When using a queryset to render a list of images, you can now use the `prefetch_renditions()` queryset method to prefetch the renditions needed for rendering with a single extra query, similar to `prefetch_related`. If you have many renditions per image, you can also call it with filters as arguments - `prefetch_renditions("fill-700x586", "min-600x400")` - to fetch only the renditions you intend on using for a smaller query. For long lists of images, this can provide a significant boost to performance. See [](prefetching_image_renditions) for more examples. This feature was developed by Tidiane Dia and Karl Hobley.
* Character count: The character count is displayed underneath the editor, live-updating as you type. This counts the length of the text, not of any formatting.
* Paste to auto-create links: To add a link from your copy-paste clipboard, select text and paste the URL.
* Text shortcuts undo: The editor normally converts text starting with `1. ` to a list item. It’s now possible to un-do this change and keep the text as-is. This works for all Markdown-style shortcuts.
* RTL support: The editor’s UI now displays correctly in right-to-left languages.
* Focus-aware placeholder: The editor’s placeholder text will now follow the user’s focus, to make it easier to understand where to type in long fields.
* Empty heading highlight: The editor now highlights empty headings and list items by showing their type (“Heading 3”) as a placeholder, so content is less likely to be published with empty headings.
Wagtail’s page preview is now available in a side panel within the page editor. This preview auto-updates as users type, and can display the page in three different viewports: mobile, tablet, desktop. The existing preview functionality is still present, moved inside the preview panel rather than at the bottom of the page editor. The auto-update delay can be configured with the `WAGTAIL_AUTO_UPDATE_PREVIEW_INTERVAL` setting. This feature was developed by Sage Abdullah.
* Convert various pages in the documentation to Markdown (Khanh Hoang, Vu Pham, Daniel Kirkham, LB (Ben) Johnston, Thiago Costa de Souza, Benedict Faw, Noble Mittal, Sævar Öfjörð Magnússon, Sandeep M A, Stefano Silvestri)
* Use `FormData` instead of jQuery's `form.serialize` when editing documents or images just added so that additional fields can be better supported (Stefan Hammer)
* Add informational Codecov status checks for GitHub CI pipelines (Tom Hu)
* Introduce JavaScript chooser module, including a SearchController class which encapsulates the standard pattern of re-rendering the results panel in response to search queries and pagination (Matt Westcott)
* Upgrade notification, shown to admins on the dashboard if Wagtail is out of date, will now link to the release notes for the closest minor branch instead of the latest patch (Tibor Leupold)
* Upgrade notification can now be configured to only show updates when there is a new LTS available via `WAGTAIL_ENABLE_UPDATE_CHECK = 'lts'` (Tibor Leupold)
* Adopt new breadcrumbs on the page explorer (listing) view and the page chooser modal, remove legacy breadcrumbs code for move page as no longer used (Paarth Agarwal)
* Deprecate the usage and documentation of the `wagtail.contrib.modeladmin.menus.SubMenu` class, provide a warning if used directing developers to use `wagtail.admin.menu.Menu` instead (Matt Westcott)
* Ensure `aria-label` is not set on locale selection dropdown within page chooser modal as it was a duplicate of the button contents (LB (Ben Johnston))
* Revise the `ModelAdmin` title column behaviour to only link to 'edit' if the user has the correct permissions, fallback to the 'inspect' view or a non-clickable title if needed (Stefan Hammer)
### Changes to `Page.serve()` and `Page.serve_preview()` methods
As part of making previews available to non-page models, the `serve_preview()` method has been decoupled from the `serve()` method and extracted into the `PreviewableMixin` class. If you have overridden the `serve()` method in your page models, you will likely need to override `serve_preview()`, `get_preview_template()`, and/or `get_preview_context()` methods to handle previews accordingly. Alternatively, you can also override the `preview_modes` property to return an empty list to disable previews.
### `base_url_path` keyword argument added to AdminURLHelper
The `wagtail.contrib.modeladmin.helpers.AdminURLHelper` class now accepts a `base_url_path` keyword argument on its constructor. Custom subclasses of this class should be updated to accept this keyword argument.
Safari 13 will no longer be officially supported as of this release, this deviates the current support for the last 3 version of Safari by a few months and was required to add better support for RTL languages.
The `PageRevision` model has been replaced with a generic `Revision` model. If you use the `PageRevision` model in your code, make sure that:
* Creation of `PageRevision` objects should be updated to create `Revision` objects using the page's `id` as the `object_id`, the default `Page` model's content type as the `base_content_type`, and the page's specific content type as the `content_type`.
* Queries that use the `PageRevision.objects` manager should be updated to use the `Revision.page_revisions` manager.
*`Revision` queries that use `Page.id` should be updated to cast the `Page.id` to a string before using it in the query (e.g. by using `str()` or `Cast("page_id", output_field=CharField())`).
*`Page` queries that use `PageRevision.page_id` should be updated to cast the `Revision.object_id` to an integer before using it in the query (e.g. by using `int()` or `Cast("object_id", output_field=IntegerField())`).
* Access to `PageRevision.page` should be updated to `Revision.content_object`.
If you maintain a package across multiple Wagtail versions that includes a model with a `ForeignKey` to the `PageRevision` model, you can create a helper function to correctly resolve the model depending on the installed Wagtail version, for example:
### `Page.get_latest_revision_as_page` renamed to `Page.get_latest_revision_as_object`
The `Page.get_latest_revision_as_page` method has been renamed to `Page.get_latest_revision_as_object`. The old name still exists for backwards-compatibility, but calling it will raise a `RemovedInWagtail50Warning`.
Custom choosers should no longer use `wagtail.admin.widgets.chooser.AdminChooser` which has been replaced with `wagtail.admin.widgets.chooser.BaseChooser`.
### `explorer_breadcrumb` template tag has been renamed to `breadcrumbs`, `move_breadcrumb` has been removed
The `explorer_breadcrumb` template tag is not documented, however if used it will need to be renamed to `breadcrumbs` and the `url_name` is now a required arg.
The `move_breadcrumb` template tag is no longer used and has been removed.
### `wagtail.contrib.modeladmin.menus.SubMenu` is deprecated
The `wagtail.contrib.modeladmin.menus.SubMenu` class should no longer be used for constructing submenus of the admin sidebar menu. Instead, import `wagtail.admin.menu.Menu` and pass the list of menu items as the `items` keyword argument.
### URL route names for document and snippet apps have changed
If your code contains references to URL route names within the `wagtaildocs` or `wagtailsnippets` namespaces, these should be updated as follows:
*`wagtaildocs:chooser` is now `wagtaildocs_chooser:choose`
*`wagtaildocs:chooser_results` is now `wagtaildocs_chooser:choose_results`
*`wagtaildocs:document_chosen` is now `wagtaildocs_chooser:chosen`
*`wagtaildocs:chooser_upload` is now `wagtaildocs_chooser:create`
*`wagtailsnippets:list`, `wagtailsnippets:list_results`, `wagtailsnippets:add`, `wagtailsnippets:edit`, `wagtailsnippets:delete-multiple`, `wagtailsnippets:delete`, `wagtailsnippets:usage`, `wagtailsnippets:history`: These now exist in a separate `wagtailsnippets_{app_label}_{model_name}` namespace for each snippet model, and no longer take `app_label` and `model_name` as arguments.
*`wagtailsnippets:choose`, `wagtailsnippets:choose_results`, `wagtailsnippets:chosen`: These now exist in a separate `wagtailsnippetchoosers_{app_label}_{model_name}` namespace for each snippet model, and no longer take `app_label` and `model_name` as arguments.
As part of the introduction of the new live preview panel, we have changed the `WAGTAIL_AUTO_UPDATE_PREVIEW` setting to be on (`True`) by default. This can still be turned off by setting it to `False`. The `WAGTAIL_AUTO_UPDATE_PREVIEW_INTERVAL` setting has been introduced for sites willing to reduce the performance cost of the live preview without turning it off completely.
The page explorer listings now use Wagtail’s new slim header, replacing the previous large teal header. The parent page’s metadata and related actions are now available within the “Info” side panel, while the majority of buttons are now available under the Actions dropdown in the header, identically to the page create/edit forms.
Customising which actions are available and adding extra actions is still possible, but has to be done with the [`register_page_header_buttons`](register_page_header_buttons) hook, rather than [`register_page_listing_buttons`](register_page_listing_buttons) and [`register_page_listing_more_buttons`](register_page_listing_more_buttons). Those hooks still work as-is to define actions for each page within the listings.
