands in page search, including bulk delete, bulk move/copy, bulk design, and bulk speed settings
Page Search and User Search now have fully customizable columns
Better Anti-Spam Controls. Easy installation of new captcha libraries like reCAPTCHA (available for free download from concrete5.org) and anti-spam libraries like Akismet.

Extensive CSS and JavaScript Minification and Combination. Far fewer files and code loaded.
UI now uses sprites for better performance.
Much JavaScript is now loaded in the footer to prevent blocking.
Make Config values use one database query at startup to load, or one cache call. (Integrated and modified pull request from christiaan)
More optimized dynamic PHP function calls (thanks christiaan)
Page List is lighter weight with system pages no longer cached or calculated on the fly.
Included an optimization job that can remove all but the most recent 10 versions of pages.
Page reindexing no longer happens every time we set attribute or exit edit mode. Now instead it happens when running the index search job, or when visiting a page you have edit access to (through a silent, non-blocked reindex AJAX request.) (Note: this behavior can be modified by defining ENABLE_PROGRESSIVE_PAGE_REINDEX to false.)
Much improved performance on the better designed Form Results page.
Removed the Database class. Instead just go directly to ADODB and add our functions as stubs

Updated TinyMCE to 3.4.6, fixing bugs, improving stability, and enabling editing on iOS devices.
Dialog windows should no longer be larger than the container browser window.
Cleaner page list block template (thanks jordanlev)
Departments of France are now included when checking France as an active country (thanks marcandre)
Default mod_rewrite rules now make it so that pages like "jobs" that match directory names can be created (thanks christiaan)
Included iPhone home screen thumbnail in the site icons dashboard page.

Fixed bug where top nav optional menu items for sitemap and file manager, and the internationalization menu stopped working in 5.4.2.2.
When a page is cached still dispatch the render events and set the correct Content-Type header (thanks christiaan)
Added minor XSS protection to Dashboard message area.

Included the new concrete5 Content Export Format, an XML language for describing sample content for a website.
Global Areas can be defined in themes, allowing easy changes to sitewide content.
Dashboard blocks are now available. These blocks are only shown in the dashboard, in a special tab.
concrete5's dialog box now seamlessly wraps the jQuery UI dialog class.
Developers can now add elements/dashboard/install.php to their packages, which will show up automatically when a package is installed through the dashboard. This can include form elements, which will then be passed in a post array to the package's install() method.
Developers can now specify $pkgAllowFullContentSwap, which will give the super user the ability to fully swap out content for that which has been provided in the the new concrete5-cif format.
Upgraded to jQuery 1.7
Blocks now longer have to include add or edit templates. If they don't they'll just automatically be added and edit will be unavailable.
New Events: on_user_validate, on_user_logout, on_user_activate, on_user_deactivate, on_before_job_execute, on_job_execute, on_job_install, on_job_uninstall
Rendering a view manually from a controller should now work when rendering from within a controller found in a package (thanks jordanlev)
In the spirit of the Zend Framework, get() and post() methods can take a default parameter (which will be used if nothing is matched from the get/post)