The eagerly awaited, Drupal 10 was released December 2022; just under a year before Drupal 7 reaches end of life. With it, comes a few improvements and changes on previous versions which we’ll explore within this blog.
Drupal 10, slated to release in December 2022, comes loaded with exciting new features. Notable changes include implementing an automated update system, replacing some jQuery uses with vanilla JavaScript in core, upgrading third-party dependencies (CKEditor 5, Symphony version 6, PHP 8.1), and removing some core modules like HAL, QuickEdit, Aggregator, RDF, and Activity Tracker. These upgrades will improve website performance and provide a strong user experience.
Improved Back-end Performance
One of the biggest changes in Drupal 10, from Drupal 9, is the upgrade of the Symfony PHP framework. Symfony 6, the new framework on the block, removes a lot of old deprecated code. Whilst that means there’s a need to update modules and temes that use dated Symfony APIs, it also means that websites will be able to take advantage of the latest framework improvements. Coupled with the newest release of PHP, PHP 8.2, back-end performance should create a much speedier user experience for all the content creators, website managers and admins.
In addition to PHP and Symfony, class autoloading has been included in Drupal 10. Autoloading is how PHP finds classes within the code and their corresponding files automatically with no manual intervention. This will improve performance by loading less files and classes as it only loads what you need.
A further performance related benefit of Drupal 10 is increased caching. Caching allows you to reuse previously retrieved or computed data as it holds on to this information rather than finding and loading it each time it’s needed. Caching helps to improve content availability and page loading speeds for website visitors by reducing network congestion.
Front-end Performance Enhancements
Talking about the old kid’s on the block, Drupal is working towards removing jQuery – something frontend developers have embraced since the late 2000s. jQuery enabled many to tackle javascript without feeling intimidated and did more with fewer lines of code.
After nearly 2 decades, Javascript has caught up and incorporates most of jQuery’s features within itself. Removing jQuery means that a lot of the hard work jQuery was once doing, is now being done within Javascript but with much more efficiency.
jQuery hasn’t fully been removed from Drupal 10, this is still in progress. Drupal’s core team is working towards the removal of easy-to-remove jQuery plugins as a priority before having a complete clear out of jQuery code.
The use of native Javascript over jQuery will mean we’ll start to see some improvements to front-end performance.
Safe and Secure
With every upgrade comes an improvement to security and Drupal 10 is no exception. One of the most significant changes is the addition of a new security report which identifies potential security vulnerabilities on your website to help you prioritise fixes on weak spots.
Other security enhancements include password salting and hashing for more secure password storage and a new setting that works to protect against clickjacking attacks.
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