CKEditor 4.5 Beta Released!

CKEditor 4.5 Beta introduces an entire spectrum of new features and improvements and is the biggest release since CKEditor 4.0. The CKEditor team has been working on this ground-breaking release for the last couple of months and we are extremely proud to be able to finally deliver the beta version to the general public!

New Features in a Nutshell

With an astounding number of 103 tickets, 25k new lines of code and 8 totally new plugins it will be impossible to describe all the goodies that this release introduces. Since we are introducing so many exciting new features at once, we are releasing a beta version first to let everyone familiarize with them before the final release (that is due in a few weeks). We encourage you to read the changelog for all details and here goes a short excerpt of what CKEditor 4.5 beta is all about:

• There are new end-user related features like support for uploading dropped and pasted images, embedding media and support for nesting widgets (inserting widgets into other widget’s nested editables).

• There are new toolbar configurators and a redefined editor sample that from now on will be shipped with every CKEditor installation package. These tools are aimed at simplifying the editor integration and configuration.

• There are useful components like notifications, notification aggregator, file tools and upload widget which will allow developers to build new, rich features.

• There are low level APIs like editor.getSelectedHtml() and a set of static methods in CKEDITOR.plugins.widget.

• There are uncountable other changes and improvements, many of them related to integrating CKEditor with the native clipboard.

• And last but not least, we have basic support for Microsoft Edge browser (also known as Project Spartan), although due to Spartan’s instability at the moment, we could not test the editor properly yet. We will work on remaining small glitches in the minor releases following CKEditor 4.5.

Again, the changelog is massive, but we are sure that it is worth reading and more importantly, it is definitely worth familiarizing yourself with the new features!

Uploading Pasted and Dropped Images

Uploading dropped images is just one aspect of an entirely new set of clipboard APIs and features like the upload widget, data transfer facade or notification aggregator. Thanks to all of them it was not only possible to implement uploading pasted and dropped images, but it will also be possible to implement custom handlers for other file types as well as easily create a customized upload image feature.

Note: The linked sample relies on CKFinder, our in-house file manager, to provide the file upload functionality. CKEditor itself does not include any server-side code that would handle file uploads automatically so you always need a file browser (like CKFinder or your own one) to provide the missing bits.

Embedding Media

CKEditor 4.5 Beta introduced two new widgets that handle embedding resources such as images, videos, tweets, or maps hosted by other services. By default the two plugins use the Iframely proxy service which supports over 1715 content providers such as YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, Instagram, Imgur, SlideShare, or Google Maps, but you can configure the widgets to use another proxy service of your choice.

Check out the Media Embed and Semantic Media Embed plugins live in action on the CKEditor 4.5 Beta samples page and read more about them in the documentation.

New Sample and Toolbar Configurators

The old set of samples shipped with every CKEditor package was replaced with a shiny new single-page sample. This change concluded a long term plan that started from introducing the CKEditor Examples and the CKEditor Functionality Overview section in the documentation which essentially redefined the old samples.

Additionally, two toolbar configurators with live previews were introduced. They will be shipped with every CKEditor package and are meant to help in configuring toolbar layouts. This is a huge step forward in making CKEditor customization as easy and accessible to anyone as possible!

You can check out the new samples and toolbar configurators here!

What’s Next?

With all the features ready and the CKEditor 4.5 Beta released we switched to polishing the new functionality. We want to make sure that everything works 100% right, so we are not defining a final release date just yet. Stay tuned and check out our progress in the CKEditor Weekly series or through our social channels (Twitter, Facebook. See also the CKEditor 4.5.0 milestone on our tracker to understand what further changes are coming into the final release!

Download

Note: Because CKEditor 4.5 introduces a whole lot of new code, we have decided to release a beta version first. This will give everyone time to learn the new features and try them out.

Download CKEditor 4.5 Beta now (Standard + all plugins)!

This beta release is not available in CKBuilder. It is however also available in a dedicated section of the CKEditor Download page.

Try It Out!

If you do not want to install the new version, the CKEditor 4.5 Beta samples are available for everyone to play with.

License

CKEditor is available in Open Source and Commercial licenses. Full details can be found on our license page.

Reporting Issues

Please use the CKEditor development website to report issues and suggestions through tickets.

Support

Community support is available through Stack Overflow. Visit the support page for additional options.

Feedback Needed!

We are really enthusiastic about the new CKEditor version and its numerous new features. We will be happy to hear from you and thankful for any suggestions that will help us improve this feature and tailor it to your expectations.