Article audience: This article applies to GovCMS SaaS customers running Drupal 9 and seeking an upgrade to Drupal 10.
We would like to inform you about an important change coming to the Drupal content management system. As part of an ongoing commitment to enhance the user experience and maintain the highest security standards, Drupal is transitioning from CKEditor 4 to CKEditor 5.
Why is the Upgrade Necessary?
The upgrade to CKEditor 5 brings several improvements that are critical for optimal website performance and security. These improvements include enhanced speed, stronger security measures, and the addition of new features designed to make the editing experience more user-friendly.
In addition to these improvements, CKEditor 4 is set to reach its end of life (EOL) on 31 December 2023. At the end of Q2 2023, CKSource, the maintainer of CKEditor 4, will discontinue security coverage for the editor. As a result, upgrading to CKEditor 5 is a necessary step to ensure the continued support and security of your website.
Benefits of CKEditor 5
Enhanced User Experience (UX): CKEditor 5 provides a superior user experience with a focus on usability and intuitive design. Features like intuitive image insertion, automated uploading, resizing, and creation of different image sizes for responsive design, simple linking processes, auto-formatting for lists and inline styles, a persistently visible toolbar, and easy inline styling all contribute to an improved UX.
Customisability and Extensibility: CKEditor 5 offers powerful customisation and extensibility options. The core is open for extensions and reuse, allowing developers to create any type of editor with any type of toolbars or balloons. The new data model and model-view-controller (MVC) architecture make the conversation between model and view highly customisable.
Improved Data Model: CKEditor 5 introduces a more efficient data model, which is a part of the MVC architecture of the editing engine. This data model is defined and controlled with pure JavaScript, providing more control over how the data is output and the format in which it's produced. This structure is normalised and optimised for complex data management operations, which makes implementing algorithms such as Operational Transformation and real-time collaboration possible.
Modern, Modular Implementation: CKEditor 5 has been rewritten in ES6, using the power of modules. It provides all the necessary tools to easily integrate with modern applications and technologies, such as Angular, React, Node.js, npm, and others. It also assures the quality of the code with 100% code coverage at each level of the architecture.
Real-Time Collaboration: CKEditor 5, with the collaboration services provided by the CKEditor Collaboration Server, makes it extremely easy to bring real-time collaboration features inside any application. This feature is particularly useful for teams working on the same content simultaneously.
Future-Proofing: CKEditor 5 is the default editor for new Drupal installations and is necessary for the transition to Drupal 10. By upgrading to CKEditor 5, you are future-proofing your website, ensuring it stays compatible with the latest Drupal versions, and benefits from ongoing updates and improvements.
Timeline of Changes
Drupal has already begun integrating CKEditor 5 into its core as of version 9.5, although no automatic changes are made to existing sites during the upgrade process. CKEditor 4 will continue to be a part of Drupal 9, but it has been mirrored to a contrib CKEditor project and will be removed entirely in Drupal 10.
For new Drupal installations, CKEditor 5 is already the default editor. However, when existing Drupal sites are updated to Drupal 9.5, CKEditor 4 remains the default editor unless manually changed.
What You Need to Do
If you have existing Drupal sites, you'll need to prepare for this transition. GovCMS released the Drupal 9 (D9) distribution update on Monday, 22 May 2023, which included CKEditor 5 in the distribution. However, CKEditor 4 will remain the default text editor for your project unless you request a change.
To become familiar with CKEditor 5 and test its features, you can request it to be enabled via a service desk ticket. This will allow you to continue testing in a feature branch. If you're comfortable with CKEditor 5 and want to streamline your upgrade to Drupal 10, you can enable CKEditor 5 as your default text editor now. The GovCMS team prepared a series of events and slides for you to learn about CKEditor 5.
To learn more about CKEditor 5, including its enhanced user experience, customisation and extensibility, new data model, and modern implementation, please refer to the CKEditor 5 documentation or visit the CKEditor 5 GitHub repository.