Drupal 8, which has been in beta for a few months now, is causing plenty of excitement. In the beginning, Drupal made confident claims that it would be a major step forward:

Drupal 8 will set a new standard for ease of use, while offering countless new ways to tailor and deploy your content to the Web. Easily customize data structures, listings, and pages, and take advantage of new capabilities for displaying data on mobile devices, building APIs, and adapting to multilingual needs.

Drupal 8 has many new features, and Drupal.org also describes it as having a "leaner, meaner core," an "easier migration process from earlier versions," and "in-place content editing tools." Modules and themes will also become more powerful because of Drupal 8's adoption of OOP (Object Oriented Programming).

1. Creating a Bridge for New Developers

And speaking of the new OOP approach, this new feature might be one of the more exciting aspects of Drupal 8.

It's finally building a bridge to new developers.

Drupal 8 is much more compatible with the programming standards of PHP, and this means that new developers who may not know Drupal very well can still come in with their OOP PHP familiarity and contribute to projects.

Besides adding a wider door through which more developers can pass, Drupal 8 is improving things in all the ways you might expect in our current Age of the Smart Device:

2. Drupal 8 is Actually Mobile-First, Not Just Mobile-Friendly

Drupal 8, not surprisingly, will be mobile-first. It's a good thing too. According to SmartInsights.com, 80% of Internet users now own a smart phone, and the majority of digital media consumption is now done on mobile devices. Mobile-first is the new standard for web design, and Drupal 8 is embracing that trend. For example, Drupal 8's built-in themes are all responsive, and the administration toolbar is mobile-first.

3. File System-Based Configuration

The new management system makes it easy to switch configuration changes with greater consolidation and versatility (which translates into fewer headaches). Here's how Drupal describes it:

Drupal 8 has a whole new configuration system to store configuration data in a consistent manner. All of your site configuration from enabled modules through fields, contact categories to views, are stored with this system. The system is designed to make it much easier than prior Drupal versions to make changes, export site configuration to files, and import those changes back into the site.

4. HTML 5-Based Markup

HTML 5-based markup means, among other things, native input tools that make it simple to design for mobile. It also means that the output templates have simpler elements. It's definitely a much-needed feature. And they were thorough with it, as their initial list of HTML 5 objectives reveals:

The main goals of this initiative will be to implement HTML5 in Drupal core in a way that will:

• Have the most benefit for end users.
• Enable contributed modules and themes to evolve using HTML5.
• Allow theme developers to control where to use the new semantic elements, and opt out entirely if they so choose.
• Adding support for the new form elements to Drupal's Form API.
• Adding new semantic elements in core templates in an appropriate way.
• Adding ARIA roles to markup to improve accessibility.
• Simplifying style and script elements.
• Ensuring input filters and functions accept HTML5 elements.

5. Much Easier Editing

Drupal 8 features a new WYSIWYG configuration, two-column editing, improved draft-saving, and the ability to edit content without reverting to the full edit mode.

6. Drupal 8 Will Speak Your Language

Drupal has its eyes on the global prize, and Drupal 8 is clear evidence of this. It has powerful multilingual features: it has built-in interfaces that can translate anything in the system, it will grab software translation updated automatically from Drupal, and, according to Drupal, it can "build pages with Views language filtering and block visibility."

Powerful indeed.

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