Discover the future of web development: Craft 5 Beta now available

Craft CMS recently announced that Craft 5 is now available in beta. This update promises huge improvements in several areas, including the authoring experience, content modeling and developer experience (DX). It is the largest and most ambitious update to date.

User Interface

The control panel interface has been refined and every angle tweaked to be lighter, sharper and friendlier. There is a new set of icons, the global sidebar is collapsible and breadcrumbs are more functional.

Element Cards

Element indexes and relational fields can now display elements as maps with a large thumbnail and customizable content preview.

Two-factor authentication and Passkeys

Improve your account security with two-step verification and speed up login with a passkey based on fingerprint or facial recognition.

Accessibility Improvements

Craft 5 takes a giant leap forward in efforts to achieve WCAG AA compliance.

Improved navigation for screen readers
Content tab menus as disclosure menus
Checkboxes in element selection modals: In element selection modals, checkboxes are now shown for selectable elements.
Improved accessibility of relational fields: Relational fields now use proper list semantics.
Improved accessibility of login page and modals.
Improved accessibility of element indexes.
Users can now disable autofocus as an accessibility preference, which helps reduce barriers for users with certain cognitive limitations.

Matrix in Matrix

In Craft CMS 5 beta, the Matrix in Matrix feature has been introduced, allowing users to nest Matrix fields within other Matrix fields. This offers a significant improvement in content modeling and structuring, allowing you to create complex content hierarchies and layouts with deeper nesting of content blocks. This feature makes it possible to design more dynamic and flexible Web pages by enabling users to manage nested content structures in an intuitive and efficient way.

Decoupled entry types

Entry types are now created independently of sections, so they can be reused by multiple sections.

Multiple authors

Entries are no longer limited to having a single author. Each section now has its own "Max Authors" setting.

Administration and development

Lazy eager-loading: Eager-loading of nested elements is now easier in Craft 5. Just add .eagerly() to your nested element queries.
PHP 8.2 required: Craft 5 requires PHP 8.2, allowing plugin developers to take advantage of several language improvements since 8.0.
utf8mb4: MySQL installations now use the utf8mb4 character encoding by default, providing full emoji support.
This is an exciting time for developers and users of Craft CMS, with many new features and improvements to look forward to. It promises to transform the way we interact with content and development.

Roll out

The expected launch date of a stable Craft CMS 5 version will be March 2024. PixelDeluxe will not start implementing this upgrade to our customers until we are sure that all teething problems are out. We will keep you informed.

Interested

Want to keep up to date with developments?