New in Craft CMS 2.3

Content editing directly on index pages

Entries, categories, files, and users can now be edited directly from their index pages. No more drilling down into individual edit pages for every small change. A modal opens right in the list.

This is particularly useful for quick tasks like changing an entry's status, replacing a file, deleting old categories, or editing several entries at once. Editors who manage a lot of content will save a lot of time.

There's a new option called "Save as a new entry" in the Save menu, so you can quickly make a copy or variation of an existing entry.

Matrix, revamped

The Matrix field got a major update. There's now a menu on the side that lets you reorder blocks, expand or collapse them, enable or disable them, and delete several at once. You can also add instruction text to each block to guide editors.

You no longer have to name every block type, which makes creating new ones easier. This change made Matrix much more practical for building complex layouts in everyday work.

Scalability

Several areas of the control panel have been updated to handle hundreds or thousands of entries, categories, users, and assets more effectively:

• Structures and categories now have the same tabular index view as channels
• Category fields have been rewritten for better scalability
• The "Parent Entry" and "Author" fields now use element selector modals instead of dropdown menus

Before version 2.3, the control panel could be slow with large amounts of data. Now it runs much more smoothly.

Transferring content when deleting a user

Now, when you delete a user, you can transfer all their content to someone else automatically. Before, you had to do this by hand, which was time-consuming if the user had a lot of entries.

Five new languages

The control panel is now available in five more languages: Simplified Chinese, Hebrew, Korean, Spanish, and Swedish. In total, Craft now supports 15 languages.

Plugin developers

With the new Element Actions API, plugins can add their own actions to the index pages for entries, categories, assets, and users. There are also new hooks for customizing the table columns on those pages.

My take

Craft 2.3 had been cooking for six months. Inline editing, a revamped Matrix, better performance under load, five new languages. Six months of work, and it shows. Editors noticed.