⁠Chapter 3. Enhancements

Portal

794359 - Add a function to completely hide a page using check-box and date-control

Previously, page authors could not restrict access to a page even if the page was not published. Setting a publication date was possible, but may have given the impression that the page was not accessible if it was not published. The fix adds an option "Hide page when outside publishing window" to the "create page wizard", which allows authors to restrict access to the page based on publishing time. This feature is documented in the "Add a New Page using the Page Creation Wizard" section of the User Guide.

1038545 - Automatic way to update all sites at once (Portal, groups and user sites)

Previously, it was not possible for the Portal REST API to concurrently perform a single import or export operation over several portals. This forced large updates to portals to be performed individually, which created unnecessary deployment complexity. This release introduces the concept of Templates, which take the form of a Zip archive. The archive contains a file structure which permits changes to a number of portal instances in a single operation. The functionality is described in the Red Hat JBoss Portal 6.2 Development Guide "Working with Templates" section.

1038562 - Provide a restricted page editor

A customer requested the functionality to be able to control which users can perform certain operations when adding new pages or editing existing pages. To implement the request, two new kinds of permissions (Move Apps and Move Containers) applicable to Sites, Pages and Containers were added. Portal owners have fine-grained control over edit operations on Sites and Pages.

973835 - Allow customers to customize login validation and accounts expiration

Previously, the password policy for JBoss Portal was static, and could not be customized. Portal administrators could not adjust the policy based on their requirements. The fix implements a configuration option that allows an Administrator to override the default validation by specifying custom password policies through the configuration.properties file.

793726 - Review the functionality that allows Portlet Event and Public Render Parameter to be propagated to portlets on different pages.

Public render parameters in portlets are now supported through portal URLs. Public render parameters were previously shared between pages but there was no support from Portal URLs. Public render parameter can now be passed to portlets through a Portal URL.

811126 - Enable PortalRequestHandler to set Cache-control according to some configuration option

Previously, cache control could not be fine tuned. This prevented highly concurrent portals benefiting from caching. The enhancement adds an option for an administrator to set a custom cache-control string on the portal’s configuration. This allows an administrator to fine tune the cache-control HTTP header, based on the portal’s requirements. Portals without this requirement continue to have the same behavior as before.

1050065 - Validating source code generated by RHJP in W3C validator

JBoss Portal produced XHTML-type documents, some of which contained rendered markup with HTML4 legacy, or new HTML5 styles. While mixed styles are valid from a browser perspective, they are not valid according to the W3C XHTML specification. Extensive review of JBoss Portal W3C compliance has been undertaken, and the areas reviewed and rectified are described in https://access.redhat.com/articles/1128703 .

1032937 - Define navigation nodes with external links

Previously, Navigation Nodes did not offer the option to specify external links in the navigation, or open in a new window. These configuration requirements are now supported in the Portal API.

793647 - Provide a button/icon to reset the search string

Previously, the User Management screen did not offer an easy way to re-display all users after performing a search. The workaround was to clear the entry in the search box and click the Search Icon. The enhancement introduces a Clear Search button, taken from the Organization Management Page Search field, which allows the field to be easily reset.

1038554 - Configurable default view mode in page editor

Previously, the JBoss Portal page editor showed portlets rendered in blocks. A manual change to the preview was needed to show fully rendered portlets in the page editor. New flags available in configuration.properties (gatein.portal.pageEditor.defaultEditMode, gatein.portal.layoutEditor.defaultEditMode) now allow the default view mode to be set. The JBoss Portal page editor can now be configured to define which rendered mode is used for portlets.

1038569 - Site header/footer preview when editing a page

Previously, the header and footer portlets were not visible in the wire-frame or preview view of the restricted page editor. The enhancement introduces functionality that displays the header and footer portlets in preview (read-only) mode, which gives a more accurate representation of the page when editing is complete.

794468 - Gadgets which are not whitelisted in the proxy should provide a notification

Previously, if a gadget tried to use a proxy URL which was not whitelisted, the gadget would silently fail. In many cases, a log message was not recorded for the failure. This could have resulted in customers incorrectly assuming the gadget contained a bug instead of the actual reason of the gadget using an unauthorized proxy connection. The enhancement introduces an INFO level log entry describing the root cause of the failure.

1043858 - Portal API Enhancement: Compose pages

Previously, it was not possible to create and compose new portal pages using the public API. In this release, a way to create and compose pages using the public API is available. The feature is described in the Page Composition section of the Development Guide.

1103762 - Add an option to load Asynchronous Module Definition (AMD) JavaScript from a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

It is possible to load Asynchronous Module Definition (AMD) JavaScript using the require.js config’s paths field. This feature is documented in the Red Hat JBoss Portal 6.2 Administration and Configuration Guide.

808453 - Way for an admin role user to view other non-admin user's customized dashboard/pages without logging in as the non-admin user

Previously, it was not possible for an Administrator to view and verify the permissions of a standard user without logging onto the portal as the user. Changes to the Administration console now permit an Administrator to "Impersonate" any user and verify their settings as they would experience them. This feature is described in detail in the Administration and Configuration Guide.