Print

1.1.  Release History for Sitecore CMS 6.6 and DMS

Some of the issues described on this page contain internal reference numbers. You can use these reference numbers when communicating with Sitecore about a particular issue or feature.

As part of our commitment to continually improving our software and listening to our customer’s feedback, Sitecore regularly releases new versions of our CMS product. Each release undergoes careful quality assurance procedures to minimize the number of issues.

April 11, 2014

Released Sitecore CMS and DMS 6.6.0 rev. 140410 (6.6.0 Service Pack-2, originally released as 6.6.0 Update-8).

Note: This is a product Service Pack. Sitecore recommends customers to install service packs for any feature release that the customer has installed. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

For instructions on how to download and install this release, please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page.

Highlights

The main highlights of this update are:

• Security vulnerability fixes to make Sitecore more secure.
• Support for running the Sitecore user interfaces in Internet Explorer 11.

System requirements

• Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 is supported by CMS 6.6 Service Pack-2, originally released as 6.6 Update-8.

Issues resolved

• Potential security vulnerabilities backported from 7.1 Update-2:
  • Sitecore Corp. would like to give credit to Richard Turnbull at NCC Group for the discovery of the following vulnerability and for his cooperation:
    Authenticated users could potentially misuse the Package Upload wizard to upload zip files to the system, even if they did not have access to the Installation Wizard. This has been fixed. (403551, 403900)
  • The xmlcontrol did not perform sufficient validation of the control name to render. This could be used to make the xmlcontrol load iframes or images. This has been fixed. (403892, 403900)
• A number of IE11 issues have been fixed, including (but not limited to):
  • When you clicked the Start button, the Start menu did not open. This happened in Internet Explorer 11 if you were using non-Compatibility View mode. This has been fixed. (402796)
  • The Content Editor ribbon displayed multiple tabs on the ribbon at the same time. This happened in Internet Explorer 11 if you were using non-Compatibility View mode. This has been fixed. (402801)
  • The Page Editor dialogs appeared unresponsive when using Internet Explorer 11 in non-Compatibility View mode. This has been fixed by making Internet Explorer switch to IE10 mode for the Page Editor. (402809)

December 13, 2013

Released Sitecore CMS and DMS 6.6.0 rev. 131211 (6.6.0 Update-7).

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends that you upgrade to this release if the fixes included in this release meet the specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include new functionality or specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

For instructions on how to download and install this release, please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page.

Highlights

The main highlights of this update are:

• To improve the performance in solutions with a large number of items, versions, or languages, you can now configure the system so it does not populate database caches during indexing. In addition, the logic for determining whether media items are file based has been reworked to improve performance in these solutions.
• The Sitecore authentication provider did not support session time-outs.
• A performance issue has been fixed that affected virtual users when using the Sitecore clients.
• Some issues related to dynamic image scaling have been fixed where the system did not resize the image to the correct dimensions after you changed the image size of an image in the Rich Text Editor or in the properties dialog box for an image field.
• A considerable number of issues related to the Content Editor have been fixed, including:
  • The item:write and language:write permissions were not always respected.
  • The logic for checking whether you had permissions to remove a version was not consistent across the entire system.
  • When a user performed certain operations, new item versions were sometimes unnecessarily created.
• A number of issues related to the Sitecore serialization event handlers have been fixed.

Improvements

• Performance
  • A new web.config setting named Indexing.DisableDatabaseCaches allows you to specify whether to populate database caches with data during indexing. When set to true, Sitecore indexes every version and language of the items as usual, but does not cache this item data in the database caches. This can reduce the amount of memory used for cached data and improve performance, especially in solutions with a large number of items, versions, or languages. (396295, 396287)
  • The logic for determining whether media items are file-based has been reworked to improve performance, especially when the media is stored in the database. Previously, the MediaData.HasContent check would often read all language versions of the item, thereby degrading performance and memory usage, especially in solutions with a large number of items, versions, or languages. (396294)
• Easier security hardening
  • A new web.config setting named Login.DisableAutoComplete allows you to disable autocomplete on the Sitecore login forms on the /sitecore/login/default.html and /sitecore/admin/login.html pages. This is useful, for example, if you do not want user names to be disclosed when editors log into Sitecore on shared/public computers. (357648)
  • A new web.config setting named Login.DisableRememberMe allows you to disable the "Remember Me" checkbox on the login page. If you disable the "Remember Me" checkbox, any existing "Remember Me" cookies will be ignored, and users will have to log in again. (375077)
• Security API
  • A new attribute named ignoredDomains has been added to the switching profile provider. When using multiple profile providers, this attribute can be used to specify a comma-separated list of domains that should not be handled by the default profile provider (a provider that has a domains="*" attribute). The ignoredDomains attribute is useful if you use the User Manager in Sitecore to create user accounts stored in a domain with a different profile provider. In such a scenario, you must add the custom domain(s) to the ignoredDomans attribute to avoid a duplicate of the user's profile information being stored in the default profile provider as well as the profile provider associated with the user's domain. (388392, 378374, 335128)
  • Two new attributes named ignoredUserDomains and allowedUserDomains have been added to the switching role provider. When using multiple role providers, these attributes can be used to specify a comma-separated list of domains on each role provider to define which domains the role provider should handle. The attributes are mutually exclusive. If you specify a value for both of these attributes on a provider node, an exception is thrown when the switching role provider is initialized. (388258)
• Setup.exe installation program
  • The setup.exe has been updated with a new EULA, including a note that the license agreement is not intended to in any way modify or replace your existing agreement if you are an existing or new licensee with a valid agreement to use the Sitecore Software. (390048, 390176)
• Unsubscribing from events
  • A new overload for Event.Unsubscribe has been introduced which takes a third parameter that indicates that only the particular handler that is passed to the method should be unsubscribed, instead of unsubscribing all handlers of the same type. The existing overloads continue to unsubscribe all handlers of the same type. (387287)

Breaking changes

• To support .NET 4.5, the protected field "screen" in the Sitecore.Shell.Applications.Preview.SimulatedDevicePreview.Layouts.Default class has been changed from HtmlGenericControl to HtmlContainerControl. (387760)
  • This should not affect customers, unless they have overridden the class.

Deprecated classes, methods, and properties

• The Sitecore.Platform.Psapi class that exposes an old WIN API has been deprecated. It is recommended to use the classes in the System.Diagnostics namespace instead. (394079)
• The Sitecore.MainUtil.GetWorkingSetSize() method has been deprecated in favor of a new Sitecore.MainUtil.WorkingSetSize property. (394079)

Issues resolved

• Engagement Analytics
  • The RaiseSessionEndEvent would sometimes be called for sessions without Analytics data. This caused an unhandled InvalidOperationException error to be written to the application event log with the following message: "Cannot process without current visit." This has been fixed so the processor is no longer called for such sessions. (369630, 369306)
• Content Editor
  • When you opened the Reset Fields dialog box for an item, it would display warnings related to publishing, workflows, and so on at the top of the dialog box. This has been fixed so now the Reset Fields dialog box does not display these warnings. (360325, 360174)
  • When editing items with Standard Fields enabled, in some scenarios, the Content Editor would copy the presentation details from the standard values in the template and store them directly on the item, even when the user had not changed the presentation details. This could occur after enabling the Personalization Section in the Content Editor. (388441)
  • When you clicked the Markup button on the Review tab in the ribbon, an error message would appear informing you: "This document cannot be checked. No User-Agent header found!" This has been fixed by sending an appropriate User-Agent header when calling the W3C HTML Validator service. (384527)
  • When you tried to edit or perform any operations on items, a SqlServer error related to the SqlProxyDataProvider would occur if any of the Sitecore databases pointed to a database that was unreachable. This has been fixed so the SqlProxyDataProvider no longer fails if there is a database-related exception or a database is unreachable. In addition, the provider no longer issues requests to databases that do not have proxies enabled. (313476, 388133, 385657)
  • When you used copy/paste to duplicate items that were in a final workflow state, the workflow states on the copies were not reset. This has been fixed. (383894, 370650)
  • The Clone button, on the ribbon, on the Configure tab, was enabled, even if the item did not have any versions in the current language. This has been fixed so now the button is disabled in this situation. (361335)
  • The Change button, on the ribbon, on the Security tab, in the Ownership group, was enabled, even if the item did not have any versions in the current language. This has been fixed. (387014)
  • When you browsed items in the Content Editor using a non-administrator account and you had Standard Fields enabled, an AccessDeniedException error would sometimes appear inside the Security field control. This has been fixed by displaying the field in a read-only mode as well as disabling the "Assign Security" button above the field if you do have sufficient permissions to change security assignments. (351238, 383713)
• Content Editor issues related to item:write and language:write permissions
  • If you selected an item that you did not have item:write permissions for, a content editor warning would appear with an "Add a new version" link (although clicking the link did not do anything). This only occurred if the selected item did not have any versions in the current language. This has been fixed so now the "Add a new version" link does not appear in this situation. (383995)
  • You could create new items using the Insert panel, even if you did not have language:write permissions to the current language. This has been fixed by hiding the insert options from the Home tab and Developer tab in this situation. (378462)
  • A number of buttons on the ribbon that modified the shared fields on the item, such as changing the icon or configuring presentation details, did not check whether you had language:write permissions, and executing them could cause an empty version to be created in the current content language (although you could not see this new version yourself). This has been fixed so these buttons are now disabled when you do not have language:write permissions. (384455)
  • A number of commands did not check whether you had language:write permissions and allowed you to create new items in this situation. This has been fixed for the Copy To, Duplicate, Paste, and Clone commands, and the commands are now disabled if you do not have language:write permissions. (384454)
• Content Editor issues related to removing versions
  • The logic for checking whether you had permissions to remove a version was not consistent across the entire system. This has been fixed so that in order to delete a version, you must have item read/write/delete permissions, language read/write permissions, as well as workflow state delete permissions. (384896)
  • In the Content Editor, the Remove button on the Versions tab was enabled, even if you did not have delete permissions for the item. This has been fixed. (384896)
  • If you did not have permissions to delete one of the versions of an item, the system did not allow you to delete any other versions from the item. This has been fixed. (351397)
• Unnecessary versions created
  • If an item did not have a version in the default language, the system would create an empty version when a user performed any of the following operations that modified shared fields: (387014)
    • Changing the icon for the item.
    • Configuring custom editors, the contextual tab, the context menu, or the tree node style for the item.
    • Changing or resetting the insert options for the item.
    • Changing the template for the item.
    • Hiding or making the item visible.
    • Modifying or resetting presentation details.
• Edit frames and Field Editor windows
  • The "Edit the item fields" button on edit frames was enabled, even if you did not have "Item Write" permissions to the related item. This has been fixed. (357513)
  • The Field Editor allowed you to edit fields that you did not have "Field Write" permission for, although the changes were not applied. This has been fixed so now the Field Editor disables editing of such fields. (357513)
• Page Editor
  • When you clicked the device simulator button in the ribbon in Preview mode, a JavaScript error would sometimes occur. This has been fixed. (386787)
  • [Internet Explorer] When running IE8/IE9/IE10 in Compatibility View mode and using the Page Editor, media links from Rich Text fields would sometimes have the current site's host name added to the URL when saving the page, thereby making the URLs absolute instead of relative. This has been fixed so that these media links remain relative. (387883)
• Dynamic image scaling
  • When you changed the image size of an image in the Rich Text Editor, the system did not update the image URL to dynamically resize the image to the new dimensions. This could result in the image being scaled by the browser instead of being scaled server-side, which often led to low quality images and in some cases caused large images to be served to the browser. This has been fixed both when you resize images using the Image Properties dialog box and when you use the mouse. (354463, 347322, 360190)
  • After you specified custom image dimensions in the properties for an Image field, the <sc:image> web control did not add the appropriate query string parameters to the image src. This resulted in the image being scaled by the browser instead of being scaled on the server-side. This has been fixed so the <sc:image> web control now outputs the appropriate query string parameters. (339889)
  • The <sc:image> web control did not support the AllowStretch attribute. This has been fixed so the web control now adds the corresponding "as" query string parameter if you specify an AllowStretch attribute on the web control. (318802)
• Rich Text Editor
  • [Internet Explorer] When inserting media links or when inserting other relative links in the Rich Text Editor, the inserted link would sometimes be prefixed by the URL of the Rich Text Editor control. This has been fixed. (389158)
  • When moving links in Rich Text fields using drag-and-drop, the target link could break due to Sitecore adding the following path to the beginning of the link URL: "http://hostname/sitecore/shell/Controls/Rich%20Text%20Editor/". This has been fixed. (393512)
  • [Internet Explorer] When switching between Design and HTML mode in the Rich Text Editor, the editor would sometimes add the local host name to relative links, thereby changing them to absolute links. This has been fixed. (389708)
  • When you clicked the Upload button in the Document Manager in the Rich Text Editor, an error message was displayed. This has been fixed by hiding the Upload button in the Document Manager. (370572)
    Note: This issue reappeared in the 7.2 Initial Release. The button was therefore removed again in 7.2 Update-2 (ref. no. 407100). [Added May 30, 2014]
• Scaling and multi-instance setups
  • After you renamed an item and saved it, the item would still be available using the old item path on other instances. This also affected publishing renamed items. This has been fixed so now the path cache is cleared correctly in these scenarios. (377145)
  • The event queue could fail to process events if one or more databases were unreachable. This has been fixed so the event queue does not stop processing events from other databases when one or more databases are unreachable. In addition, to make troubleshooting easier, the EventProvider now writes a more descriptive error to the log file in this situation. (363942)
• Item cloning
  • Clones only appeared in gray in the content tree if they had versions in the current content language. This has been fixed so now clones appear gray in the content tree even if the clone does not have any versions in the current content language. (371353)
• Audit information
  • When you deleted a security role, the audit information in the Sitecore log file would indicate that the role had been deleted by the sitecore\Anonymous account. This has been fixed so the audit record now contains the correct account name. (376652, 376864)
  • When you created a new security role, the system did not log audit information about the action. This has been fixed. (376652)
  • When you serialized, updated, or reverted items, users, or roles using the UI, the system did not log audit information about the action. This has been fixed. (375086)
• Security API
  • The Sitecore authentication provider did not support sliding session time-outs for persistent logins. The session expiration would not be extended when the user was still active. This has been fixed. (340726, 344867)
  • The Sitecore authentication provider did not support session time-outs (sliding or non-sliding) for non-persistent logins, for example when you used the standard <asp:login> control to log in users. This has been fixed so such sessions now respect the configured session time-out. (344867)
  • When virtual users logged in, they would experience slow performance when using the Sitecore clients, and the load on the database server would increase. This happened because the Sitecore RolesInRoles provider called the underlying security provider each time the user.IsInRole(string) method was called. This has been fixed so the system now uses the RolesInRoles provider cache. (387287)
  • The GetCustomProperty and SetCustomProperty methods did not work correctly for virtual users. An empty string would always be returned. This has been fixed. (390726)
• Sitecore.Search API
  • The IndexingProvider could become stuck when retrieving records from the history table, causing reindexing to slow down or stop completely. This occurred if there were thousands of records to retrieve from the history table since the last index update, for example, when importing data from an external system and creating thousands of items in a short time. This has been fixed by optimizing the code that retrieves records from the history engine. In addition, the system now only updates the Properties table with the time of the last index update once, rather than updating it each time an item from the queue has been indexed. (392686)
• Link provider
  • In 6.6 Update-6, the StripLanguage processor in the <preprocessRequest> pipeline was changed so that it always parsed languages from the URL, even when languageEmbedding was set to "never". This caused problems for some customers, so a new web.config setting named Languages.AlwaysStripLanguage has been introduced. You can set this setting to "false" to return to the earlier behavior. (390434)
  • When generating links, the Link Provider sometimes changed the host name for links to the targetHostName for the site, even if the link pointed to an item in the current site. This could happened if the hostName attribute contained multiple host names separated with a pipe ("|") character. This has been fixed so the host name is not changed for such links. (382388)
• Media API
  • The MediaUrlOptions.Empty property reused and returned the same object to all callers. This could cause negative side effects if any callers modified the object. This has been fixed so the method now always returns a new object. (395299)
• Renderings and layouts
  • If you created a custom sublayout template that inherited from the Sublayout template, the system did not treat sublayouts that used the custom template as regular sublayouts. This has been fixed. (375970)
  • If you used the template builder to modify a template without having language:write permissions to the current language, an UnauthorizedAccessException error would appear when you tried to save the template. This has been fixed so now the template builder does not allow you to make changes if you do not have write permissions to the current language. (386240)
  • If you used the template builder to modify a template without having language:write permissions to the current language, you could use the commands on the Builder Options ribbon to modify the template. This has been fixed so now these commands are disabled in this situation. (384457)
• Serialization
  • When you reverted a serialized media item, a new copy of the media blob would be added to Blobs table in the database. This has been fixed so now the system reuses the previous blob. (377487)
  • After configuring the system to use the Sitecore serialization event handlers, running a full publishing operation failed to complete. This happened because of an unhandled exception error that caused the ASP.NET worker process to terminate. This has been fixed. (374386)
  • When you deleted an item, the Sitecore serialization event handlers could fail with an unhandled exception error that caused the ASP.NET worker process to terminate and restart. This has been fixed. (380520, 384308, 384282)
  • When you renamed or moved an item, the Sitecore serialization event handlers did not update the serialized files correctly. This has been fixed. (384940, 384946)
  • When you copied or duplicated items, the Sitecore serialization event handlers did not serialize the copies. This has been fixed. (384824)
  • When you created an item with a long name, the Sitecore serialization event handlers failed with an exception error, and the serialization file was not deleted. This has been fixed. (383993)
  • When you renamed, moved, or deleted items with long items names, the Sitecore serialization event handlers did not serialize the changes correctly and did not clean up the folder structure with serialized files correctly. This has been fixed. (386174, 386159, 386154, 386296)
• Performance counters
  • After setting the Counters.Enabled web.config setting to false, the system would still try to access some performance counters. This could lead to warnings in the log file on systems where Sitecore did not have access to the performance counters. This has been fixed. (394079)
• Multibrowser support
  • [Internet Explorer] When you used IE9 or later to edit the contents of a Word field, the changes to the field value were not saved. This has been fixed. (361360)
  • [Chrome] If you tried to use any of the Sitecore clients in Chrome on a non-English OS, the UI could become unresponsive and a JavaScript could appear in the console with a message similar to: "Uncaught SyntaxError: Failed to execute 'setRequestHeader' on 'XMLHttpRequest': 'Thu Nov 14 2013 18:27:20 GMT+0900 …' is not a valid HTTP header field value." This has been fixed. (399895)
  • [Chrome] When using the "classic" non-Flash upload, the upload pop-up window did not close after the upload had completed. (388220)
  • [Firefox] The "Do you want to save changes" dialog box in the Page Editor refreshed the page before displaying the dialog box, thereby discarding your changes. This has been fixed so now the page is not reloaded before the prompt is displayed. (380203, 386518)
  • [Firefox] When clicking an item in the content tree, the browser would scroll to the top of the content tree after loading the item. This has been fixed. (382186, 381218)
  • [Firefox] When you tried to upload files, an ItemNullException error could appear if you were working in a different database than the master database. This has been fixed for both using Flash upload and the "classic" non-Flash upload. (387785, 396383)
• Update Installation Wizard
  • [Backported from the 7.0 Initial Release] After installing .NET Framework 4.5, the Update Package Installation Wizard could fail when trying to install an update package. The wizard would display a "Parser Error" and the following message: "The base class includes the field 'logArea', but its type (System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlGenericControl) is not compatible with the type of control (System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlIframe)." This occurred if the targetFramework attribute on the <compilation> node was set to "4.5" in the web.config file. This has been fixed. (377274, 387017)
• Localization
  • A number of editing controls in the Content Editor presented the selected values using the display name from the client language instead of the content language. This has been fixed for all the relevant field types, for example, TreeList, Multilist, DropList, DropLink, CheckList, Name Value Lookup, and Internal Link. (358106, 384081, 361945, 359285, 384088, 384092, 385348, 385350, 385346, 385354)
  • A number of phrases could not be translated in various areas of the product. This has been fixed. (370802, 364838, 370720)
  • Some phrases in the Danish translation were not formatted correctly. This has been fixed. (388048)
  • When using the Japanese client language, some of the labels in the UI wrapped to multiple lines. This has been fixed in the Move To wizard, the Copy To wizard, the Clone Item wizard, and the Take a Screenshot dialog box. (363088, 362838, 385451)
• Miscellaneous
  • Sitecore could fail to start due to an unhandled SocketException error in the WebUtil.GetHostIPAddress() method. For example, this would happen on servers without any DNS records or hosts file records. This has been fixed so now a warning is written to the log file if an exception error occurs in the GetHostIPAddress() method, and Sitecore no longer fails to start. (389231, 358874)
  • After renaming an item, accessing the item.Paths.FullPath property for any descendants would sometimes return the old path. This happened because the item paths cache that was introduced in 6.5.0 Update-6 was not cleared for descendants when an item was renamed. This has been fixed. (387492)
  • If the logout pipeline was executed outside a SheerUI context, the CheckModified processor failed with a NullException error. This has been fixed. (353148)

June 6, 2013

Released Sitecore CMS and DMS 6.6.0 rev. 130529 (6.6.0 Service Pack-1, originally released as 6.6.0 Update-6).

Note: This is the latest release of Sitecore CMS 6.6.0.

This is a Service Pack. Sitecore recommends customers to install service packs for initial release of Sitecore CMS 6.6. This is especially true in production environments. For more information about the recommended versions of Sitecore, see Sitecore Versioning Policy page [updated July 25, 2013].

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy  page.

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page  for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

Highlights

The main highlights in this update are:

• After upgrading to 6.6 Update-5, custom user profile properties could be lost.
• Security vulnerability fixes to make Sitecore more secure.
• LinkProvider fixes, including improvements and fixes to the logic for generating cross-site links.
• Executive Insight Dashboard fixes.
• New item versions were sometimes created when a user performed certain operations.
• Ability to use a different logic for partial cache clearing operations for certain caches.

Improvements

• Link Provider
  • A new web.config setting named "Media.LowercaseUrls" has been introduced. If set to true, Sitecore will generate lower case URLs when it uses the MediaProvider API and/or the link provider to render media URLs. If it is blank (the default value), Sitecore will use the value in the lowercaseUrls attribute of the link provider when generating media URLs.  (356720)
• Performance of partial cache clearing operations
  • It is now possible to configure the system to use extended indexed storage for cache keys for the AccessResultCache and the ItemCache. (365171, 387568)
  • Using indexed storage for cache keys can in certain scenarios significantly reduce the time it takes to perform partial cache clearing operations, and is typically useful on large solutions where the size of the AccessResultCache and/or the ItemCache are very large and where partial cache clearing causes a measurable overhead.
  • A new web.config setting named Caching.CacheKeyIndexingEnabled.AccessResultCache allows customers to enable this feature for the AccessResultCache.
    • However, enabling this setting on content management servers with many editors and many content items can degrade performance.
  • A new web.config setting named Caching.CacheKeyIndexingEnabled.ItemCache allows customers to enable this feature for the ItemCache.
    • However, enabling this setting on content management servers with many editors, many languages, and/or many versions can degrade performance.

Breaking changes

• The Sitecore. Web.UI.HtmlControls.Literal control no longer supports appending child controls. (361422)
  • The Literal control will now throw an exception in case someone tries to modify the child control collection.
• The Entry property of the AccessExplanation class, which has been marked obsolete for a long time, will now always return null to avoid adding unnecessary object references into the AccessResultCache. (358558)

Issues resolved

• Potential data loss
  • After upgrading to 6.6 Update-5 from an earlier CMS version, all custom user profile properties previously set for user accounts appeared as empty when accessing them using the API or the User Manager application, and would be permanently lost if the user profile was saved/updated, as described in the associated known issue on SDN. (386151)
• Potential security vulnerabilities
  • Sitecore Corp. wants to give credit to Security-Assesment.com, Paul Haas, for the discovery of the following vulnerability and for their cooperation:
    • Unauthenticated users could use the Sitecore web service to reveal if a specific Sitecore database name was valid, which potentially could be useful information for malicious users. (382453)
  • Unauthenticated users could get access to a number of applications and dialogs in Sitecore if they knew the URL of the applications, although they could not perform any malicious actions by doing so. (378681, 353228)
  • Authenticated users that did not normally have sufficient permissions could open a number of XAML controls and dialog boxes if they knew the URL to the control, although they could not perform any malicious actions by doing so. (353228, 366608)
  • Potential JavaScript injection vulnerabilities have been fixed in the Rules Editor dialog box and the Rules field. (347359)
• Executive Insight Dashboard
  • Issues related to displaying data in the timeline and Dashboard reports:
    • When opening the "Site Search" report, the following error message would sometimes appear: "An error occurred while loading report data." (385095)
    • If there is no data for a time range (i.e. Campaign data), the Dashboard will now show a zero value for the time range. Previously, empty time ranges did not show up in the timeline and Dashboard reports. (383889)
    • The Dashboard will no longer display negative values in the bar charts when showing Value or Value Per Visit. Negative values will instead be displayed as 0. (383292)
    • If the data set contained negative values, the Value pie chart would display slices with negative percentages and other slices in the chart would sometimes display a percentage larger than 100%. (383291)
    • The area chart used as a background image for the timeline in the Dashboard was not rendered correctly for certain data sets. (384702)
    • The Dashboard would sometimes display wrong week numbers across the end of a year. This has now been corrected. (383842).
      However, the Dashboard continues for now to use FirstFullWeek algorithm when calculating week numbers instead of the week calculation rules for the current culture. Please use ref. no. 384815 if contacting Customer Service about this issue.
  • [Chrome] When trying to click buttons and UI controls in the Silverlight application, the click event sent to the application would be offset by 20 pixels, making it difficult for users to interact with the Dashboard. (384985)
• Dynamic image scaling
  • After specifying custom image dimension in the properties for an Image field, the <sc:image> XSL control did not add the appropriate query string parameters to the image src. This resulted in the image being scaled by the browser instead of being scaled server-side. (354636)
    Note: This issue was fixed for the <sc:image> web control in 6.6 Update-7 (ref. no. 339889). [Added December 13, 2013]
• Content Editor
  • When saving an item, the seconds of all DateTime fields were set to zero, even if the user had not modified the DateTime fields. An important side-effect of this issue was that the value of the __Created field could change the first time the item was saved. (332194)
  • When clicking the Today button above a Date field, the value stored in the field would contain hours and minutes. Now, the hours and minutes will be set to zero when clicking the Today button. (337629)
  • If a user deleted a media item and selected "Link to Another Item" in the Breaking Link dialog box, links to the media item in Rich Text fields were changed from "~/media" to "~/link". (375118)
  • [Safari] When creating a new item using the available insert options on an item, the dialog box where the user enters the new item name could not be cancelled. (360348)
• Page Editor
  • In 6.6 Update-3, the <renderField> pipeline was modified to HTML encode the field value when rendering single-line text fields (ref. no. 327905). This did not work correctly in the Page Editor which displayed the encoded value. And if the user saved the page, the already encoded value would be HTML encoded again. (384997)
  • [Internet Explorer] When running IE8/IE9/IE10 in Compatibility View mode and using the Page Editor, internal links from Rich Text fields would sometimes have the current site's host name added to the URL when saving the page, thereby making the URLs that are being published absolute instead of relative. (341310)
    Note: This issue was only fixed for regular links in 6.6 Update-6. It has also been fixed for media links in 6.6 Update-7 (ref. no. 387883). [Added December 13, 2013]
• Rich Text Editor
  • [Internet Explorer] When inserting a link to a Sitecore item in the Rich Text Editor, the inserted link would sometimes be prefixed by the URL of the Rich Text Editor control. (348998)
    Note: This issue was only fixed for links to Sitecore items in 6.6 Update-6. It has also been fixed for media links and other relative links in 6.6 Update-7 (ref. no. 389158). [Added December 13, 2013]
  • The Rich Text Editor removed all host names from media links, even host names that did not match the current request, making it impossible to link to media using a specific site context or to link to media on external Sitecore sites. (354317)
  • After changing an image in a rich text field to another image, the <img> tag no longer specified the width and height of the image. (331388)
• Unnecessary versions created
  • If an item did not have a version in the current content language, the system would create an empty version when a user assigned profile cards, goals, or other Analytics attributes to the item. (338841)
  • If an item did not have a version in the default language, the system would create an empty version when a user performed any of the following operations: (317035)
    • When changing security permissions for the item in the Security Editor or Access Viewer.
    • When changing security permissions for the item using the Security field.
    • When clicking Protect Item or Unprotect Item in the Security Editor ribbon.
• Link Provider
  • The logic for resolving cross-site links has been improved:
    • When generating links, the Link Provider would sometimes generate an incorrect link when the start items for different sites started with the same prefix/path. (382388)
    • When generating links, the Link Provider did not always resolve the correct target site for cross-site links in multi-language solutions. To avoid such problems, now the system first tries to match sites by prefix/path and language and, if no match is found, it tries to match them by prefix/path only. (373076, 370730)
  • The Link Provider would sometimes add a different host name to the generated URL, even if the item being linked to belonged to the context site. (373639)
  • The Link Provider did not always use the correct host name of the active site in the generated URL when the alwaysIncludeServerUrl attribute was set to true. (307539)
  • After setting the LinkProvider's languageEmbedding property to "never", existing URLs containing an embedded language would stop working and return the "404 Not Found" error page. (334710)
    • To avoid such problems, the StripLanguage processor in the <preprocessRequest> pipeline will now parse languages from the URL, even when languageEmbedding is set to "never".
      Note: Starting with 6.6 Update-7, you can revert back to the earlier behavior by setting Languages.AlwaysStripLanguage to false (ref. no. 390434). [Added December 13, 2013]
• Link database
  • If a user moved or renamed an item that was used as data source for a Multilist field, the data source would sometimes end up being encoded after it was updated to point to the new path. This happened when the data source for the Multilist field was specified using "DataSource=<item path>". (370430)
• Multibrowser support
  • [Firefox] When using the "classic" non-Flash upload, the upload pop-up window did not close after the upload had completed. (384969, 382055)
• A number of issues have been resolved in the AntiCSRF HTTP module that was introduced in 6.6 Update-3:
  • When using the Web Forms for Marketers module, some of the module's dialog boxes and applications did not work correctly with the default configuration of the AntiCSRF module. (385609, 385072)
  • In the Engagement Automation Supervisor, paging between records did not work when viewing visitors in a state. (385609)
• IIS Integrated pipeline mode
  • [Backported from 7.0] The Sitecore.Nexus.Web.HttpModule would throw an exception when trying to resolve Context.User if the database was down. This would cause the IIS to display the standard .NET error page instead of any custom error page, even if the custom error page was added to the IgnoreUrlPrefixes web.config setting. (325423)
• Scaling and multi-instance setups
  • New instances did not always replay recent remove events from the event queue, as determined by the EventQueue.PersistStampMaxAge web.config setting. This happened if the new instance has a clean Properties table without any data about already processed events. (378254)
• Caching
  • The AccessResultCache was storing unnecessary references to ISecurable objects, related to the obsolete AccessExplanation.Entry property. This caused the cache to take up more memory than necessary and without reporting the extra memory usage when inspecting cache sizes. (358558)
• Development
  • The Run method in the Sitecore.Shell.Framework.Commands.SetLayoutDetails class has been made "protected virtual" to make the class easier to override. (353165)
• Miscellaneous
  • The Context.ContentDatabase property was not updated when changing the Context.Site property. (382710)
  • [Backported from 7.0] The ResolveItemPath command in the Nexus assembly now calls GetChildren() with a ChildList.SkipSorting parameter, thereby improving performance when there are many children or when called repeatedly. (371212)
  • In very rare cases, a StackOverflow exception could occur after trying to upload to the media library. (361422, 385341)
  • More descriptive log messages:
    • If an item refers to a missing template, the system will now include the database name in the error that is written to the log file to make it easier to locate the relevant item. (383316)
    • If an item refers to a missing rendering control, the system will now include the item path, item ID and database name in the error that is written to the log file to make it easier to locate the relevant item. (379643)
    • The audit messages written to the log file now use the word "branch" instead of the obsolete term "master" when a user adds items using a branch or creates a new branch. (380928, 387270)
• The clean installation
  • The comment above the <sites> section in the web.config file has been updated to describe the targetHostName attribute. (310399)

April 17, 2013

Released Sitecore CMS and DMS 6.6.0 rev. 130404 (6.6.0 Update-5).

Note : This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meet specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Important: A known issue has been identified in 6.6 Update-5 which affects solutions upgraded to 6.6 Update-5 from 6.6 Update-4 or earlier 6.6 releases. Due to this issue, the upgrade instructions have been updated with a step to execute an aspx page as part of the upgrade process. For solutions that have already been upgraded to 6.6 Update-5, the aspx page should be executed as soon as possible. The issue does not affect clean installations of 6.6 Update-5. Please refer to the known issue for more information.

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

Highlights

The main highlights in this update are:

• Support for running the Sitecore user interfaces in Internet Explorer 10.
• User Manager improvements and fixes.
• A number of potential security vulnerability issues have been resolved.
• A number of performance counter issues have been resolved.
• A number of Engagement Analytics issues have been resolved, including filtering robots in the Executive Insight Dashboard.

Improvements

• Support for running the Sitecore user interfaces in Internet Explorer 10.
• User Manager improvements and fixes:
  • The User Manager now supports using most of the standard field types on user profile templates, such as Image, Link, Checklist, etc. (321001, 340627)
  • When editing a user, the Profile tab will now show the profile values as read-only values. (374537)
  • When editing a user, a new "Edit" button on the Profile tab is used to edit the profile fields. The button opens a Field Editor window which provides a rich UI for editing field values with the usual field commands above the field controls, such as "Browse" or "Insert Link". (321001)
  • Users can now type up to 40 characters in the search box in the User Manager. Previously the limit was 20 characters. (364876)
  • The portrait field is no longer displayed on the Profile tab, only on the General tab. (317879)
  • Changes to a user's portrait were not saved. (317879)
  • The User Manager now displays a more descriptive error message when the underlying security provider does not support or implement certain commands, such as Delete, Disable, Enable, or Unlock. (341156)

Breaking changes

• To support .NET 4.5, the type of the StartPage control on the login page has been changed from HtmlGenericControl to HtmlContainerControl. (380861, 383546)
  • This should not affect customers, unless they have overridden the login page.

Important changes

• The Executive Insight Dashboard no longer displays visits that are classified as robots. (370172)
  • The underlying views in the Analytics database have been modified to filter by VisitorClassification < 900.
  • As a result of this change, you cannot directly compare newly generated charts with data that you have previously exported from the Dashboard . This also applies to screenshots.
• Layouts and renderings
  • In 6.6 Update-3, the <renderField> pipeline was modified to HTML encode the field value when rendering link fields (ref. no. 327905). This turned out to have unintended side-effects, for example when embedding IMGs in a link field. The field value for link fields is therefore no longer encoded in 6.6 Update-5 and later. (382059)

Issues resolved

• Potential security vulnerabilities
  • Sitecore Corp. wants to give credit to Joel St. John and Jake Meredith from iSEC Partners and Chris Sulham from Velir for the discovery of all of the following vulnerabilities and for their cooperation.(382010)
    • Authenticated users could open the Package Designer application in Sitecore if they knew the URL of the application, even if they were not members of the Sitecore Client Developing role. (381770, 381947)
    • Authenticated users could potentially misuse the File Browser dialog box that is available in the Package Designer to show, download, or remove files that did not have an .xml extension. (381834)
    • Authenticated users could potentially craft POST requests to the Upload dialog box that is available in the Installation Wizard and in the Package Designer and make the dialog box upload files to other locations on the server. (381934, 382006)
    • The License overview dialog box that is available from the Control Panel did not encode the name of license keys when opening the license detail dialog box. The value is now encoded, although no reproduction scenario was identified where the unencoded value could be used for JavaScript injection or for an XPath injection attack. (381836)
    • A potential JavaScript injection vulnerability has been fixed in the User Manager. (378264)
    • A potential JavaScript injection vulnerability has been fixed in the Workbox. (378496)
  • The View and Delete buttons in the File Explorer would always show up in the context menu, even if access had been restricting to the corresponding items in the core database. (383555, 378651)
  • Two potential JavaScript injection vulnerabilities related to the Alt text on images in the media library have been fixed in the Sitecore client. (364595, 383519)
  • A non-persistent JavaScript injection vulnerability has been fixed in the Package Designer. (374444)
• Clean Up Databases wizard
  • The Clean Up Databases wizard removed content in languages for which the culture/locale did not exist on the server, even if a language definition item existed in Sitecore. This could lead to data loss. (378801)
• Engagement Analytics
  • The visitor cache did not work correctly when calling VisitorFactory.GetVisitor(id) to retrieve a different visitor during a visit. This would replace the current visitor with the retrieved visitor, which in turn caused the current page/request not to be tracked in the Analytics database. (382207, 382187, 376628)
  • The global Analytics session cookie was unnecessarily set on each request during a visit. The global session cookie is now only set/updated on the first request in a session. (382179, 376644)
  • While the system is trying to auto-detect if a visitor is a robot, the MediaRequestSessionModule will now ensure that media requests for the visit have a session. Otherwise, the auto-detecting does not work as expected which in rare situations could lead to visitors incorrectly being classified as robots. (382274, 376638)
  • If HttpContext.Session is null, the Analytics tracker will now raise an exception during initialization with the following message: "Cannot start Analytics Tracker when HttpContext.Session is null." (376021)
    • Previously, the system would attempt to start Analytics and then fail with a less descriptive exception. This could for example occur if the MediaRequestSessionModule was commented out in the web.config file.
  • Hardcoded references to the "__Tracking" field have been replaced with calls to Tracker.GetTrackingField(item) to avoid inconsistencies in the logic for obtaining the tracking field. (376622)
  • The logic for checking if media items have data in the Tracking field was inconsistent. This could cause media requests to not have a Session object in certain situations when using IIS Integrated pipeline mode, thereby preventing page events or goals for such media request to be tracked. (364277)
  • Requests to the VisitorIdentification.html page were sometimes written to the database. This could for example happen if the page for some reason was requested twice in the beginning of a visit. (375613)
• Performance counters
  • The HealthMonitor class did not take the Counters.Enabled web.config setting into account. (384115)
  • When a performance counter category does not exist on the server, a warning was written to the log file indicated that a temporary internal counter would be used. This was not correct, and the warning message will now simply state that the performance counter category does not exist on the server. (378489)
  • Exceptions related to performance counters would appear in the Sitecore log file in various situations:
    • If the identity that the IIS application pool is running as does not have permissions to read or create performance counters, the log file would contain one or more UnauthorizedAccessExceptions with the following message: "Access to the registry key 'Global' is denied." (378530)
    • Whenever a "Cannot resolve Instance name for the counter" warning was written to the log file, it was followed by an entry with an InstanceNameIsNotAvailableException error message. (378465, 378490)
    • An InvalidOperationException could appear in the log file with the following message: "Category does not exist." This occurred if the instanceType attribute for a Sitecore-specific counter was set to "CLR" or "Windows". (383850)
    • An InvalidOperationException could appear in the log file with the following message: "The requested Performance Counter is not a custom counter, it has to be initialized as ReadOnly." This occurred if the instanceType attribute was set to "Sitecore" for a Windows or .NET counter. (383846)
• Content Editor
  • When a user selected one of the dictionary items that contain a newline in the Key field, Sitecore would display the "Do you want to save the changes to the item?" dialog box when the user navigated away from the item, even if the user had not made any changes to the item. (381312)
• Page Editor
  • When opening a dialog box from the Page Editor when editing a long page, the background overlay that grays out the main window was positioned incorrectly. (381703)
  • In Field Editor windows, a JavaScript error occurred if editors clicked the "Show Editor" button above a Rich Text field. (381741, 382005)
• Rich Text Editor
  • When copying and pasting links in Rich Text fields, the target link may become broken due to Sitecore adding the following path to the beginning of the link URL: "http://hostname/sitecore/shell/Controls/Rich%20Text%20Editor/". (349192)
• Media library
  • The Drag & Drop button appeared in the Media Library, even if the user did not have sufficient permissions. The button is now only displayed when the user has item:read, item:write, and item:create access to the current item. (383460, 381979)
• Security applications
  • After changing the Portrait for a user in the User Manager and clicking OK, the old portrait was still displayed in the User Manager grid. (379579)
• Virtual users
  • Accessing the IsAdministrator property did not work correctly for virtual users, and would result in a warning message being written to the log file. (380934)
  • Calling the Profile.SetCustomProperty() method for a virtual user caused a SerializationException to be thrown. (381762)
• Link database
  • When iterating over ItemLinks returned by the GetReferrers() or GetReferences() methods, calling the ItemLink.GetTargetItem() method would sometimes return an "empty" item in the Invariant language. (380101)
  • When renaming an item, the system would sometimes create a version in the Invariant language on referring items. (379363, 380101)
• Multibrowser support
  • A number of issues related to Internet Explorer 10 have been resolved:
    • A number of cosmetic issues and script errors have been resolved in the Sitecore user interfaces. (378939, 379463, 383443)
    • Rich Text fields appeared collapsed in the Content Editor. (383453)
    • The Edit Profile dialog box used to edit a user's profile fields had extra scrollbars. (383448)
    • After using the template builder and navigating to another item, text fields in the Content Editor would sometimes appear to be locked, thereby preventing the user from typing or modifying text in such fields. (380187)
    • After uploading files to the Media Library, text fields in the Content Editor would sometimes appear to be locked, thereby preventing the user from typing or modifying text in such fields. (378885)
  • [Chrome, Firefox, Safari] When creating a new user, the "OK" and "Cancel" buttons were not visible in the "Edit User Roles" dialog box. (381594)
• Item Cloning
  • Clones of an item did not appear correctly in Preview mode if the original item was not publishable. (380426)
• A number of issues have been resolved in the AntiCSRF HTTP module that was introduced in 6.6 Update-3:
  • In the Page Editor, a PotentialCsrfException appeared when the user selected the Testing tab in the ribbon and clicked the arrow that expands the Components and Combinations drop-down box. (382326)
  • Expanding nodes in the content tree resulted in an error message with certain encodeNameReplacements configurations, for example when replacing " " (the space character) in URLs with another character. (382967)
  • A number of applications in the Sitecore Desktop, such as the User Manager and Role Manager, did not work correctly with certain encodeNameReplacements configurations, for example when replacing " " (the space character) in URLs with another character. (380534, 381234)
  • A number of applications in the Sitecore Desktop, such as the User Manager and Role Manager, did not work correctly if the addAspxAttribute was set to false on the <linkManager> node in the web.config file. (381137)
  • If the IIS is configured to redirect 404 errors to a custom page, an error page would appear instead of the custom 404 page. The message on the error page would indicate that the specified URL was not in the right format. (382156)
  • After editing Engagement Analytics reports in the report designer, the log file would contain entries indicating potential cross-site request forgery requests (PotentialCsrfException). (382322)
  • The preview function in the Engagement Analytics report designer would stall when trying to load and display reports. (382322)
• Two issues have been resolved related to the item paths cache that was introduced in 6.5.0 Update-6:
  • The item paths cache was not cleared correctly for subitems when renaming or moving an item. This could cause subsequent calls to item.FullPath to return incorrect results. (381856, 382033)
  • The item paths cache could return incorrect language versions from the cache when ItemPathType was set to DisplayName. (381213)
• Setup.exe installation program
  • The setup.exe has been updated with a new EULA. (380903)
• Miscellaneous
  • The Sitecore.Data.Fields.MediaPath class has been marked as obsolete. (352572)
    • This has been done for consistency, since the Src and MediaPath properties of the ImageField class having been marked as obsolete since 6.2 Update-4.
  • After installing .NET Framework 4.5, the Sitecore login page failed to load with a "Parser Error" and the following message: "The base class includes the field 'StartPage', but its type (System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlGenericControl) is not compatible with the type of control (System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlIframe)." (380861)
    • This occurred if the targetFramework attribute on the <compilation> node was set to "4.5" in the web.config file.
  • The DeviceResolver processor in the <httpRequestBegin> pipeline no longer throws an exception if the query string contains a sc_device parameter with the name of a device that does not exist in the solution. Instead, the parameter will be ignored and a message will be written to the trace, similar to how the sc_item query string parameter is handled. (380021)
  • The event queue for the core and web databases were populated with events that only related to the master database, causing remote events to be unnecessarily raised on content delivery instances. This applied to the "item:locked:remote", "item:unlocked:remote" and "item:templatechanged:remote" events. (380063)
  • If the thread culture was set to "th-TH" (Thai), the system would fail with the following message: "A required license is missing". (377647, 382073)
  • When Sitecore throws an EditingNotAllowedException, the exception message will now include the item path and item ID to help in troubleshooting. (379660)
  • The assembly version numbers of some of the Sitecore DLLs were incorrectly set to "6.0.0.0" or "1.0.0.0" instead of something like "6.6.0.4187" or "1.0.0.4330". This has been corrected for the following assemblies: (376722)
    • Sitecore.Logging.dll
    • Sitecore.Nexus.dll
    • Sitecore.NVelocity.dll
    • Sitecore.Zip.dll
    • Sitecore.Mvc.DeviceSimulator.dll
  • The Sitecore.Automation.MarketingAutomation assembly was missing copyright information in the assembly meta-data. (376722)
  • Users that did not have language:write permissions to the current content language could add a version to any items with no versions by clicking the “Add a new version” link in the content editor warning. (375013) [Added July 22, 2013]
• The clean installation
  • The web.config file did not contain event definitions for the "user:runtimerolesupdated" and "user:runtimerolesupdated:remote" events. (380477)

February 27, 2013

Released Sitecore CMS and DMS 6.6.0 rev. 130214 (6.6.0 Update-4).

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meet specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

Highlights

The main highlights in this update are:

• Resolves an important issue in 6.6 Update-3 related to attaching/detaching media to versioned media
• A number of Engagement Analytics and Engagement Automation fixes
• IIS Integrated pipeline mode fixes
• Resolves a number of situations where the "Do you want to save the changes to the item?" dialog box appeared, despite the user not having modified the item
• Resolves a number of issues related to security permissions and uploading
• Rich Text Editor fixes

Important changes

• Security API and membership providers
  • Since 6.6 Update-1, the AuthenticationHelper.IsDisabled(User) method returned true if user.Profile.MemebershipUser was null. This behavior was different than in previous releases, and with certain configurations of security providers, this could cause Sitecore.Context.User.Name to return the name of the anonymous user, even if a different account was authenticated. The IsDisabled(User) method now returns false as expected in such cases. (378377)

Issues resolved

• Engagement Analytics
  • Profile key values would not be added correctly if the values contained fractions, typically when multiple profile cards have been assigned to an item. This could cause the total value for a profile key for a visitor to be lower than it should. (376088, 379755, 379719)
  • The API for deploying campaigns to the Analytics database could fail with a ConstraintException if multiple threads deployed campaigns concurrently. Alternatively, an InvalidOperationException could occur with the following message: "DataTable internal index is corrupted: '<index>'" (373190)
    • This problem affected the ECM module and prevented the system from simultaneously sending more than one scheduled message.
  • The Analytics.DisableDatabase setting did not disable all read and write access to the Analytics database. This could cause exceptions to show up on the website, for example when a visitor requested a page with one or more personalization rules configured. (373763)
    • The setting now works as expected and disables all read and write access to the Analytics database, including processing of engagement automation states.
  • The SubscriptionTask background job that sends out emails about visits was unreliable if the interval for the agent did not match the scheduler's frequency. The agent has therefore been removed from the web.config file and the functionality has been replaced by a Session End rule that sends out email notifications about visits. (373048, 381486).
  • The Analytics database would sometimes contain records in the Visits table for which there were no records in the Pages table. The system will no longer write such empty visits to the database. (374480)
• GeoIp lookups
  • The MaxMind GeoIp service sometimes returns HTML in the Country field instead of data in the normal format. When this occurred, an ArgumentExceptions was written to the log file with the following message: "Cannot set column 'Country'. The value violates the MaxLength limit of this column." (374117)
    • Sitecore will now populate the visit with a value of "Unknown" in the GeoIp fields in such situations and write a more descriptive error message to the log file, including information about the IP address and the full HTML returned from the MaxMind provider to help in troubleshooting.
• Engagement Automation
  • When a visitor triggered a goal that a state in an engagement plan is subscribed to, a DeletedRowInaccessibleException could appear on the website with the following message: "Deleted row information cannot be accessed through the row." This typically happened if the item also had a campaign assigned that was configured to enroll visitors to the same engagement plan. (374794)
  • The "Add Points" dialog box did not show the points that were already specified when modifying the properties for an "Add Points" action in an engagement plan. (358799) [Added June 26, 2013]
  • If an unhandled exception occurred during execution of the <automation> pipeline, the goal or page event that had triggered the evaluation of the <automation> pipeline would not be registered correctly. Also, the visitor would be stuck in the current state in the engagement plan and not be reevaluated when subsequent goals were triggered or when the state's Due Time was reached. (376005, 379630)
    • As a symptom of such problems, errors would be present in the log file with the following messages: "Some of the automation states could not be written to the database, probably because of expired lock." and "Concurrency violation: the UpdateCommand affected 0 of the expected 1 records." (379708)
    • In such a situation, the goal/page event will now be registered correctly, and the visitor will be reevaluated if subsequent goals or page events are triggered.
    • The system will however continue not to reevaluate visitors for which the pipeline failed when the state's Due Time is reached, since this could lead to a dramatic increase in rows to reevaluate over time in case a condition is broken and always fails.
• Publishing
  • When renaming an item, the item was not added to the publish queue. This caused Incremental Publish operations to not republish such items. (378014)
  • When copy/pasting or duplicating an item, versions that had publish restrictions were not added to the publish queue. This could cause future Incremental Publish operations to ignore publishing restrictions for versions on copied items. (378071)
  • The audit information that is written to the Sitecore log file when a user configures publishing restrictions for one or more versions of an item was incorrect. The log entry would always indicate that version 1 was affected, no matter for which version(s) the user had changed the publishing restrictions.
• Content Editor
  • Actions performed on the an item in the Content Editor would be executed on the parent item if the selected item had become unavailable to the editor during the session, for example if security permissions for the item had been restricted. This could cause the wrong item to be deleted, renamed, etc. Now, the Content Editor will display a message informing the user that the item could not be found. (381324)
• Page Editor
  • Placeholder names were treated as case sensitive in several situations. This could cause a number of problems when using the Page Editor, such as:
    • Placeholders did not appear on rendered page in the Page Editor if the value for the Placeholder Key field on the Placeholder Settings was entered using mixed case. (368161, 381600)
    • The Page Editor did not save renderings inserted to a placeholder if the placeholder contained renderings that specified the placeholder key using mixed case. (367952)
    • Moving a rendering to a different position in a placeholder could cause the rendering to appear in a different position than expected. This occurred happened the placeholder contained several renderings that used different case for their placeholder keys. (380127)
  • If the current item in the Page Editor becomes unavailable to the editor during the session, for example if security permissions for the item have been restricted, the Page Editor will now display a message under the ribbon. (355904)
    • The message is similar to the messages that are displayed in the ribbon if the current item has been deleted. The message is displayed the first time a server request happens after the item was deleted, for example when the user attempts to Save the item or perform other operations on the item.
  • The user's session could expire while using the Page Editor and cause error messages to appear if the user had previously worked in Preview mode. For example, buttons on edit frames could fail with an error message: "buttonRoot isn't set for editor frame". (362353)
• Rich Text Editor
  • The Undo command did not work for line breaks. When pressing undo after inserting one or more line breaks, nothing happened. (366609)
  • The Hyperlink Manager in the Rich Text Editor did not escape symbols in the Subject field when inserting e-mail links. This could cause the opened e-mail to have an empty subject field and/or to have incorrect text in the body of the e-mail body. (357027)
  • The name of the default paragraph styles could not be changed, for example "Heading 1". The name would appear correctly in the Paragraphs Style drop-down box when applying the style, but if the user placed the cursor inside a header tag, such as a <h1> tag, the Paragraph Style drop-down box would display "Heading 1" instead of the custom name. (307994)
• Installation Wizard
  • The installation wizard cut the end of long item paths when asking the user which overwrite mode to use. (327281, 357300)
• Media API and media library
  • In CMS 6.6 Update-3, versioned media data for older versions could be lost when attaching or detaching media, as described in the associated known issue on SDN. (380433, 380592)
  • In the Insert Sitecore Link dialog box in the Rich Text Editor, users were able to upload media and thereby create media items in media folders that they did not have create permissions for. (345703, 354854)
  • A number of issues have been resolved that occurred if a user selected a media library folder for which the user only had create permissions and not write permissions:
    • In the Media Library, the "Upload File" and "Upload file (Advanced)" options did not appear on the "Folder" tab in such a scenario. (338383)
    • When trying to upload files to the Media Library using the "Upload file" insert option in the ribbon, an error message would appear and the files would not be uploaded in such a scenario. (338383, 335663)
    • In the Rich Text Editor, the upload button in the Insert Sitecore Media dialog box was always disabled in such a scenario. (341983)
• Virtual users
  • The AccessResultCache was not cleared correctly after adding or removing runtime roles for a user using one of the AddRange() methods. This could cause security permissions to be resolved incorrectly. (378815)
• Multibrowser issues
  • When a user selected a different item in the content tree, Sitecore would sometimes display the "Do you want to save the changes to the item?" dialog box, even if the user had not made any changes to the current item. (349347, 378145, 371552, 357084, 345784, 353713)
    • This issue typically occurred if the item had Multi-Line Text fields or memo fields containing newlines where the value had been saved in one browser, for example Internet Explorer, and was viewed in a different browser, for example Firefox or Chrome (or vice versa).
    • The issue could also appear if an item contained Treelist fields or custom field types that store newlines as part of the field value. (355026, 356399)
    • Users were more likely to see this issue if they had Standard Fields and/or Raw Values enabled in the Content Editor.
    • When using Firefox or Chrome, this issue also occurred after selecting certain items in the clean Sitecore distribution, for example dictionary items that contained newlines. (368020)
    • The issue also occurred after modifying security assignments for an item using the Content Editor with Standard Values enabled. (334681)
  • [Chrome, Firefox, Safari] The Change Password dialog box no longer displays a "Copy to clipboard" button in browsers that do not support copying data to the clipboard. (378492)
• IIS Integrated pipeline mode
  • The standard IIS error pages would sometimes be displayed instead of the standard Sitecore error pages when the IIS application pool was configured to run in Integrated pipeline mode. Examples of affected pages: Not Found, No License, No Layout, Error, No access. (327516)
  • The Globals.ServerUrl property incorrectly returned "127.0.0.1" instead of the host name of the server when the IIS application pool was configured to run in Integrated pipeline mode. (340117)
    • This affected the WebUtil.GetServerUrl() method, and could cause the system to generate incorrect links in a number of situations, for example when sending out Engagement reports by email, when generating Client RSS Feeds, and when executing the full page XHTML validator.
    • This has been resolved by introducing a new pipeline processor named EnsureServerUrl in the <httpRequestBegin> pipeline.
  • When the system sent out Engagement reports by email, links in the email contained "http://127.0.0.1/" instead of the host name of the server. (327510, 343459)
  • In most setups, the UrlAgent would fail with a WebException with the following error message: "The remote server returned an error: (404) NotFound." (366123)
    • This happened because the UrlAgent tried to access http://127.0.0.1/sitecore/service/keepalive.html
• Miscellaneous
  • The UrlAgent in the web.config file did not work as expected. The agent was configured to run every hour by default, while the idle time-out for IIS sites is configured to 20 minutes by default. The default Sitecore configuration has therefore been changed so that the agent is configured to run every 15 minutes. (378635)
  • If IIS was configured to compress static files, the browser could fail to load static files with certain extensions. This occurred if the IIS application pool was configured to run in Integrated pipeline mode and if Sitecore at the same time was configured to handle requests for one or more static file extensions (via the 'Allowed extensions' parameter for the FilterUrlExtensions pipeline processor). (353300)
  • Accessing ASP.NET web services running in the context of a Sitecore CMS application using URLs like "/TestWebService.asmx/js" could fail with the following server error: "System.InvalidOperationException: No web service found at: /TestWebService.asmx/js." (378889)
    • This could happen when using language embedding in the URL or in the query string, and was a side-effect of the Sitecore RewriteModule.
  • An InvalidOperationException could occur in the IsUserInRoleCache.AddRecord(…) method . This typically happened when many users logged in or were active in the system at the same time. (373646)

  January 16, 2013

  Released Sitecore CMS and DMS 6.6.0 rev. 130111 (6.6.0 Update-3).

  Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

  To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

  Known issues:

  • Important: An issue has been discovered in 6.6 Update-3 that can lead to data loss when using versioned media. For more information, see the following known issue: Versioned media data for older versions can be lost when attaching or detaching media.
     

  Highlights

  The main highlights in this update are:

  • The Executive Dashboard features two new reports: "Channel Performance" and "Campaign Performance".
  • Ability to view known users in engagement plan states in the Supervisor and the Monitor.
  • Virtual user fixes and improvements.
  • Item cloning fixes.
  • Performance improvements for full publish operations in multi-instance setups and for item access on sites with complex security configuration.

  Improvements

  • Engagement Automation
    • A new "View" button in the ribbon of the Engagement Automation Supervisor and Monitor allow users to view known visitors in a state. From the dialog box, it's possible to open a full report with additional details about known visitors in the state, as well as exporting the list of known visitors to a CSV file. Also, you can select a visitor and open a report with visits for that visitor. (377532)
  • Executive Insight Dashboard
    • A new "Channel Performance" report is available for traffic types. The report shows a stacked area chart displaying Value or Visits for each traffic type distributed over time. (377536)
    • A new "Campaign Performance" report is available for campaign categories. The report shows a stacked area chart displaying Value or Visits for sub-categories of the selected campaign category. (377536)
    • The Dashboard now supports displaying data by day instead of month when displaying a report for a single campaign. (376090)
    • The charts in the Dashboard use a new color palette for charts and data points. (377975)
    • When displaying Dashboards for a single traffic type, such as the ECM Email Channel Performance report, the data transferred from the server is now filtered by traffic type to reduce loading time. (376091)
  • Content Editor
    • A new web.config setting named ContentEditor.ShowFieldSharingLabels has been introduced. The setting allows customers to configure the Content Editor to display field sharing labels ([shared] and [unversioned]) to users that are not Sitecore administrators. (379490)
  • Virtual users
    • It is now supported to set Profile properties for a virtual user, including Email, and the system will no longer attempt to save these properties to the security provider. (323147, 374728, 360381)
    • A new AuthenticationManager.LoginVirtualUser(User) method has been introduced. The existing Login(User) method can still be used to log in virtual users, but the new method should make it easier for developers to realize that virtual users must be logged in using a User object rather than a user name. (374784)
    • It is now possible to subscribe to two new events related to virtual users: "user:runtimerolesupdated" and "user:runtimerolesupdated:remote". The events are raised when modifying the runtime roles for a user. (359005)
  • Sitecore now ships with a new HTTP module which guards against Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks. (370125, 360531)
    • The module is based on the third party AntiCSRF HTTP module which implements the so-called "double submitted cookies" approach to guard against CSRF attacks.
    • When enabled, the module automatically creates a session cookie and uses JavaScript to add this cookie value to form submits that are performed from pages under /sitecore/shell. Due to the JavaScript security model, this protects against cross-domain form posts.
    • The module is configurable by modifying the following file: /App_Config/Include/Sitecore.AntiCSRF.config (or by creating your own include file to modify or extend the configuration to include or exclude paths to be guarded).
    • The module is enabled by default, and can be disabled by setting the 'enabled' attribute on the <AntiCsrf> node to 'false'. [Updated January 21, 2013]

  Issues resolved

  • Engagement Analytics
    • If the Analytics API was used to register a page event or goal for the next page while cancelling the current page, two rows would be registered in the Analytics database instead of only one row for the next page. This could cause Dashboard reports to show too many pages for the visits associated as well as registering the page event/goal on the second page of a request instead of the first. This problem affected the ECM module when visitors clicked links in email messages. (376951)
  • Engagement Automation
    • All goals were checked by default when opening the State Evaluation Triggers dialog box in the Engagement Automation Designer, making it difficult to select only one or two goals in a solution with many goals defined. (369389)
    • In the Engagement Automation Designer, it was possible to insert newlines into the name of states and conditions when using inline editing. (377756)
    • If a user cleared the Display Name field of an engagement state in the Engagement Automation Designer and saved, the state item would be saved with an empty value in Display Name instead of filling it with the item name. (345726)
  • Executive Insight Dashboard
    • In CMS 6.6, the Dashboard would display an empty screen when the user selected the Campaign data type and there was no overview data available. (378276)
    • The campaigns and categories in the Campaigns drop-down did not appear in alphabetical sort order. (373068)
    • The "Find Campaign" did not work correctly for uncategorized campaigns when the Campaigns drop-down box contained multiple "Uncategorized" entries. (376850)
  • Performance
    • In multi-instance setups, Full Publish operations could lead to a significant performance decrease for the entire website or even causing the website to become unresponsive due to unnecessary cache clearings related to remote events for FieldSharingChanged. (378800, 374379)
    • In solutions with complex security configuration with many roles in roles, item access could be slow. This especially affected the system during initializing or after clearing the AccessResultCache where a large amount of queries to the RolesInRoles table would be executed. The RolesInRoles provider has been reworked to make the IsUserInRole() method perform better in such situations. (376242, 376416)
  • Publishing
    • When performing Full Publish operations, the system raised remote events for FieldSharingChanged for all template fields that were republished, even when the field sharing had not been changed. (378800, 374192, 375208)
      Note: Updated with additional reference numbers. [January 30, 2014] 
    • Incremental Publish operations did not republish clones of an item after changing the original item, as described in the Item Clones bullet below. (361192, 378252)
  • Security API
    • A number of issues related to runtime roles have been resolved:
      • The AccessResultCache was not cleared correctly after adding or removing runtime roles for a user. This could cause security permissions to be resolved incorrectly. (359005).
        Note: This issue was only partially fixed in 6.6 Update-3. It was fully fixed in 6.6 Update-4 (ref. no. 378815). [Added February 27, 2013]
      • Added or removed runtime roles for a user were treated as case sensitive. This could cause security permissions to be resolved incorrectly, and would typically affect solutions that make use of virtual users. (367944, 311085)
      • The RolesInRolesProvider.IsUserInRole() method did not take added and removed runtime roles for users into account. (326415)
  • Virtual users
    • Only direct role assignments were taken into account for virtual users. Now, roles in roles are taken into account as well when resolving security permissions for virtual users. (326415)
    • Using the Profile property with virtual users would add records to the security tables in the core database. (323147)
    • If a virtual user was logged in to the Sitecore desktop and tried to open the Workbox, an InvalidOperationException would appear with a message that "user doesn't exist". (333228)
  • Item Cloning
    • Clones of an item were not republished when performing an Incremental Publish operation after changing the original item. (361192)
    • Clones of an item were not unpublished when performing an Incremental Publish operation after changing the publishing restrictions of the original item. (378252)
    • If a clone was published and the original item no longer existed, the published item in the target database would contain a broken link in the __Source field. (363001, 373912, 378362, 378290)
      • This could cause an exception to appear on the front-end on content delivery instances that don't have a master database.
      • In such situations, the clone will now be published without a link to the original item, and a message will be written to the log file with a warning that some field values may be missing in the published item.
    • Trying to open a clone with a broken link in the __Source field in the Content Editor would cause an exception to appear, preventing such items from being edited. (379358)
    • Trying to save a clone after entering a broken link in the __Source field would cause an exception to appear and the item would not be saved. (379354)
  • Layouts and renderings
    • The <renderField> pipeline did not HTML encode the field value when rendering single-line text fields and link fields. (327905)
      Note: Encoding the field value when rendering link fields turned out to have unintended side-effects. The field value for link fields is therefore no longer encoded in 6.6 Update-5 and later (ref. no. 382059). [Added April 17, 2013]
    • The LinkRenderer class did not encode the value of the title attribute when rendering link fields. (327905, 347361) [Updated January 15, 2014]
  • Media API
    • Media blobs were not removed from the Blobs table when no longer in use.
      • Blobs will now be removed when attaching a media file to an existing media item, when detaching media from a media item, and when deleting media items from the API without recycling them first. (359817, 359807, 359806, 351198)
      • Blobs will still remain in the Blobs table when no longer in use if you first recycle or archive the associated media item before permanently deleting it. Such blobs can be cleaned up using the Database Cleanup wizard. Please use ref. no. 378000 if contacting Customer Service about this issue.
  • WebDAV
    • If the /App_Config/Include/Sitecore.WebDAV.config file was disabled or removed, WebDAV would still be enabled, but not function correctly. The default value for the WebDAV.Enabled setting has been changed to false to avoid such problems. (375130)
  • Localization
    • When using the Japanese client language and displaying data per month in the Dashboard, the month labels in the timeline were not formatted correctly. (377878)
    • When running the setup.exe in Danish, German, or Japanese, the page with advanced configuration options for the IIS Web Site was not localized properly. (370205)
  • Miscellaneous
    • Only Administrators were allowed to download files. (316774, 348557, 381915)
      • This was a problem in several areas of the system, for example the Package Generator and the Export Language Wizard in the CMS. It also affected the Export Users Wizard in the ECM module.
    • The <hasPresentation> pipeline which was introduced in 6.6 Update-1 did not take the DefaultLayoutFile setting into account when determining whether or not an item can be opened in Preview or Edit mode. (376641)
    • The QueryStringResolver processor in the <httpRequestBegin> pipeline no longer throws an exception if the query string contains a sc_itemid parameter with an invalid ID. Instead, the parameter will be ignored and a message will be written to the trace, similar to how the system works if you pass a valid ID and the item is not found. (377012)
    • When installing Sitecore packages, an unhandled .NET Framework exception would sometimes occur on the final page of the Installation Wizard, and the Windows Event Log would contain an entry for ".NET RunTime" with "Exception Info: Lucene.Net.Index.MergePolicy+MergeException" as part of the message. (378164)
    • If the DisableBrowserCaching setting was set to false, editors would sometimes encounter exceptions when using the Sitecore clients. (312410)
      • To make it easier to troubleshoot such problems, Sitecore will now output a warning to the log file if browser caching is enabled for the shell site.
      • Also, a new disableBrowserCaching="true" attribute has been added in the clean web.config file for the shell site to ensure that browser caching by default is disabled for the Sitecore clients, even if the DisableBrowserCaching web.config setting is set to false.
    • The SqlArchive class has been changed so that it now uses a reader lock instead of a writer lock for item access in the ArchiveItem and ArchiveVersion methods. (376517)
    • If an event handler for the "item:deleted" event started a new thread which called Database.GetItem(), the new thread would hang until the base thread completed due to the SqlArchive class holding a writer lock for item access. (376517)
    • The Sitecore login page now outputs an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header in addition to the "robots" meta tag to prevent robots from indexing the contents. (377139)

  December 12, 2012

  Released Sitecore CMS and DMS 6.6.0 rev. 121203 (6.6.0 Update-2).

  Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

  To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

  Highlights

  The main highlights in this update are:

  • A large number of multibrowser issues have been resolved.
  • The Page Editor now supports other link types than internal links for "General Link" fields.
  • In CMS 6.6, logging in virtual users did not work as expected.
  • Various issues in the CMS and DMS have been resolved.

  Improvements

  • When displaying dialog boxes and wizards, Sitecore will now grey out the main browser window with an overlay to bring more focus to the dialog box. (357448)
    • Also, this prevents a number of problems where users would try to interact with applications in the main browser window in non-IE browsers while a dialog box or wizard was open.
  • Page Editor
    • When editing "General Link" fields in the Page Editor, the Page Editor is no longer restricted to internal links. A redesigned dialog box allows editors to use any of the link types that are supported by the "General Link" field. (311859, 352558, 324486)
  • Sitecore MVC
    • The GetPageItemProcessor.GetItem() method has been made more flexible and extensible. The method now uses the ItemLocator to look up items, and will now try locating the item below SiteContext.StartItem (using SiteContext.StartPath as root) before trying SiteContext.RootPath. (374648)

  Issues resolved

  • Engagement Analytics
    • If Sitecore does not have a connection to the Analytics database, an exception could occur and the website visitor would be presented with an error page. This could happen if the current page contained personalization rules that requested data from the Analytics database. (373038)
    • Trying to subscribe to session reports using a non-English client language resulted in an error page with a "NotSupportedException: curr_state" message. The same happened when trying to unsubscribe. (370910)
    • If a visitor deleted his cookies and then made another request in the same browser session, the system could end up storing two different visitor IDs for the data in the Pages table related to the current visit. This happens because some browsers, most notably IE, do not clear session cookies when the user clears cookies. (371127)
    • In certain scenarios, Tracker.CurrentPage.Cancel() did not cancel tracking of profiles, causing profile values that were updated on the cancelled page to be written to the database. (359178)
  • Engagement Automation
    • When using the Supervisor to add a user or all users in a role to a state, the system will no longer add/move users that are already in another state in the current engagement plan. (372955, 367878, 346522)
    • When configuring a Send E-Mail Message action in an engagement plan, the dialog box failed to save Japanese characters in the Subject and Message fields correctly. (362395)
    • A cosmetic issue has been fixed which occurred when hovering over the Undo and Redo buttons in the Supervisor. (376296)
  • Executive Insight Dashboard
    • The calculation of Potential and Potential Value Gain in the Dashboard reports has been corrected. (372370)
    • When using a non-English client language, the Referring Site Classification dialog box displayed an empty drop-down box, meaning that the traffic type could not be changed. (363971)
    • Two of the phrases in the Referring Site Classification dialog box were not localized. (363974)
    • When displaying the Dashboard in "disabled" mode (i.e. in ECM), the Dashboard no longer use any margin, giving more room to display the data. (375536)
  • Sitecore MVC
    • The system could throw an ArgumentNullException in the NameValueCollectionExtensions.ToDictionary() method. (374434)
      • This could for example happen when rendering a page with an MVC rendering if one or more rendering parameters from the renderings parameters template were not specified.
    • Passing image specific properties like "maxWidth" and "maxHeight" to the image field renderer using the Razor helper extensions did not work as expected. (374802)
    • A manually added "model" attribute on the layout definition XML will no longer be removed when editing the presentation details using the Layout Details dialog box. (374004)
    • If an illegal route is detected (as specified by the Mvc.IllegalRoutes setting), the system will now throw an IllegalOperationException with a description of the illegal route. (372947)
      • Typically this occur if the default MVC route "{controller}/{action}/{id}" is active. This route will catch a lot of the URLs used by Sitecore, and can cause applications such as the User Manager and Role Manager to stop working.
  • Content Editor
    • Pressing CTRL + S immediately after editing the contents of a Rich Text Field and closing the Rich Text Editor did not always cause the current item to be saved. (367662)
    • Pressing CTRL + S after manually editing the value of a Date or Datetime field did not always cause the current item to be saved. (362389)
    • The Field Bookmarks menu that is displayed in the right-hand corner of the Content Editor and which allows the user to quickly navigate to fields and sections did not allow the user to jump to fields in collapsed sections. Now the section will be expanded if such a field is selected. (360076, 319402)
    • When selecting certain field types in the Field Bookmarks menu that is displayed in the right-hand corner of the Content Editor, nothing happened. (307793, 371483, 328201, 375717)
      • This applied to the following field types: Treelist, Date, Datetime, Profile Cards, Rules, Attachment, File Drop Area, Custom.
    • The Content Editor would display a stretched image in Image fields if the height of the selected image was less than 128 pixels. (368255)
    • The "My Items" dialog box used case-sensitive comparison of user names when trying to unlock items. This could cause items not to be unlocked. (369860)
    • After decreasing the width of one of the drop-down panels in the Content Editor, the resize handle would sometimes be missing the next time the panel was displayed, making it impossible to increase the width again. This applied for example to the Language drop-down, Favorites, Versions, Security Presets, and the Insert panel. (371896)
  • Page Editor
    • The "My Items" dialog box used case-sensitive comparison of user names when trying to unlock items. This could cause items not to be unlocked. (369860)
    • The language drop-down box in the Page Editor no longer displays languages that the user does not have read access to. (328322)
  • Publishing
    • When "Publishing Warnings" are enabled in the Quick Actions bar in the Content Editor, an error icon would sometimes appear with a "PublishingWarnings gutter failed to render" message. This happened if every version of the selected item in the current content language was hidden/unpublishable. (318916)
    • When selecting a version of an item with publishing restrictions, the system would sometimes display an incorrect publishing warning which could be confusing which made it difficult to figure out if a newer version, an older version, or no version at all would be published. (346052, 373181)
  • Recycle Bin and Archive
    • Items and versions that were archived in the background (due to having an archive date set for them) were incorrectly registered as having been archived by the anonymous user. This meant that such items/versions were only visible to Administrators in the Archive application and not to the user who had scheduled the archive operation. (369732)
    • Restoring an item for which the original parent item no longer exists did not work as expected. Now, the system will restore the necessary parent item structure (without any versions) when restoring such an item. (373313)
  • Media requests
    • Images might not be served correctly and the log file would contain ArgumentOutOfRangeExceptions with the following message: "The UTC time represented when the offset is applied must be between year 0 and 10,000". This happened when media items did not have versions in the requested language. (364083, 369094)
  • Security API
    • Logging in virtual users did not work correctly. The Thread.CurrentPrinicpal was set correctly, but Sitecore.Context.User returned the anonymous user account instead of the virtual user. (375782)
    • When accessing the UserProfile.Email or UserProfile.Comment properties, the system made an unnecessary call to Membership.GetUser(). This could cause the User Manager to take a long time to load when using external security providers. (371614)
    • The Sitecore security APIs made a large number of unnecessary calls to Membership.GetUser() whenever a user worked with the Sitecore client. This could reduce performance of the Sitecore clinet, especially when using external security providers and/or when using virtual users. (367977, 364958) [Added June 21, 2013]
  • Multibrowser support
    • Sitecore Desktop
      • [Chrome] The interface would sometimes seem to stop responding after a while. This could happen if the user opened a dialog box or wizard and then tried to interact with applications in the Sitecore Desktop while still having the dialog box or wizard open. (357448)
      • [Chrome, Firefox, Safari] Switching between windows in the Sitecore Desktop did not work as expected if the user clicked inside a Rich Text field or other content that is rendered inside iframes. (337532)
      • [Chrome, Firefox, Safari] The search box in the Sitecore Desktop task bar did not work as expected. Users would only be able to perform a search once. Subsequent attempts to search did not display the search results pop-up window. (338314, 364984)
      • [Chrome, Firefox, Safari] The color of the Sitecore Desktop could not be changed. When clicking the "Color" button in the Desktop Background dialog box, the dialog box would close instead of displaying a color picker. (335760)
      • [Firefox] To close dialog boxes using the ESC key, the user would have to press ESC twice. (342520)
      • [Firefox] When pressing ENTER in a Search field in a wizard or dialog box to search, the wizard window would close. (373205)
      • [Firefox] When pressing backspace in text field in a wizard or dialog box to delete some text, the wizard window would close. (356329)
    • Keyboard navigation
      • Using the up and down keys to navigate between items in tree controls did not work as expected, for example in the content tree in the Content Editor and the Access Viewer, as well as in various dialog boxes. (368075, 371801, 368076)
    • Content Editor
      • [Chrome] To select a different item in the content tree, the user would sometimes have to click twice to select the item. (357279)
      • [Chrome, Firefox, Safari] Drag & drop reordering of items in the content tree did not work correctly when the user had scrolled the content tree, making it difficult to place the dragged item at the desired location. (364317)
      • [Chrome, Firefox] Creating siblings using the Insert Options drop-down box did not work as expected. (338172, 353760)
      • [Chrome] If the user selected "Link to Another Item" in the Breaking Link dialog box, the user did not see any items to select as the new link target. (360845)
      • [Chrome, Firefox, Safari] When a user selected a different item in the content tree, Sitecore would sometimes display the "Do you want to save the changes to the item?" dialog box, even if the user had not made any changes to the current item. This also applied to applications based on the Content Editor, such as the Marketing Center. (351206)
        Note: This issue was only partially fixed in 6.6 Update-2 and 6.6 Update-4. It was fully fixed in 6.6 Update-5 (ref. no. 381312). [Updated April 17, 2013] 
      • [Chrome] After collapsing and expanding a field section in the Content Editor, the fields in the section would only take up half the available width of the Content Editor window. This also applied to Field Editor windows. (338904, 353768)
      • [Chrome, Firefox, Safari] Translate mode did not display fields in the right-hand column correctly, for example Rich Text fields. (335631)
      • [Firefox] Nothing happened when a user clicked the Goals and Attributes buttons that are displayed above the Tracking field in the Advanced section on the standard template. (355504)
      • [IE]The language drop-down would sometimes take a long time before it appeared. (356184)
      • After decreasing the size of the Content Editor window, the buttons at the bottom of the window were no longer visible. (371898)
    • Rich Text Editor
      • [IE] After inserting HTML code to display Flash movies into the Rich Text editor, a JavaScript error would appear when clicking the "Accept" button. (373425)
      • [Firefox] Links to Sitecore items and media in Rich Text fields would be corrupted. Links would be inserted using "%7E" instead of the "~" character. (371883, 312541)
      • The HTML and Design buttons in the Rich Text Editor window would sometimes no longer be visible after the user had decreased the height of the window. (371984)
    • Page Editor and Debug
      • [Safari on Windows] All characters that a user typed in any of the Page Editor dialog boxes would appear twice for each key press. (365728)
      • [Chrome, Firefox, Safari] When running in Debug mode, the "Output" tab in the rendering information windows would be empty. (355565)
    • Upload
      • After uploading a number of files using the Advanced "classic" non-Flash upload dialog box and keeping the dialog box open, the user would only be able to upload one file at a time until they closed the dialog box and opened it again. (371894)
      • [IE9] The browser would hang when trying to upload a new file to a "File" field. (370707)
      • [Firefox] Uploading files using the File Explorer did not work correctly. The dialog box would appear to get stuck after clicking the "Upload" button in the upload wizard. (369833)
      • [Safari] Trying to upload a picture from the Page Editor did not work as expected when clicking the "Upload" button in the floating toolbar above a Rich Text field. (371067)
    • Package Designer
      • A JavaScript error appeared in the Package Designer if the user tried to add security accounts to the package. (334603)
      • A JavaScript error appeared in the Package Designer if the user tried to select a template to use as a template filter for adding items dynamically. (359714)
      • [Chrome, Firefox, Safari] The "Clear Filter" buttons in the Add Dynamic Items Wizard and the Add Dynamic Files Wizard did not work correctly. (334379, 372289)
      • [Chrome, Firefox, Safari] When selecting a Dynamic Items or Dynamic Files source in the Package Designer, the "Search Root" tab would be empty instead of displaying a tree control with the root node for the selected source. (336284, 359711, 371937)
      • [Chrome, Firefox, Safari] When selecting a Dynamic Items source in the Package Designer, the "Filters" tab would be empty instead of displaying the filters for the selected source. (336284, 354523, 359711, 371937)
      • [IE, Firefox] When adding items or files to a package, the tree control for selecting items/files would wrap each item on multiple lines. (334719, 366814)
    • Installation Wizard
      • [Chrome, Firefox, Safari] The Installation Wizard no longer displays a "Copy to clipboard" button in browsers that do not support copying data to the clipboard. (344891)
    • Issues with extra or missing scrollbars
      • [Chrome, Firefox, Safari] The scrollbar in the Rich Text Editor window was obscured by the window border and almost hidden. (355850)
      • [IE] After resizing certain applications, such as the Access Viewer, the application would be missing scrollbars. (360835)
      • [Firefox] The Rich Text Editor window was missing a scrollbar after the Content Editor window was resized. (338242)
      • [Firefox] The Insert Sitecore Link dialog box in the Rich Text Editor would display a scrollbar for the entire window rather than only for the content tree. (371928)
      • [Firefox] In the Installation Wizard, the scrollbar for long license agreement texts would display for the entire dialog box window instead of only scrolling the license agreement text. (372120)
      • [Firefox] When clicking the Icon button on the Configure tab of the Content Editor ribbon, the drop-down box did not have a scrollbar. (334609)
      • [Chrome, Firefox] When clicking the Open button on the Navigate tab of the Content Editor ribbon, the "Content Tree" tab did not display a scrollbar when the user expanded the content tree. (353686)
      • The language drop-down box in the Content Editor was missing a scrollbar when displaying a large number of languages. (356575)
      • [IE8] The Advanced "classic" non-Flash upload would obscure long file names of uploaded files with a scrollbar. (376040)
      • [Firefox] The Advanced "classic" non-Flash upload was missing a vertical scrollbar after uploading many images. (375498)
    • Cosmetic issues
      • [Chrome, Safari] Some of the images in the Workbox remained at fixed positions and did not scroll with the rest of the content. (361338)
      • [IE, Firefox] The tree control for Droptree fields would wrap items with long names on multiple lines. (367679, 371315)
      • [Chrome, Firefox] Treelist fields did not always have the same height for the left-hand and right-hand lists. (367655)
      • [Chrome, Firefox, Safari] On Mac OS, the text color was wrong in Sitecore right-click menus when hovering over a menu item. (338239)
      • [Chrome, Firefox, Safari] On Mac OS, some of the colors were wrong on Sitecore's calendar control, for example when setting publish dates for an item. (338240)
      • [IE] After uploading media in the Media Browser dialog box, a Content Editor window will open to allow the editor to edit the metadata for the media item. The ribbon in this window would wrap to two lines when using IE or when using the Japanese client language. (356966, 375441)
      • [Chrome] After uploading media in the Advanced "classic" non-Flash upload dialog box, the list of uploaded files would look incorrect. (371889)
      • [Chrome, Firefox, Safari] The error message that is displayed to users if their session has timed out or lost due to a server failure contained HTML tags. (372175)
      • A number of minor, cosmetic issues have been addressed. (353808, 371890, 375497, 353795, 360838, 353700)
  • Localization
    • When adding new variations to multivariate tests using the Page Editor, the default name of the new variations would sometimes appear in a different language than the current client language. (360736)
    • When configuring personalization using the Page Editor, the default name of new conditions would sometimes appear in a different language than the current client language. (376683)
    • When using the Japanese client language, a number of pages and applications did not use the Meiryo font. (370038, 370041, 370042, 369933, 369936)
      • This was for example the case for the User Manager, the Role Manager, the Domain Manager, the Workbox, the Search application, the boost page, and certain phrases on the Change Password Page.
  • Miscellaneous
    • When using .NET Framework 4.5 and changing Sitecore configuration to use "Forms" authentication mode instead of "None", Sitecore were not be able to properly log in users to the Sitecore Client. When trying to log in with valid credentials, the login page was refreshed and the user was not logged in. (374264)
    • When a user tried to resize a field in a Field Editor window, for example in the Rendering Parameters dialog box, the following error message would appear: "Method "SaveFieldSize" not found in Sitecore.Shell.Applications.ContentManager.FieldEditorForm." (359272)
    • The "My Items" dialog box did not display item names when one or more items had very long names. (366917, 359124)
    • The panes in the Media Browser dialog box could not be resized by dragging the splitter between the panes. (351955)
    • In the core database, switching to the "Inheritance" tab on a template item would cause an "InvalidOperationException: fieldTypeItem" error message to appear. (346115)
    • The __Owner field in the core database did not have a field type. (346115)

  November 12, 2012

  Released Sitecore CMS and DMS 6.6.0 rev. 121015 (6.6.0 Update-1).

  Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

  To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page. Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

  Highlights

  The main highlights in this update are:

  • The Sitecore login page could be indexed by search engines
  • Page Editor fixes and improvements
  • Content Editor could delete the wrong item
  • Bugfixes related to using engagement automation actions

  Improvements

  • This release incorporates all changes made for 6.5 Update-6. For additional information about these changes, please refer to the release notes:
    • Release notes for 6.5 Update-6
  • A new <hasPresentation> pipeline has been implemented. (372158, 372161)
    • The pipeline is used to determine whether or not an item can be opened in Preview or Edit mode.
    • The default pipeline processors will return "true" if item.Visualization.Layout is not null or if the "Controller" field is not empty.

  Issues resolved

  • Potential security vulnerabilities
    • The Sitecore login page did not prevent search engines from indexing the content of the login page. This could allow people to identify solutions running Sitecore. To prevent this, the Sitecore login page now contains a meta tag to prevent robots from indexing the contents. (373127)
  • Engagement Analytics
    • In previous 6.6 releases, the standard values for the Campaign template did not specify a default value for the "Change Traffic Type" field. The value is now set to "Yes – if this is triggered on the landing page" to be consistent with 6.5 Update-4 and later. (373650)
  • Engagement Automation
    • In the initial 6.6 release, newly added actions in an engagement plan could fail to execute without any errors or any sign of failure in the log file. This happened because the Engagement Automation Designer sometimes failed to populate the "Type" field on engagement action items when saving an engagement plan. (374806)
      • If you encounter this problem, you can execute the following Sitecore query to identify any actions with an empty Type field:/sitecore/system/Marketing Center//*[@@templatekey='engagement automation action' and @Type='']
    • A JavaScript error appeared in the Engagement Automation Designer if a user tried to edit the properties for the "Send E-Mail Message" action. (361892)
    • The context menu in the Engagement Automation Designer appeared in the top left corner instead of appearing at the position where the user right-clicked. (373606)
  • Executive Insight Dashboard
    • It is now possible to reload data in the Dashboard, even if there was no data displayed previously. (370359)
    • The Dashboard would display an AccessDeniedException and fail to load if the user had previously worked in Preview mode. (372123)
    • The "Source Value per Visits" label has been corrected to "Source Value per Visit". (365894)
  • Content Editor
    • When a user tries to delete an item which has been deleted by a different user or in a different browser window, the Content Editor now displays a message informing the user that the item could not be found. Previously, the delete action would be executed on the Home item when the selected item no longer existed. (371814)
    • If an exception occurs in an event handler that is triggered right after an item is deleted, the exception is now logged and the content tree is refreshed. Previously, the content tree was not refreshed and the already deleted item would appear to still exist. If the user then tried to delete it again, the delete action would be executed on the Home item. (371886)
  • Page Editor
    • When starting the Preview or Debug clients from the Page Editor, Sitecore did not display the "Do you want to save the changes to the item?" dialog box if the user had modified the page. (355784, 355785, 368976)
    • The Page Editor could fail with the message "The Page Editor is not yet available" error message when the page layout or a sublayout contained an ASP.NET LinkButton with a PostBackUrl attribute. (311421)
    • The Page Editor and Preview client displayed an error message stating that the current page does not have a layout when a user tried to open an item that had an MVC controller assigned. (372158, 372161)
  • Serialization
    • After reverting serialized clones, the restored clones would sometimes display incorrect values in one or more fields. This happened when the standard values item for the template contained a $name token in one or more fields. (369320, 369159)
      Note: Updated with additional reference numbers. [December 12, 2012]
    • When a user tried to revert an item, the system would fail with an InvalidOperationException if the current template of the item was different than the template of the serialized item. (344884)
  • Multibrowser support
    • [Chrome, Firefox, Safari] The "OK" and "Cancel" buttons were not visible in the "Add Roles" dialog box. (335082, 338235)
      Note: Updated with additional reference numbers. [Added December 12, 2012]
      Note: This issue was only fixed in 6.6 Update-1 when editing users. The issues was fixed for creating users as well 6.6 Update-5 (ref. no. 381594). [Added April 17, 2013]
    • [Firefox] The Engagement Automation Supervisor would display several unnecessary notifications if the user opened the "Add a Segment" dialog box and then clicked Cancel. (373306)

  November 5, 2012

  Released Sitecore CMS and DMS 6.6.0 rev. 120918 (6.6.0 Initial Release).

  This is an old CMS 6.6 update.

  You should only use this update as an interim update when upgrading from Sitecore CMS 6.5 to CMS 6.6 Update-1 or later.

  To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page. Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

  Highlights of new features, improvements and fixes

  • Improved Executive Insight Dashboard
  • Sitecore MVC improvements and bug fixes
  • The setup.exe now defaults to use .NET 4.0 for application pools, and supports enabling Sitecore MVC
  • The Rich Text Editor has been updated to a newer version of the Telerik components
  • UI improvements and bug fixes related to the Archive and Recycle Bin
  • Issues resolved by 6.5 Update-5 have now been merged to 6.6.

  New Features

  • The 6.6 Technical Preview introduced several new features, which are summarized here:
    • Device Simulator
    • Page Preview service
    • MVC support
    • Support for SQL Server Database Mirroring
    • Ability to restore individual versions from the Recycle Bin and Archive
    • Dictionary Domains
    • Segment Builder
    • See the release notes for the 6.6 Technical Preview for the full details about each of these features.
  • Executive Insight Dashboard
    • The Executive Dashboard has been made faster and easier to use.
    • It is now possible to filter by site and language in the Executive Dashboard. You can select a single site or view data from multiple sites simultaneously. (361877)
    • The Dashboard can now display data for partial periods. Such data is displayed in a lighter color.
    • A new Campaign Search box allows users to search for campaigns.
    • Users can right click bar charts and pie charts to drill down.
    • Note: When using the Oracle data provider, the Refresh button in Dashboard reports does not fetch new data from the Analytics database. To refresh data, you must first execute the "Refresh Aggregated Data in Reports" task from the Control Panel. We are planning to address this issue in a future update (please use ref. no. 372729 if contacting Customer Service about this issue).
  • Engagement Analytics
    • A Dashboard tab will be displayed when selecting a Campaign or Campaign Category item in the Marketing Center or the Content Editor. The Dashboard tab displays a report for the selected Campaign or Campaign Category.
  • Support for using separate databases for collecting data and for reporting in DMS
    • Sitecore now provides a DMS Data Transfer Package for SQL Server which transfers DMS/analytics data from a collection database to a reporting database.
    • The Engagement Analytics Configuration Reference Guide has been updated to provide information about how to implement and configure distributed setups using these features (see the section "Using Separate Databases for Collecting Data and Reporting in Sitecore DMS").
    • The Data Transfer Package can be downloaded from the DMS Resources section on SDN.
    • Note: The Dashboard might fail with an error if you try to open or refresh reports while the SQL Server is transferring data into the reports database, as described in the associated known issue on SDN. (ref. no. 373097 will be used when the issue gets addressed in a future update).
  • Support for setting up a SQL Server Agent job to refresh reporting the data in the reporting database
    • Sitecore now provides documentation on how to set up a SQL Server Agent job to refresh aggregated data for reports.
    • Using a SQL Server Agent job is a more manageable, reliable, and configurable method for automatically refreshing the views compared to the default configuration of Sitecore where the views are updated by a scheduling agent defined in the Sitecore.Analytics.config file.
    • See the Engagement Analytics Configuration Reference Guide for instructions (in the section "Setting Up a SQL Server Agent to Refresh the Report Summary Data in the Sitecore_Analytics Database").
    • The SQL script for setting up the job can be downloaded from the DMS Resources section on SDN.
  • Engagement Automation
    • In the Engagement Automation Supervisor, it is now possible to use rules and conditions to create a segment of existing visitors that you can add to a state.

  Breaking Changes

  • Sitecore MVC
    • A number of methods in the SitecoreHelper class have been renamed for clarity and consistency. (368905, 368906)
      • The following methods have been renamed:
        • Item() is now ItemRendering()
        • View() is now ViewRendering()
        • Xslt() is now XsltRendering()
        • Inner() is now ChildRenderings()
      • You must rename all occurrences of these methods to the new names. If you precompile your views, the compiler will find the usages and report the corresponding error messages.
    • The SystemHelper.GetThreadData() method has been replaced by a new ThreadHelper.GetThreadData() method. (369002)

  Deprecated methods and properties

  • Lucene
    • In the 6.6 Technical Preview, a number of classes related to Lucene were deprecated. See the release notes for the 6.6 Technical Preview for the full details.
    • In the 6.6 Technical Preview, the entire Sitecore.Search.DebugFSDirectory class was deprecated by mistake. The class is no longer deprecated. Only the parameterless constructor is now deprecated in favor of a new constructor: DebugFSDirectory(DirectoryInfo, LockFactory). (368717)
  • The Sitecore.Analytics.Configuration.AnalyticsSettings.AutoDetectRobots setting has been deprecated. Use AnalyticsSettings.Robots.AutoDetect instead. (359275)
    • The corresponding setting in the Sitecore.Analytics.config file continues to be named "Analytics.AutoDetectBots".

  Important changes

  • Executive Dashboard
    • The Executive Dashboard requires Silverlight 5.
    • The configuration files for the Executive Dashboard in the /sitecore/shell/Applications/Reports/Dashboard folder have been renamed from *.xml to *.config to prevent the files from being accessed in clear text. (370742)
  • Engagement Automation
    • The engagement automation feature depends on a new include file in the /App_Config/Include folder. If this file is removed or disabled, a number of dialog boxes in the engagement automation applications will fail with an exception.
      • The full path to the file: /App_Config/Include/Sitecore.Shell.MarketingAutomation.config.
  • Lucene Search
    • In the 6.6 Technical Preview, the Lucene.Net.FSDirectory.class setting was removed from the web.config by mistake. The setting has been reintroduced in the web.config file. (368716)
  • Calls to String.ToUpper() in the Sitecore API have been replaced with calls to String.ToUpperInvariant() to prevent issues when the application runs under specific cultures, such as Turkish where "ı" (a dot-less i) is converted to "I" (upper-case i), thereby potentially causing strings to be uppercased and/or compared incorrectly. (363085, 364814)
    • This change could potentially break existing code, although we're mostly using uppercased strings when generating cache keys or hash codes which most customers do not interact directly with.
    • It is recommended to review custom code and change .ToUpper() to .ToUpperInvariant() when performing string operations that interact with the Sitecore API if the code is expected to run under the Turkish culture.
  • The following 3rd party assemblies (.dll files) have been updated to a newer version. You might have to update and recompile your code if you are referencing these assemblies from your code:
    • The Telerik.Web.UI.dll assembly has been updated from 2011.1.315.35 to 2012.2.607.35. (348893)

  Improvements

  • This release incorporates all changes made for 6.5 Update-5. For additional information about these changes, please refer to the release notes:
    • Release notes for 6.5 Update-5 
  • Page Editor
    • The 6.6 Technical Preview introduced a large number of improvements for the Page Editor. See the release notes for the 6.6 Technical Preview for the full details.
  • Executive Dashboard
    • There is no longer a delay in aggregating data used in the Executive Dashboard and some of the Engagement Analytics reports. The delay in aggregating data was introduced in 6.5 Update-4 as a temporary solution.
    • The 3 chart categories have been removed (Executive Overview, First Impression, and Engagement) so that all available Dashboard reports are available on a single screen.
    • Help text is now available in the UI.
    • A "last updated" timestamp label is displayed on each chart.
    • The timeline only highlights the area selected by the user.
    • The trend table can be collapsed or expanded.
    • Improvements to caching.
    • The "Reload data" button refreshes data more quickly.
    • The export to Excel functionality has been changed so that the Excel file contains only the data that has been bound to the selected report. (370328)
    • 4 settings files plus a configuration file offer developers more configuration options.
  • Engagement Analytics
    • [SQL Server] The default size of the clean Analytics database has been increased to 10MB and the default file growth increment has been set to 5MB instead of 1MB to reduce the frequency by which SQL Server needs to allocate additional file space. (370582)
      • Notice that many customers should consider using a larger value for file growth further based on quickly their Analytics database grows.
    • A new setting names Analytics.TrackerChanges.LongOperationThreshold has been introduced in the Sitecore.Analytics.config file. (356942)
      • This setting defines the threshold value for logging long running Analytics Tracker operations, such as Analytics insert operations. The default value is 2.5 seconds.
    • The TrackingField class has been extended with a new property named IsEmpty that can be used to detect whether an item has tracking information. (367391)
  • Sitecore MVC
    • It is now possible to pass a model to a layout (i.e. the outermost view). This can be done in several different ways, listed with the highest priority first: (368457)
      • Add a field to the item being rendered called 'MvcLayoutModel' and set it to a valid model reference.
      • Add a parameter to the layout by adding the text 'model="MyModel"' where MyModel is a valid model reference. For now, this can only be done by editing the raw layout definition XML (in the Renderings field).
      • There is a new field on layout definitions called Model. If this contains a valid model reference, it will be used when rendering the layout.
    • When specifying Controller Name on a controller item, it is now possible to specify either the name of the controller or the type name of the controller. Previously, specifying the type name of the controller was not supported. (366381)
    • It is now possible to replace the default ControllerLocator, ModelLocator, and ItemLocator. (368948)
      • You can register your own implementation with code like the following:MvcSettings.RegisterObject<ModelLocator>(() => new MyCustomModelLocator());
      • Typically you will put this code in the Initialize pipeline.
      • To get the currently registered implementation of a locator, use code like the following:var modelLocator = MvcSettings.GetRegisteredObject<ModelLocator>();
  • Scaling and multi-instance setups
    • The ClientData cache was not kept in sync between instances in a multi-instance setup. This could cause virtual users to have different runtime settings, including roles, on different instances. (366780)
  • Page Preview service
    • To make it easier to configure the service, the PagePreview.SiteName web.config setting is no longer commented out by default. Also, the default value has been changed from "website" to "" so that Sitecore continues to use the same value as Preview.DefaultSite by default.
  • Recycle Bin and Archive
    • The drop-down and dialog box in the Content Editor that is used to archiving items and individual versions have been revised to make it easier for editors to work with. (366654, 366655)
    • When the "Show Versions" option is enabled in the Recycle Bin and Archive applications, the available versions will now be displayed in a grid. The grid displays language, version number, when the version was archived and which user account that archived it. (366658)
    • When the "Show Versions" option is enabled, it is now possible to restore the entire item simply by selecting the item and not selecting any versions in grid with available versions. (371126)
  • Setup.exe
    • The setup.exe now defaults to configuring the IIS application pool to run under the .NET 4.0 framework if .NET 4.0 is installed on the server. (369991)
    • The setup.exe now supports Sitecore MVC. (367561)
      • If .NET 4.0 and ASP.NET MVC 3 are both installed, the setup.exe configures the IIS application pool to run under the .NET 4.0 framework and enables Sitecore MVC.
      • If you wish to use MVC and Analytics together, you must still manually enable the Sitecore.MvcAnalytics.config file in the /App_Config/Include folder.
    • The setup.exe now uses the instance name as the default application pool name. (369887)
  • Layouts and renderings
    • A new <resolveRenderingDatasosurce> pipeline has been implemented. The pipeline allows developers to dynamically override the datasource for renderings. (369175)
      • The pipeline is called with an instance of the ResolveRenderingDatasourceArgs class which contains two properties:
        • DefaultDataSource: Contains the data source that Sitecore would have used by default
        • DataSource: Contains the overridden data source
  • Dictionary
    • A DictionaryBatchOperationContext class has been introduced. This class is used to suppress dictionary cache clearings which can significantly speed up operations that update multiple dictionary entries. (368276)
      • The context only suppresses expensive cache clearings. The system continues to add, update and remove individual cache entries as usual, meaning that the dictionary remains usable during long-running import operations.
      • The constructor takes an optional autoReloadTranslationsOnExit parameter. When true, the dictionary cache will automatically be cleared when leaving the context. Otherwise you must manually call Translate.ResetCache(true) to clear the dictionary cache.

  Issues resolved

  • The 6.6 Technical Preview resolved a small number of issues in the following areas:
    • Executive Dashboard
    • Analytics Reports
    • Page Editor
    • Dictionary
    • See the release notes for the 6.6 Technical Preview for the full details.
  • Potential security vulnerabilities
    • Unauthenticated users could get access to perform actions related to engagement plans, including seeing a number of configuration parameters, if they knew the correct URLs and parameters to provide. (370746)
  • Engagement Analytics
    • [Merged from 6.5 Update-6] The system did not discard requests that come from robots based on the information in the "/App_Config/Include/Sitecore.Analytics.ExcludeRobots.config" file. (355803)
      • Compared to OMS, the implementation has been reworked to reduce the overhead of checking for robots. (355908, 355905)
    • If a layout did not contain the sc:VisitorIdentification control, the system would classify the visitor as an auto-detected robot, even after the visitor had visited multiple pages. (361760)
    • The subscription task background job read records to process from the database based on the server's time zone instead of UTC. This could cause emails with session reports for a visit to be sent again and again, or not to be sent at all. (364725)
    • [Merged from 6.5 Update-6] The system registered request to /sitecore and /sitecore/default.html in the Analytics database. Such requests are no longer tracked. (371310)
    • [Merged from 6.5 Update-6] The system registered requests to the keepalive.html page in the Analytics database. (345487)
    • [SQL Server] The sp_sc_refresh_views stored procedure that refreshes aggregated data for reports would fail to execute if the permissions for the SQL Server user was configured according to the installation guide for Sitecore CMS. The stored procedure now has an "execute as owner" statement to avoid this problem. (370364, 365969)
    • [SQL Server] The DataKey field of the PageEvents table has been changed from varchar to nvarchar to support Unicode characters. As a result of this issue, Unicode characters in site search keywords were lost when stored in the Analytics database. (370962)
    • [Oracle] Visitor classifications were not updated correctly when running the "Update Visitor Classification" wizard from Control Panel > Analytics. (369393)
    • [Oracle] The VisitorsByLocation materialized view did not use the same logic as SQL Server. The view filtered visits show based on the classification of each visitor rather than the classification of each location that the visitor has visited from. (369885)
  • Analytics reports
    • [Oracle] The reports that show Classified Organizations and Unclassified Organizations did not filter visits correctly. This could cause classified organizations to show up in the Unclassified Organizations report and vice versa. (367076, 368865)
    • After modifying the Visitor Overview or the Visit Details reports in the Report Designer, the reports no longer worked. When trying to view the reports, an exception would be displayed with one or more of error messages. (369338, 369352)
  • Executive Dashboard
    • The Dashboard will no longer offer the user to select unnecessary resolutions. For example, the Day and Week resolutions will not be available if all the visible Dashboard reports are grouping data by month. The Day and Week resolutions will only be enabled when at least one daily report is viewed (370662, 354738).
    • The tick labels on the timeline would sometimes overlap when the timeline spanned a large time range. (349002)
    • [Chrome] When a user pressed the backspace key while working with the Executive Dashboard, the browser would navigate back to the login screen. (370515)
    • When using the Japanese client language, the Dashboard will now display 4-digit years everywhere. (371446)
  • Engagement Automation
    • In 6.6, engagement plan states contain two Description fields. In the 6.6 Technical Preview, the descriptions of engagement plan states were taken from the Description field in the Data section instead of the Description field in the Designer section. (367859, 372391)
  • Sitecore MVC
    • The <mvc.requestBegin> and <mvc.requestEnd> pipelines were not triggered at the correct stages in the request lifecycle. (368263))
      • This caused various problems, such as the <mvc.requestEnd> pipeline not being run when the controller was assigned to a content item, which in turn meant that the Page Editor did not work for such items.
      • The pipelines are now triggered from within a custom route handler that runs when a route is matched.
    • When using MVC with Analytics and having multiple controllers on a page, profile values would be increased multiple times. To avoid this problem, the StartTracking processor has been moved from the <mvc.actionExecuting> pipeline to the <mvc.requestBegin> pipeline. (365659)
    • After configuring personalization or multivariate testing for a view rendering, a TypeLoadException error related to the EmptyRenderer class would appear when trying to render the page. (370246)
    • When passing an Item object to the @Html.Sitecore().Item() method in a view, the context item would be rendered instead of the item that was passed as a parameter. This did not happen if the item was passed using the item ID. (368832)
      • Notice that this method is now called ItemRendering(), as described in the breaking changes section.
    • When an item is rendered by a custom controller, several problems could occur:
      • The ASP.NET MVC engine would fail to locate the view and throw an InvalidOperationException with the following message: "The view '[viewname]' or its master was not found or no view engine supports the searched locations". (369355)
      • The Page Editor would fail to display the Page Editor ribbon and did not work correctly when trying to edit such an item. (369707)
      • Alternatively, the Page Editor would fail with an InvalidOperationException and the following message: "Attempt to retrieve context object of type 'Sitecore.Mvc.ExperienceEditor.Presentation.LayoutContext' from empty stack." (371936)
    • When a model passed to a view did not match the model type expected by the view, the error message did not contain the view path, making these types of errors hard to troubleshoot. (368567)
    • An error would occur when specifying ".dll" at the end of a type declaration used by Sitecore MVC, for example when specifying the type name and assembly for model items. (368908)
    • When an error occurs, an exception will now be thrown instead of rendering a custom error message on the page, for example when the system encounters a non-existent controller or an incorrect Controller type. (368342)
    • Rendering parameters contained encoded characters if the parameters had been configured in the presentation details dialog box in the Content Editor. This happens because the presentation details dialog box double encodes the parameters. The XmlBasedRenderingParser will now detect such parameters and double decode them if necessary. (368827)
  • Recycle Bin and Archive
    • A number of issues related to restoring individual versions from the Recycle Bin and Archive have been resolved. (365998, 366042, 367571, 368536, 368539, 369670, 369733, 369745, 369747, 369753, 371077, 371076, 371178, 371167, 371842)
    • The system now writes audit information to the log file when an editor sets or clears the archive date for an item or one or more versions of an item. (367250)
    • The background task that archives items and versions that are scheduled to be archived did not log which items/versions it archived. (367252)
    • The "Delete a Language" wizard in the Control Panel permanently deleted language definition items instead of moving them to the Recycle Bin. (368541)
  • Page Editor
    • In the 6.6 Technical Preview, the ID that the Page Editor generated for a field no longer corresponded to the ID generated for the field's value container. When using the Web Forms for Marketers module, this issue caused changes to a web form to be lost after editing the form in the Form Designer from the Page Editor. (368711)
    • In the 6.6 Technical Preview, the Allowed Controls field of Placeholder Settings items would display unnecessary folders such as the Controllers, Models, and Simulators folders. (371026)
    • [Merged from 6.5 Update-6] When the Page Editor reloads the entire page, it will now refresh the parent window instead of the top window to prevent the Page Editor from overtaking the entire browser window if it is embedded in an iframe. (371245)
  • Rich Text Editor
    • A number of issues in the Rich Text Editor have been resolved by updating to a newer version of the Telerik Rich Text component. A few highlights:
      • When pressing ENTER to insert a new paragraph inside a DIV tag that already contained a P-tag, the Rich Text Editor replaced the DIV tag with a P-tag. (368437)
      • After inserting a table using the Insert Table tool, the table would often be surrounded by a P-tag, causing the HTML not to validate. (308758)
      • After inserting a table using the Insert Table tool and adding text in the cells, the table would sometimes contain a closing P-tag in one or more cells, causing the HTML not to validate. (354467)
      • The table properties dialog box did not apply CSS classes to the table correctly, causing the styles not to take effect. The dialog box added the styles using a classname="..." attribute instead of a class="..." attribute. (367659)
  • Multibrowser support
    • [IE9][Chrome][Safari] In the Referring Sites report in the Executive Dashboard, the Referring Site Classification dialog box did not work as expected. In IE9 and Chrome, clicking the name of a referring site to change the traffic type caused an error message to appear. In Safari, clicking the name of a referring site silently failed to open the dialog box. (369556, 363356, 363360)
    • [IE] Selecting "Show Editor" for a Rich Text field rendered inside an edit frame, would cause an "Invalid argument" JavaScript error to appear. (349843)
    • [IE9] In a number of areas, the font size was too small when using Sitecore with the Japanese client language in Internet Explorer 9. (369253, 369259, 368951, 368768, 368891, 368636)
      • This was for example the case for the login page, sub-menus in the start menu, pop-up windows in the Page Editor, certain parts of the ribbon, and for certain combo boxes.
    • A cosmetic issue with the login page displayed in Japanese has been fixed. (368635)
    • A cosmetic issue with tabs in dialog boxes when using Japanese client language has been fixed. (368765, 369806)
  • Media API
    • The system did not always identify empty Tracking fields on media items correctly. This would not cause incorrect Analytics data to be collected, but would cause a small performance overhead for such media requests. (367391)
  • Profile Cards
    • Profile cards could not be unassigned from content items when the selection mode is set to "Single". (369635)
  • Security applications
    • A number of situations have been addressed where the User Manager, Role Manager, Security Editor, or Access Viewer failed with an exception if one or more user names or role names contained a comma. (341925, 370009, 370753, 370757, 370760, 371744, 372376)
      • This happened because the underlying ASP.NET membership model does not allow account names with commas, while some security providers, such as the CRM security provider, allow commas in account names.
      • Sitecore will now handle such situations gracefully, either by ignoring the underlying ASP.NET exception when trying to display information or by informing the user that the operation cannot be performed.
  • Lucene search
    • In the 6.6 Technical Preview, the Search application in Sitecore would sometimes fail with a NullReferenceException in Lucene.Net.Util.CloseableThreadLocal.Close(). This was caused by a race condition in Lucene.Net. (372305)
  • Oracle
    • Several issues related to Analytics were fixed, as described in the Engagement Analytics section above.
    • In the 6.6 Technical Preview, an error would occur if a user tried to restore versions from the Archive or the Recycle Bin. (372396)
  • Dictionary
    • Importing translations using the Import Languages wizard took much longer than expected due to constantly clearing the dictionary cache. The wizard now uses a DictionaryBatchOperationContext object during the import. This ensures that dictionary cache clearings are suppressed until all translations have been imported. (368276)
  • Localization
    • The Publish dialog box will now render publishing targets using their display names. (342333)
  • Miscellaneous
    • The prefetch cache would sometimes add data inconsistently when the thread culture was changed from custom code, causing content to partly missing from the website on a seemingly random basis.
      • This problem only happened if one of the thread cultures in use was the Turkish culture and only affected languages that contained an "i" in the language identifier (such as "fi-FI"). The issue was caused by using .ToUpper() instead of .ToUpperInvariant() when generating cache keys for the prefetch cache. (363085, 364814)
    • The list of license files for 3rd party components in the /Website/sitecore/Copyrights folder has been revised, adding a number of missing files and renaming existing files for more consistency. (372234)
    • The copyright information in the About Sitecore box (available in the Control Panel) has been updated to point to the list of license files in /Website/sitecore/Copyrights folder. (371523)
    • A couple of typos have been fixed in the item name related to the Android Tablet device simulator. (371281)
  • The clean installation
    • The Web.config.MVC file has been renamed to Web.config.Mvc for consistency with other MVC files. (368330)
    • The clean installation now includes an alternative web.config file named Web.config.Oracle.Mvc. This config file allows you for to use ASP.NET MVC together with the Oracle data provider.

  June 26, 2012

  Released Sitecore CMS and DMS 6.6.0 rev. 120622 (6.6.0 Technical Preview).

  Important: The technical preview release of Sitecore CMS 6.6 comes with only limited documentation and support. Please refer to the following page on SDN for more information about support for the technical preview release.

  Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

  Highlights of new features, improvements and fixes

  • Device Simulator
  • Page Preview service
  • Native MVC support
  • Page Editor improvements
  • Sitecore is now using Lucene.NET 2.9.4
  • Support for SQL Server database mirroring
  • Ability to restore individual versions from the Archive and Recycle Bin
  • Dictionary enhancements

  New Features

  • Device Simulator
    • In Preview mode, it is now possible to preview a page as it will look when viewed with different devices (mobile phones, tablet, TV, etc.)
    • The device simulator can only use the same browser as the client accessing the CMS, and therefore mimics devices without providing a pixel-perfect rendition of the website as it will look on a specific device. It should however give a good indication of how the website will appear on a device and allow content authors to quickly check how their pages look on mobile devices.
    • The system provides definitions out-of-the-box for a number of devices: iPhone, iPad, Android Phone, Large Android Phone, Android Tablet, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Feature Phone, and HD TV.
    • Simulators can be scaled to fit the monitor size.
    • Simulators are defined below /sitecore/Layout/Simulators
      • Each simulator has a number of configuration parameters (such as user agent, background image, and screen dimensions) in addition to one or more subitems known as "traits".
      • Traits are used to mimic the capabilities of the device, such as "No Flash Support" or "No Silverlight Support". Each trait is defined as a pipeline processor that can modify the output of the page before it is sent to the browser. For example, traits typically replace unsupported elements with alternate content, and might also add trait-specific JavaScript or CSS files to the output.
  • Page Preview service
    • Page Preview uses a prepaid service that renders screenshots of how the page will look in different browsers on different devices/operating systems.
    • Customers can use the Sitecore App Center to purchase this service.
    • The resource identified by the URL must be accessible from the internet. Otherwise, the service will fail to render screenshots.
    • The service access the resource identified by the URL as a regular website visitor. This means that the page must be published before the service can render a screenshot. It also means that the content displayed to the user might not be identical to the content that the currently logged in user sees.
    • To generate one or more page previews, use the "Screenshots" button that is available on the Experience tab in Preview mode and on the Presentation tab in the Content Editor. Sitecore will then generate a URL and send it to the external service which performs a request using the desired browser(s) and generates the screenshot(s).
    • Technical details:
      • The URL that the page preview service requests to create a screenshot for a particular item is formed by the <getPagePreviewUrl> pipeline, which can be extended to modify the URL or append additional query string parameters.
      • Custom logic for retrieving the credentials for the page preview service can be implemented by registering a custom 'SACauthorization' provider, derived from 'Sitecore.ApplicationCenter.AuthorizationProvider, Sitecore.Kernel'.
      • The binding options for communicating with the page preview service can be modified in the web.config file (<binding name="SitecoreApplicationCenter"> node).
    
    Note: Page Preview service is not yet available in Sitecore App Center. It will become available after RTP release of 6.6.
  • MVC support
    • Sitecore MVC support allows ASP.NET MVC to be used as a first-class rendering engine in Sitecore.
    • Using MVC requires the .NET Framework 4 and Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 3.
    • Sitecore MVC support is disabled by default when installing Sitecore to prevent problems if the solution is running under .NET 3.5 and must be enabled before you can use the MVC features in Sitecore.
      • For instructions on how to install, enable and use MVC with Sitecore 6.6, please refer to the Sitecore MVC Developer's Reference Guide.
    • The MVC support in Sitecore is mainly pipeline driven and provides a powerful, flexible, and extendable API for controlling the rendering process.
    • New rendering types and standard fields have been added to support MVC controllers, views and models from within the CMS system.
  • Support for SQL Server Database Mirroring (363627)
    • To support hot failover for database calls in a SQL Server Database mirroring setup, Sitecore now supports retrying database calls one or more time if they fail to connect to the database. This feature can also be useful in other setups.
    • To enable this feature, find the node <sitecore><retryer> in the web.config file and set the "disabled" attribute to "false". You can also configure the number of retries before the failure is passed on to the usual data API, as well as the interval between tries.
    • If you execute custom SQL in your solution and wish to take advantage of this feature, the retryer can be used in the following way:
      • var dataApi = new SqlServerDataApi(connectionString);
        var result = Factory.GetRetryer().Execute(() => dataApi.Execute("select * from SharedFields"));
    • To setup Microsoft SQL Server Database Mirroring please refer to MSDN.
  • A new page named /sitecore/service/Heartbeat.html can be pinged by traffic managers and load balancers such as Azure's Traffic Manager to determine the health of the instance.
    • The page attempts to connect to all databases that have an ASP.NET connection string defined, including non-Sitecore databases.
    • If the system works and all databases respond, the page will return a 200 OK response code.
    • If Sitecore is running but one or more databases is not responding, the page will return a 500 Internal Server Error response code and write one or more entries to the Sitecore log file. Each unique exception will only be logged once.
  • It is now possible to restore individual versions from the Recycle Bin and Archive. (339560, 347092)
    • In addition to archiving the entire item, it is now possible to specify an archive date for each version of an item.
    • When deleting a version from an item using the Content Editor, the version will now be moved to the Recycle Bin instead of being permanently deleted.
    • Deleting versions with the API continues to delete the version permanently, unless you explicitly recycle the versions.
      Note: The technical preview requires you to write several lines of code to do so, but we're planning to implement a method in the final 6.6 release to recycle an item version with a single line of code.
      
  • Dictionary Domains (350770, 334356)
    • Support for dictionary domains makes the dictionary functionality in Sitecore much more flexible and powerful. Dictionary domains allow customers and module developers to define as many separate dictionaries in a solution as they wish.
    • Dictionary domain folders can be created anywhere in the content tree and in any database, making it possible to configure the location of the dictionary which for example is useful for modules and in multisite solutions. Also, dictionary domains can be nested.
    • Dictionary domains support automatic fallback to other dictionary domains and/or databases, and developers can also specify fallback dictionary domains/databases to the Translate.Text() method.
    • The Sitecore.Globalization.Translate.Text() method invokes the new <getTranslation> pipeline. This makes it possible to extend or modify how the dictionary resolves translations, for example by looking up phrases in a custom database.
  • Segment Builder (347792, 348088)
    • A new Segment Builder dialog box allows end users to create a list of visitors that match certain criteria. The user can define one or more conditions to define a segment, and will be presented with the number of visitors that currently match the conditions in the DMS database.
    • Segments allow for dynamic evaluation rather than having a static list of visitors. The dialog box returns the set of rules configured by the user to the calling class, which can then be evaluated against the DMS database at any time to get an up-to-date list of visitors in the segment.
    • The Segment Builder is included in this release, but it is not yet incorporated into any part of the Sitecore client (or any supported modules). It will be used in future features and modules.

  Important changes

  • The DMS version number has been changed from 2.0.1 to 6.6.0, and the version numbers will follow each other for future releases. This should make it easier to determine which CMS and DMS versions that correspond. (358592)
  • A small change has been made to the database schema for the Analytics database:
    • The definition of the VisitorsByLocation view has been changed to include the VisitorClassification from the location, not the visitor. (364127, 361947)
  • Lucene Search
    • Sitecore is now using version 2.9.4 of Lucene. (363499)
    • Due to changes in Lucene, the following web.config settings are no longer relevant and have been removed:
      Lucene.Net.FSDirectory.class
      Note: This setting was removed by mistake and has been added back in 6.6.0 (Initial Release). [Added September 24, 2012]
      • Lucene.Net.CompressionLib.class
    • Sitecore will detect if ICSharpCode.SharpZipLib is present and will automatically use compressed storage for search indexes if it is. When compression is not available, plain storage will be used. (367187)
      • Sitecore does not distribute ICSharpCode.SharpZipLib since it's covered by a GPL license, but customers can download it from ic#code and install the DLL into the /bin folder to enable compression support in Lucene. No configuration is needed.
  • The default security settings in Sitecore have been updated to separate the Designer role from people restricting what designers are allowed to do. (352587)
    • Members of the Sitecore Client Designing role no longer have permissions to create and modify items under /sitecore/Layout/Placeholder Settings by default. Instead, members of the Sitecore Client Developing role have been granted permissions to do so.
    • In the "Editor Options" section on rendering definition items, the "Field Write" access right is now granted to members of the Sitecore Client Developing role rather than the Sitecore Client Designing role for the following fields:
      • Datasource Location
      • Datasource Template
      • Compatible Renderings
      • Page Editor Buttons
  • Page Editor
    • In the Page Editor, the default access to the "Edit the placeholder settings" button has been restricted to members of the Sitecore Client Developing role. (352587)
    • A new "Can Select Placeholder Settings" policy item in the core database controls the ability to assign an existing placeholder setting item from a list. By default, members of the Sitecore Client Developing role has this ability. (352587)
  • The clean installation
    • The recovery mode for the clean SQL Server databases was not consistent. The master and web databases used "Full" recovery mode. Now, all databases use "Simple" recovery mode by default. (363981)
    • Changes to the MVC web.config files: (363632)
      • The "web.config.Net4.MVC" file has been renamed to "web.config.MVC" and updated with references to Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 3.
      • The "web.config.Net3_5.MVC" file has been removed to avoid confusion, since the new Sitecore MVC features require .NET 4

  Deprecated methods and properties

  • A number of overloads for the Sitecore.Search.IndexSearchContext.Search(...) method have been deprecated in favor of new overloads which specifies the maximum number of results to retrieve.
  • The Lucene.Net.Search.Hits class was deprecated in Lucene 2.4. The following Sitecore methods which return a Hits object or take a Hits object as a parameter have therefore been marked as obsolete.
    • Sitecore.Search.SearchHit.SearchHit(int, Hits)
    • Sitecore.Search.SearchHits.SearchHits(Hits)
    • Sitecore.Data.Indexing.Index.Search(string, Database)
    • Sitecore.Data.Indexing.Index.GetEmptyHits(Analyzer)
  • The Sitecore.Search.FSDirectory parameterless contructor has been deprecated in favor of a new constructor: FSDirectory(DirectoryInfo, LockFactory).
  • The Sitecore.IO.Compression class has been marked as obsolete, since compression plugins is a deprecated feature in Lucene.Net.

  Improvements

  • The "Select the Associated Content" dialog box is now available from additional places: (350443, 353638)
    • In the Page Editor, a "Set associated content" button is available in the floating toolbar that is displayed when a rendering is selected.
    • In the Content Editor, a "Browse" button is available above the "Data source" field on rendering definition items.
    • In the "Control Properties" dialog box, a "Browse" button is available above the "Data Source" field. The dialog box is available from the Presentation Details dialog box in the Content Editor and by clicking "Edit the Component Properties" in the Page Editor.
  • Page Editor
    • To reduce the risk that the Page Editor breaks the page layout, it is now possible to avoid that the Page Editor surrounds all editing controls for fields in <span> tags. (350593)
      • By default, the editing controls for the following field types are no longer surrounded by a <span> tag in page edit mode:
        • Image
        • Internal Link
        • General Link
        • Word (in non-inline mode)
      • This behavior is controlled by a new boolean flag named DisableWebEditFieldWrapping in the RenderFieldArgs class that is used by the <renderField> pipeline. The default value for the flag is false.
      • When the DisableWebEditFieldWrapping flag is set to true, the Page Editor will mark the beginning and end of the editing controls for the field with <code> tags instead of surrounding the field output with a <span> tag.
      • The flag should not be set to true for inline editable fields, since the surrounding <span> tag is still required to support editing for such fields.
    • The following buttons have been added to the Page Editor ribbon:
      • An "Add a new component" button is now available in the quick actions bar next to the Save button for easily inserting components with any tab selected. (349695)
      • A "Delete Page" button is now available on the Home tab. (361704, 359702)
      • A "Move Page" button is now available on the Home tab. (361710)
    • The "Profile" button on the Advanced tab of the Page Editor ribbon has been replaced with the ability to assign Profile Cards. (349783)
    • The "Insert" button on the Home tab of the Page Editor ribbon has been renamed to "Insert Page". (361265)
    • A number of small changes has been made to the floating toolbar that is displayed when a component is selected: (361265, 360492, 361497)
      • The "Delete" button has been renamed to "Remove component" and moved so that it is now the last button on the toolbar.
      • The "Change position" button has been renamed to "Move component".
      • The "Replace with another rendering" button has been renamed to "Replace with another component".
    • It is now possible to clear Image fields using a new "Clear Image" command in the floating toolbar. (361785)
    • A new "Sort content" command allows authors to sort content that is displayed by a rendering. (361587)
      • The command allows authors to sort the rendering's data source child items. If no data source is specified for the rendering, the command will allow authors to sort the context item's children.
      • To enable the command for a rendering, select the "Sort" command in the "Page Editor Buttons" field of the corresponding rendering item.
      • Developers can override which items the dialog displays and which field they are sorted by. To do so, implement a custom class for the webedit:sortcontent command and override the GetOptions(args) method of the original SortContent class. (366171)
    • A new "Rename Page" button can be added to the Page Editor ribbon. (361764, 366202)
      • To do so, add an item in the core database in the appropriate location below "/sitecore/content/Applications/WebEdit/Ribbons/WebEdit/Page Editor" and set the Click field to "webedit:rename".
    • Support for executing workflow commands from the Page Editor without using the Workbox. (356640, 361480)
      • If the current item is in a workflow, a notification will be displayed below the ribbon with information about the current workflow state along with any available workflow commands.
    • Ability to display notifications and provide command links below the Page Editor ribbon. (361480)
      • By default, the system will display workflow information and commands in the notification bar, as described above.
      • Developers can display custom notifications by adding a processor to the <getPageEditorNotifications> pipeline. The processor can optionally add one or more options to the notification. Options will be displayed in the form of command links.
    • Customizing the behavior of the "Select a Rendering" dialog box using the <getPlaceholderRenderings> pipeline has been made easier. The GetPlaceholderRenderingsArgs class now expose an Options property that allows custom processors to easily specify the options for the dialog box, for example whether the "Open the properties immediately" checkbox should be visible or hidden. (357426)

  Issues resolved

  • Executive Dashboard
    • When opening visit reports from the Dashboard, the Sample Visit report would not show data from the last day in the selected date interval. This happened because the end date for the selected interval was interpreted as the start of the day instead of the end of the day. (367068)
  • Analytics reports
    • The reports that show Classified Organizations and Unclassified Organizations did not filter visits correctly. This could cause classified organizations to show up in the Unclassified Organizations report and vice versa. This happened because the system filtered visits to show based on the classification of each visitor rather than the classification of each location that the visitor has visited from. (364127, 361947, 362590)
  • Page Editor
    • [Firefox, Chrome, Safari] When right-clicking the Page Editor ribbon, the browser's context menu would be displayed. (361589)
  • Dictionary
    • In a multi-instance setup, dictionary changes only took effect on the instance where they were made and were not propagated automatically to all instances. (345165, 355837)
    • The dictionary did not support multiple databases.
      • The Translate.Text() method will now perform lookups in the content database (or the context database if no content database is specified for the site) before falling back to the core database. (334560)
      • Adding or updating dictionary items in the master or web database would update the dictionary.dat file correctly, but the changes would only be persisted until the dictionary.dat file was regenerated. (338445, 360263)
      • Adding or updating dictionary items in any database would overwrite the key and phrases in the dictionary.dat file, even if the key and phrases came from another database.
    • The dictionary would sometimes contain deleted phrases
      • The dictionary.dat file was not updated when removing versions from dictionary items. (328639)
      • After removing the last version in a specific language from a dictionary item, the dictionary.dat file would still contain the phrase in that language, also if the dictionary.dat file was regenerated. (350708)
    • After reverting or updating serialized dictionary items, the dictionary cache was not reloaded. (324714)
    • After installing dictionary items using an Update Package, the dictionary cache was not reloaded. (324714)

1.2.  Release History for Sitecore CMS 6.5 and DMS

Some of the issues described on this page contain internal reference numbers. You can use these reference numbers when communicating with Sitecore about a particular issue or feature.

As part of our commitment to continually improving our software and listening to our customer’s feedback, Sitecore regularly releases new versions of our CMS product. Each release undergoes careful quality assurance procedures to minimize the number of issues.

October 18, 2012

Released Sitecore CMS 6.5.0 rev. 121009 (6.5.0 Service Pack-2, originally released as 6.5.0 Update-6) and DMS 2.0.1 rev. 121009.

Note: This is a Service Pack. Sitecore recommends customers to install service packs for initial release of Sitecore CMS 6.5. This is especially true in production environments. For more information about the recommended versions of Sitecore, see Sitecore Versioning Policy page [updated July 26, 2013].

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page  for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

Highlights:

• Performance improvements
• An important engagement automation issue has been fixed
• The discard robots functionality that was available in OMS is now also available in DMS

Improvements

• Performance improvements
  • The Page Editor could take a long time to load on solutions with a large number of items in the master database. (371550, 374535)
  • Improved performance when using the Tracker.DefinitionItems properties (such as the PageEvents, Goals, and Campaigns properties), especially on solutions with a large amount of Analytics definition data.
    • Looking up Analytics definition data by ID has been optimized significantly. (371083)
    • The GetDescendants() method in the Sitecore.Analytics.Data.ItemRecords<> class has been improved. (374727)
  • The ItemPublishing.IsPublishable() method did not take full advantage of its internal cache when iterating through ancestors. (371088)
    • This change mostly benefits sites running in Live Mode, but also has a small impact on publish operations.
  • The following methods and properties now call GetChildren() with a ChildList.SkipSorting parameter, thereby improving their performance when there are many children or when called repeatedly: (371071, 371140, 371312, 372366)
    • The Item.HasChildren property.
    • The Item.DeleteChildren() method.
    • The Item.RecycleChildren() method.
    • The PublishHelper.GetUnknownChildIds(ID) method.
    • The ItemAxes.GetChild(string) method.
    • The Serialization.ItemReference.GetPath(Item) method.
    • The Serialization.Manager.DumpTreeInternal(Item) method.
  • The FieldCollection.Sort() method has been reworked to improve the performance of field sorting. (372366)
  • Serializing item trees to disk is significantly faster. (372366)
  • A few minor performance improvements have been implemented in the RenderingItem, MediaData, WebDAVCustomHandler, and LockSet classes. (371099, 371250, 371085, 371084)
• Item paths cache
  • This release implements an additional item paths cache. (371070)
  • The new item paths cache supplements the existing path cache. The existing paths cache stores the item ID that corresponds to a path, while the new item paths cache stores the paths that correspond to an item ID and ItemPathType (Name, Key, DisplayName, or ItemID) instead of generating such item paths over and over again.
  • Examples of item paths stored in the new item paths cache:
    • "/sitecore/content/home" (when ItemPathType is set to Key)
    • "{11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111}/{0DE95AE4-41AB-4D01-9EB0-67441B7C2450}" (when ItemPathType is set to ItemID)
  • Each Sitecore database has its own cache instance. The default size of the cache is 10MB.
• Ability to disable item cloning
  • A new setting named ItemCloning.Enabled was introduced. (371436, 371714, 371726)
    • Setting ItemCloning.Enabled to false will disable the item cloning functionality and UI features, including hiding the clone and unclone buttons in the UI.
    • The setting is not present in the default web.config file, but it can be added manually to the <settings> section if needed, typically for troubleshooting purposes.

Issues resolved

• Performance issues
  • A performance issue was introduced by 6.5 Update-5 related to the AccessResultCache now using LongID to more efficiently perform partial cache clearings. This has been resolved by introducing a new cache for item paths for each Sitecore database. (371070)
  • The MediaData.MediaId property would iterate over all item versions in certain situations when checking if the media is file based. (371090)
• Engagement Analytics
  • The system did not discard requests that come from robots based on the information in the "/App_Config/Include/Sitecore.Analytics.ExcludeRobots.config" file. (355803)
    • Compared to OMS, the implementation has been reworked to reduce the overhead of checking for robots. (355908, 355905)
  • The system registered request to /sitecore and /sitecore/default.html in the Analytics database. Such requests are no longer tracked. (371310)
  • The system registered requests to the keepalive.html page in the Analytics database. (345487)
• Engagement Automation
  • Changes to engagement automation states for a visitor would sometimes be discarded. This could result in a number of different symptoms, including:
    • The log file would fill up with errors messages stating “Some of the automation states could not be written to the database, probably because of expired lock. Record IDs below: <guid> Concurrency violation: the UpdateCommand affected 0 of the expected 1 records.” (372193).
    • When using the ECM module, some visitors would stay in the “Opened” state instead of moving to the “Clicked Through Message” state after they clicked one or more links in an e-mail message. (372193, 372644)
    • In certain scenarios, visitors did not move out of automation states when they should. This was related to automation states for a visitor being deleted by the system in case of a conflict. (368876, 367568)
    • A returning visitor could incorrectly be added multiple times to the same plan if the visitor had a value in the ExternalUser field. (367565)
• Page Editor
  • When the Page Editor reloads the entire page, it will now refresh the parent window instead of the top window to avoid the Page Editor taking over the entire browser window if it is embedded in an iframe. (371245)
• Renderings and layouts
  • After changing the presentation details on the standard values of a template, the system updated all items that inherited presentation details from the standard values with a small XML chunk. (370575)
    • Layout inheritance still worked as expected, but it was no longer immediately apparent in the UI that these items are inheriting their presentation details from the template.
    • Also, if a large amount of items were updated, this could take a significant amount of time and put unnecessary load on the system.

August 30, 2012

Today, Sitecore has released Analytic Upgrade Tool rev. 120810 – a new version of the tool for converting OMS databases to DMS databases when upgrading from CMS 6.4.x to CMS 6.5.

Note: If you are in the process of upgrading to CMS 6.5 and DMS and have not yet gone live, we recommend that you use the new version of the Analytics Upgrade Tool. If you have already gone live on CMS 6.5 and DMS, there is no reason to re-convert your old OMS database with the new version of the tool.

Important: The new version of the tool is only compatible with CMS 6.5 Update-5 or later (DMS 2.0.1).
The instructions for upgrading from OMS 1 to DMS 2 have been updated to reflect the changes.

Issues resolved 
The following issues have been resolved in the Analytics Upgrade Tool:

• Performance improvements
  • Most of the queries for selecting data from the OMS database were optimized. (362393)
  • The tool now inserts data into the DMS database using bulk insert operations. (362393)
  • The algorithms for transferring very large tables, such as the Pages and Visits tables, were revised. 
  • The tool now cache information when transferring certain tables.
  • Calculation of the duration of visits has been optimized to make the conversion process faster and to reduce the risk of timeouts. (365547)
• Documentation
  • The Analytics Upgrade Tool Guide has been updated with some clarifications and corrections. (369024)
• Step 1: Analyze
  • If the user entered an invalid connection string, the tool did not handle the resulting error message gracefully, and the user would have to restart the tool. (369899)
  • When the PageEvent table contained page events with data > 100 characters, such as error message details, the Analytics Upgrade Tool would write an error to the log file because the data did not fit into the DataKey column of the DMS database. Now, such data will be stored in the Text field in the DMS database. (348927)
• Step 2: Transfer Meta-Data
  • It is now possible to pause and resume the transfer of meta-data without having to start over with a clean DMS database. (370043)
  • When transferring ECM campaigns, the Category3Label column in the DMS database defaulted to an empty string instead of NULL. (369459)
• Step 3: Transfer and Update History
  • When converting Visits.Latitude and Visits.Longitude, the data was rounded off due to converting the values to floats instead of doubles. (370028)
  • Web Forms for Marketers page events were not upgraded correctly. After converting an OMS database to DMS, the converted database did not contain the Form Begin and Form Dropout page events. (370234)
  • If the Data column on a campaign event contained more than 100 characters, the UserName column would be empty for the related automation state record in the DMS database. (359483)
• Miscellaneous
  • If an error occurred when transferring data, the information in log file was sometimes not sufficient to pinpoint the source of the problem. The tool now outputs more specific details to make troubleshooting easier. (349245)
  • The tool now writes an entry to the log file when the user stops or resumes the transfer. (368854)
  • A typo in the log messages has been corrected. (370003)

July 19, 2012

Released Sitecore CMS 6.5.0 rev. 120706 (6.5.0 Service Pack-1, originally released as 6.5.0 Update-5) and DMS 2.0.1 rev. 120706.

Note: This is a Service Pack. Sitecore recommends customers to install service packs for initial release of Sitecore CMS 6.5. This is especially true in production environments. For more information about the recommended versions of Sitecore, see Sitecore Versioning Policy page.


Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

New features

• Experimental support for using Sitecore Clients with SqlServer, StateServer, and other out-of-process session-state modes. (366188)
  • A number of issues have been addressed which prevented content management instances from using out-of-process session-state modes. (367194, 319426, 366200)
  • Core features such as content editing and publishing are expected to work as expected, but we are aware of a number of issues that have not yet been addressed, so the feature can be used for evaluation of this functionality, but is not considered production-ready yet.

Deprecated methods and properties

• Engagement Automation
  • The Sitecore.Analytics.Automation.Data.AutomationStateSubscriptions class is no longer used by the system and has been marked as obsolete. (359127)
  • The system has been changed so that it always checks out (locks) automation state records when accessing them. The AutomationLoadOptions.CheckOut boolean property is therefore no longer used by the system and has been marked as obsolete. (358895)
• XAML controls
  • The static XamlPageStatePersister.GetFileName(...) method is no longer used by the system and has been marked as obsolete. Instead, use the newly introduced static FilePageStateStore.GetFileName(...) method. (365693, 367093)

Important changes

• Using the Job class with out-of-process session state (366200)
  • A new property named IsLocal has been introduced. It indicates whether the job is running on the current instance.
  • All native Sitecore code that monitors the status of jobs with regular intervals has been refactored to check the IsLocal property (such as the publishing wizard, the breaking links dialog, and the rebuild search indexes wizard).
  • Custom code that uses job handles will most likely have to be reworked to check the IsLocal property if you want the code to work with out-of-process session state. Otherwise the code might fail with an exception when encountering a job handle where the job does not run on the current instance.
• To improve publishing performance, it is recommended to only have a NotificationProvider definition in the web.config file for the master database.
  • In the default web.config file, the NotificationProvider definition have been removed for the web database, since item clones are typically only created in the master database and published as "real" items to the web database(s). (364728, 364450)
• The AccessResultCacheKey class has been extended with two new properties: DatabaseName and LongID that are used to more efficiently perform partial cache clearings of the AccessResultCache. The LongID property contains the item path in the form of item IDs. (363737)
• The default value for the setting "Analytics.Automation.BatchSize" has been changed from 1000 to 10.

Improvements

• Profile Cards
  • The system now supports assigning profile cards to template standard values. (361469)
• API
  • When retrieving children for an item using the API, it is now possible to retrieve the children unsorted by specifying SkipSorting as an option when calling Item.GetChildren(options). This can help improve performance, especially in situations where an item has many subitems or when writing code that calls GetChildren() repeatedly. (364492)
• Link database
  • A new overload for the GetReferrers() method makes it possible to retrieve referrers by a specific field on an item, rather than getting all references for the item from the link database. This can improve performance when working with the link database by reducing the number of references retrieved from the database. (364450)
  • The existing link database methods only return direct referrers and references for an item. Two new methods are available that take standard values into account when retrieving referrers and references, rather than only returning direct referrers and references for an item. (362745)
    • Notice that the two new methods can be expensive to call, since they resolve standard values and referrers/references each time they are called.
    • The new methods are called GetItemReferrers(Item item, bool includeStandardValuesLinks) and GetItemReferences(Item item, bool includeStandardValuesLinks)
• XAML controls
  • A new web.config setting named PageStateStore has been introduced. The setting allows customers to configure where page state for XAML controls is stored, for example in a database, similar to the existing ViewStateStore web.config setting. Page state for XAML controls continues to be stored on the file system by default. (365693, 366188)

Issues resolved

• Performance
  • Publishing performance could be affected negatively due to the NotificationManager that keeps track of item cloning notifications and which subscribes to item:saved event. (364450)
    • The NotificationManager subscribed to the item:saved event for all databases, even if the database did not have a NotificationProvider definition in the web.config file.
    • The NotificationManager.GetAllClones() has been optimized to only retrieve references to clones, rather than getting all references from the link database.
  • The performance of item sorting has been improved. (363724)
    • When possible, the system will now extract all keys to a list once per sort operation and use them for sorting, rather than repeatedly accessing one or more field values on each item.
    • To take advantage of the new sorting algorithm, comparers must implement a new interface named IExtractedKeysComparer. The recommended way to do so is to inherit from a new class named ExtractedKeysComparer instead of the old Comparer class.
    • All the standard comparer classes in Sitecore such as DefaultComparer, CreatedComparer, and DisplayNameComparer are now based on the ExtractedKeysComparer class
  • The algorithm for resolving TemplateItem.StandardValues has been optimized. (364492)
  • To improve the speed of the DeviceResolver processor in the <httpRequstBegin> pipeline and other code that calls DeviceRecords.GetAll(), a new DeviceItemsCache has been introduced (364497, 364766)
  • The GetFieldValue processor in the <renderField> has been reworked to improve performance slightly. (366275)
  • The DataSource.GetParentID() method did not cache null values returned from the underlying data provider. In certain situations, for example when starting the Page Editor, this could cause a large number of superfluous calls to the data providers to get the ParentID for the root item. (353245)
  • When using a "sc_camp" query string parameter in the URL to trigger a campaign, the request could take several seconds or more, depending on the number of campaign definition items in the system. (357382)
  • On solutions with a large number of goal definitions or page event definitions, visitors could experience slow response times on pages that triggered campaigns, goals, or page events. (367697)
  • On solutions with a large number of engagement plans, visitors could experience slow response times after the ASP.NET worker process had been restarted. (359127)
    • This happened because the system loaded all engagement plan state items and their associated subscriptions from the database on the first request to the website. To avoid this overhead on the initial request, the system will no longer prefetch and cache automation state subscriptions.
    • As a consequence of this change, the system will typically send two extra requests to the Analytics database for each page view on the website to query and updating engagement plan states for visitors, including locking and unlocking the records in the database to avoid concurrency issues which could cause the visitor to end up in an incorrect state.
  • The architecture for processing automation states has been reworked to avoid several problems:
    • The server could go into an endless loop while trying to update automation states. When this problem occurred, it could lead to a general performance decrease for the entire website and to the website becoming unresponsive for particular users. (358895)
    • The SQL statements for selecting automation states that subscribe to a specific page event could become very long and complex, thereby putting unnecessary load on the SQL Server. (358898)
  • The SQL for polling the event queue for new data has been reworked to avoid an implicit cast when using SQL Server. The implicit cast made the query slower to execute and put more load on the database server than necessary. (357817) [Added September 4, 2012]
• Potential security vulnerabilities
  • Sitecore Corp. wants to give credit to STRATSEC, for the discovery of all of the following vulnerabilities and for their cooperation.
  • By using specially crafted requests, an unauthenticated user would be able to determine the existence of local files on the server if they knew the path to the files. The likelihood of this issue being exploited is however considered unlikely, as it requires a significant degree of technical skills and the issue did not appear to permit the retrieval of the contents of files on the server. (361214)
  • The Upload Wizard that can be opened from the Install Wizard could be used to upload non-ZIP files to the /packages folder. The wizard now checks that files have a .zip extension. (366007)
  • In the Engagement Automation Supervisor, the "Add from CSV File" wizard could be used to upload non-CSV files to the /temp folder. The wizard now checks that files have a .csv extension and will store the uploaded file under a random name in the /temp folder. (363051)
  • A potential JavaScript injection vulnerability has been fixed in the Page Editor ribbon. (364151)
  • A potential cross-site scripting vulnerability has been fixed in the Engagement Analytics report runner. (363059)
  • Unauthenticated users could get access to see a number of configuration parameters for the Executive Dashboard if they knew the correct URLs. (363091)
  • Unauthenticated users could get access to a number of applications and dialogs in Sitecore if they knew the URL of the applications. (363051)
• Engagement Analytics
  • The option to have a campaign change the traffic type did not work as expected. The option "Yes - always" was interpreted as "Yes - if this campaign is triggered on the landing page" and vice versa. (362011)
  • SQL Server transaction deadlocks could occur in a number of different scenarios. This would typically happen when the site was under heavy load. (361518)
  • The algorithm for identifying whether the current request is the first request in a visit would sometimes return incorrect results when attempting to get the visitor from the visitor cookie and the ASP.NET session had expired. (363483)
    • As a consequence of this, the system would sometimes add visit and page to a previous visit instead of creating a new visit record in the Analytics database.
  • If a visitor had configured the browser to block all cookies, the system would create a partial visit in the Analytics database with no associated pages when the browser requested the VisitorIdentification.html page. Such partial visits will no longer be written to the database. (365099)
  • The Tracker.IsActive property contained hardcoded checks for display mode and whether Analytics was enabled. This caused problems for the PersonaSwitcher shared source module, since it prevented the module from starting Analytics in Page Editor mode. (362664, 361964)
    • Notice that v0.1.5 of the PersonaSwitcher module does not work with CMS 6.5.
  • Setting the Analytics.LogLevel setting to "None" caused the Analytics API to log all available log messages, including warnings and informational messages, rather than disabling logging. (351156)
  • A typo in the log messages has been corrected. The word Analytics was misspelled in the following warning: "Analystics: Max size of insert queue reached." (329920)
• Analytics reports
  • When the system sends out reports by email, the links to classify or subscribe to organizations were missing from the report. (364318)
  • When saving a report as PDF, the links to classify or subscribe to organizations were missing. (362587)
  • When saving a report as HTML, the links to classify or subscribe to organizations did not work correctly. (363797)
  • When the system sends out session reports by email, the reports contains links to drill-down reports. When clicking such a link, the system would throw an "Access Denied" exception if the user was not already logged in to Sitecore. Now, the user will instead be redirected to the login page. (361561)
  • When opening a report in the Engagement Analytics application, the system would sometimes fail to render the report with an UnauthorizedAccessException and an error message "Access to the path '<path to report DLL> ' is denied". (361870)
• Executive Insight Dashboard
  • Specifying a traffic type for a referring site in the Dashboard only classified old records in the Analytics database. New records continued to be identified as "Referred - Other". (363370)
• GeoIp lookups
  • Setting the Analytics.PerformLookup setting to "false" did not completely disable GeoIp lookups. When the setting is false, the system will no longer make any calls to the external GeoIp provider, and will always return an empty GeoIp record in this case. (365325)
    • Empty GeoIp records will be cached in the Analytics database as any other GeoIp record to maintain database integrity.
    • The new WhoIsInformation.IsEmpty property can be used to check if a GeoIp record is empty.
• Engagement Automation
  • When a visitor was quickly moved between different states in an engagement plan, the visitor would sometimes end up in an incorrect state that did not correspond to the series of actions the visitor performed. This could for example happen if the visitor signed up for a newsletter with double opt-in and quickly clicked the link in the confirmation e-mail. (357113)
  • A new setting named Analytics.Automation.LockExpiration has been introduced in the Sitecore.Analytics.config file (358895)
    • When Sitecore processes automation states, the system marks (locks) the rows in the database that it is about to process. If, for some reason, the states are not successfully processed, the rows will be processed again at a later time. This can happen, for example, if the server restarts while rows are being processed. This setting specifies the minimum wait time (in seconds) before the rows can be selected for re-processing. The default value is 3 seconds.
  • When trying to upload a CSV file with users in the Engagement Automation Supervisor, the user might be presented with a JavaScript error message. (366940, 366943)
• Page Editor
  • Workflows did not work correctly for members of the Page Editor Minimal role. They were able to save changes, but the item would stay in the approved state and a new version was not created. Now, items that are in a workflow will enter the initial state of the workflow as expected when a minimal Page Editor user saves the item. The only difference compared to regular Page Editor users is that the item will not be locked during this operation. (360762)
• Content Editor
  • When a non-Administrator user performing any of the following operations on an item that did not have any versions in the current language, the system would create an empty version:
    • When renaming an item. (348531)
    • When duplicating or copying an item. (351141, 348531)
    • When moving an item using the "Move To" command or by using drag-and-drop. (348531)
  • When a user duplicated a template, the system would sometimes add an empty version on the Standard Values item of the duplicate. This happened when the Standard Values item did not have any versions in the current content language. (362436)
• Rich Text Editor
  • The Media Manager, Document Manager, and Flash Manager applications in the Rich Text Editor would sometimes display items that the current user did not have permissions to see. This happened because the list of items was retrieved in the context of the default\anonymous user rather than the currently logged in user. (363368, 365170, 366620, 367318)
• Lucene Search
  • The Rebuild Search Index wizard did not display custom search indexes in the list of available indexes. (311614)
• Link database
  • When iterating over ItemLinks returned by the GetReferrers() or GetReferences() methods, calling the ItemLink.GetSourceItem() method would sometimes return an "empty" item in the Invariant language. (358220)
  • The Links panel available from the Navigate tab in the Content Editor ribbon did not display references coming from standard values. (362745, 367117)
• Item Cloning
  • When performing a Smart Publish, clones would get republished on every publish operation if the presentation details for the source item contained a layout delta definition. (365423, 367737)
  • The ItemCloningRelations cache was not cleared when calling the Item.Reload() method. This could for example cause clones imported from a package to be republished on every publish operation. (367737)
  • When using the Danish client language, a System.FormatException would occur when a user tried to delete an item that had one or more clones. (367058)
• Multibrowser support
  • [IE9] The font size was too small when using Sitecore with the Japanese client language in Internet Explorer 9. (353224, 368148)
• Profile Cards
  • When a user tried to assign profile cards on the Standard Values item of a template, an "Application access denied" exception would appear. This would also happen when a user tried to assign profile cards to items for which personalization is denied, as determined by the <getItemPersonalizationVisibility> pipeline. (361469)
• Oracle
  • The Visit Detail report did not display the list of visited pages in the correct order. (362524)
  • The "Page - Goals and Events" report failed with an exception: "Oracle.DataAccess.Client.OracleException ORA-00907: missing right parenthesis". (361873)
  • When calculating average time on page for use in Engagement Analytics reports, an overflow could happen during conversion. (361873)
• Security API
  • The AccessResultCache has been optimized to reduce the time it takes to partially clearing the cache for all descendants of an item, since this operation could take several milliseconds when the cache contained many entries. (363737)
• Link Provider
  • The logic for resolving cross-site links has been improved. When generating links, the Link Provider would sometimes generate an incorrect link when the start items for different sites started with the same prefix/path. (339047)
    Note: This issue was only partially fixed in 6.5 Update-5. It was fully fixed in 6.6 Update-6 (ref. no. 382388). [Added June 6, 2013]
• Media library and media links
  • The wrong item could be deleted when a user tried to delete an item while navigating the media library from the Insert Media dialog box. This happened because Sitecore deleted the currently selected item in the content tree, not the item the user right-clicked to show the context menu that contains the Delete option. (363386)
  • In certain scenarios, Sitecore did not resolve security permissions for media items correctly when the media URL had a /sitecore/shell prefix. (346144)
  • Media links would sometimes be generated with an incorrect VirtualFolder in the URL. (367558)
  • When Media.AlwaysIncludeServerUrl was true, images from the media library would sometimes appear as broken image icons in the Sitecore client. This could for example happen when previewing a rendering in the Developer Center. (360170, 367060)
  • The forceDownload setting was ignored when serving media requests. This happened when the Media.EnableRangeRetrieval setting was set to true. (367336)
• WebDAV
  • The WebDAVCustomHandler processor intercepted and tried to parse non-WebDAV HTTP requests that used other verbs than GET, POST, HEAD, and DEBUG (for example requests using PUT, DELETE, and OPTIONS). The handler will no longer intercept non-WebDAV requests, except from requests to / with an OPTIONS verb. (361214)
• Development
  • The Debugger did not work for URLs without an .html extension when using Integrated pipeline mode with IIS7. (309962, 329898, 348881)
• Setup.exe installation program
  • Preliminary support for installing Sitecore on IIS 8. (364665, 354684)
    • The setup.exe will no longer show a message stating that IIS is not installed or its version is lower than 5.0 when trying to install Sitecore on Windows 8.
      Note: You will see a similar message if you try to run the setup.exe on Windows Server 2012 RC2 (ref. no. 367533). This issue was fixed in 6.6 Initial Release (rev. 120918). [Updated September 24, 2012].
    • After installation, Sitecore might fail to start with "Error 500.19 - Internal Server Error". This happens because the default installation of IIS 8 on Windows 8 does not by default install all the components that are required to run Sitecore. For now, the components must manually be installed (please use ref. no. 367542 if contacting Customer Service about this issue).
• Miscellaneous
  • Sitecore would fail with an "Illegal characters in path" error message in the RequestFilter.GetExtension() method if the requested URL contained a quote character or other characters that are not valid in a file name. Now, the GetExtension() method will return an empty string in such cases. (319427) [Added December 12, 2012]
    Note: This issue was only partially fixed in the 6.5 Update-5. There were still scenarios where this error message could appear. These scenarios were fixed in 7.2 Update-2 (ref. no. 388283, 388284). [Added May 30, 2014]
  • CMS 6.5 did not recognize Sitecore Xpress license files. When trying to use a Sitecore Xpress license file, the system would fail to start with a "Required license is missing: Runtime" error message. (363565)
  • After installing .NET Framework 4.5 Beta (for example due to installing Visual Studio 11 Beta), trying to log on to Sitecore instances running in .NET 4.0 application pools would fail. When trying to log on, an ArgumentException would occur with the following message: " Object of type 'System.Int32' cannot be converted to type 'System.Web.Security.Cryptography.Purpose'." (361953)
  • When publishing or updating user accounts, an InvalidOperationException "Invalid event arg type" would be written to the log file related to the AccessResultCache.OnUserUpdated() method. (361262)
  • Event handlers for the "item:copying" and "item:copied" events receive the item being copied as the first event argument. In certain scenarios, the item would in a different language than the user's currently selected content language. (351141)
  • View state caching for XAML controls was not disabled completely when the CacheViewState setting was set to false. (366177, 366188)

May 8, 2012

Released Sitecore CMS 6.5.0 rev. 120427 (6.5.0 Update-4) and DMS 2.0.1 rev. 120427.

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

Highlights of new features, improvements and fixes

The main highlights in this update are:

• DMS
  • The DMS version number has been changed from 2.0.0 to 2.0.1 because of database schema changes to the Analytics database.
  • Support for using Analytics with SqlServer, StateServer, and other out-of-process session-state modes.
  • Important change: Aggregated data used in the Executive Dashboard and some of the Engagement Analytics reports is by default updated once per day instead of realtime in order to optimize performance when collecting data and reduce the risk of deadlocks.
  • A large number of improvements and bugfixes related to Analytics. This includes issues that could cause exceptions to show up on the website, issues that occurred under heavy load, and issues related to GeoIp resolving.
  • Engagement Automation bugfixes
• CMS
  • Item Cloning improvements and bugfixes.
  • Support for validation rules in the Page Editor.
  • Page Editor improvements and bugfixes, including ability to work on items in workflows or with publishing restrictions.
  • A number of browser-specific issues have been resolved.
• Issues resolved by 6.4.1 Update-6 have now been merged to 6.5.

New Features

• Support for using Analytics with SqlServer, StateServer, and other out-of-process session-state modes. (348775)
  • This allows content delivery instances to be configured to share session state data and such instances are therefore no longer bound to "sticky sessions" mode.
  • Notice that content management instances must still be configured with InProc session-state mode, since the Sitecore Client only supports the InProc session-state-mode.

Deprecated methods and properties

• A number of methods and properties have been obsoleted in relation to item changes to give developers access to the original value when a field or an item property has been changed. (358378)
  • The SavedItemRemoteEvent.FieldChange(fieldId, value) method has been marked as obsolete and replaced by a new FieldChange(fieldId, value, originalValue) overload.
  • The SavedItemRemoteEvent.PropertyChange(fieldId, value) method has been marked as obsolete and replaced by a new PropertyChange(fieldId, value, originalValue) overload.
  • The ItemChanges.SetPropertyValue(propertyName, value) methods have been marked as obsolete and replaced by new SetPropertyValue(propertyName, value, originalValue) overloads.
  • The ItemChanges.PropertyChanges property which returns a Hashtable has been marked as obsolete, but can still be used for now. It has been superseded by a new Properties property which returns a Dictionary<string, PropertyChange> to give access to both the new and the old value of changed properties.

Important changes

• The DMS version number has been changed from 2.0.0 to 2.0.1 because of database schema changes to the Analytics database.
  • A DeviceName field and a Language field have been added to the Visits table. (359965)
  • A DeviceName field has been added to the Pages table. (359965)
  • The default size of the UserName field in the AutomationStates table has been increased from 100 to 256 characters to allow for long user names. (346438)
  • The views that provide data for the Dashboard have been extended with DeviceName, Language and Multisite columns. The columns are currently reserved for future use and are not yet exposed in the API or in reports. (359968)
  • To reduce table fragmentation and I/O when inserting data, a number of tables in the Analytics database have been changed to use 8-byte (bigint) identity fields as clustered primary keys with the existing Id columns being secondary unique keys and converting former clustered indexes to non-clustered. (360557)
    • Affected tables: Visitors, VisitorTags, Visits, Profiles, Pages, PageEvents, AutomationStates.
• Delay in aggregating data used in the Executive Dashboard and some of the Engagement Analytics reports. (359112, 359592, 361051, 359424, 360523, 361674, 361048)
  • Due to performance issues and the risk of SQL Server transaction deadlocks, a number of indexed views has been removed from the DMS database and replaced with a number of cache tables to hold aggregate data and normal (non-indexed) views on top of these tables. The data in the cache tables are updated by a background process that summarizes data for the Dashboard and some of the Engagement Analytics reports.
  • The background process puts a delay of up to 24 hours (configurable) on the availability of data to the Dashboard and the following Engagement Analytics reports:
    • For the most part, the Dashboard reports should not be affected by this change, since the Dashboard itself caches data per day. But when looking at reports with data for the previous day, the data range could be missing ½ hour of data (since the background job is configured to run at 23:30).
    • Reports in the Engagement Analytics application:
      • Sales > Top Leads By Activity > (all 2 reports)
      • Sales > Top Leads By Value > (all 4 reports)
    • Sub-reports in the Engagement Analytics application:
      • Business Overview
      • Business Visits
    • Item-specific reports:
      • Local Searches Leading to this Page
      • Local Searches on this Page
      • Page – Goals and Events
  • To allow administrators to force the data in the cache tables to be updated, a new "Refresh Aggregated Data in Reports" option is available in the Control Panel > Analytics. Alternatively, SQL Server administrators can execute the sp_sc_refresh_views stored procedure on the Analytics database. (361842)
  • The delay in aggregating data is a temporary solution for 6.5 Update-4. We are planning to re-introduce views with realtime or close-to-realtime data in a future release.
  • If you have customized any of the existing reports or created your own reports, the SQL statements for the reports might contain a "WITH (NOEXPAND)" hint. This hint only works with indexed views and should therefore be removed from the SQL.
• Engagement Analytics
  • The logic for tracking the end of user sessions has been improved. (345194, 360421)
    • Previously, the end of user sessions was tracked by subscribing to the ASP.NET Session_End event which executes Sitecore's <sessionEnd> pipeline, but this is not 100% reliable. Events would not be tracked for SqlServer and StateServer session modes or in cases where the ASP.NET worker process shuts down unexpectedly.
    • Instead, a new <visitEnd> pipeline has been implemented. Under normal circumstances, this pipeline is executed from the sessionEnd pipeline when the session ends. At the same time, a background job periodically checks the Analytics database and executes the visitEnd pipeline for any expired visits for which the pipeline has not been executed already.
    • The background worker can be configured using 3 new settings in the Sitecore.Analytics.config file. The settings are described in detail in the Sitecore.Analytics.config file.
      • The Analytics.VisitEnd.CheckInterval setting specifies how often the background worker is run (default value: 60 seconds)
      • The Analytics.VisitEnd.MaxRows setting defines the size of batches to read from the database (default value: 1000)
      • The Analytics.VisitEnd.ProcessingTimeOut setting specifies how often the background worker should try to re-process expired visits. (default value: 20 min.)
  • Analytics definition data (such as page event definitions, goals, and campaigns) will now be stored in the reporting database instead of the "analytics" database when Sitecore is configured to use a separate reporting database. (349118, 359365, 353994)
    • Working with Analytics definition data from custom code should always be done using Tracker.DefinitionItems (which takes the definition database into account) rather than using Client.ContentDatabase.Analytics().
  • An analyticsDefinitions="content" attribute has been added on the <site> node for the "shell" site in the web.config file. (353994)
    • This attribute specifies that Analytics definition data should be read from the content database (typically the master database) rather than the context database (the core database).
  • The Campaign template has been reworked to make it more intuitive to configure campaigns. (358577)
    • The "Campaign Link" field has been reintroduced. The field shows the query string parameter that can be used to trigger the campaign. (347688)
    • The field previously named "Organic" has been renamed to "Change Traffic Type" with a help text of "(for every visit that triggers this campaign)". The available options have also been renamed to make it easier for marketers to pick the right option and to understand how the "Change Traffic Type" field works.
    • The field previously named "Traffic Type" has been renamed to "Select Traffic Type".
    • The standard values for the Campaign template now specify a default value for the "Change Traffic Type" field. The value is set to "Yes – if this is triggered on the landing page". This means that all marketers have to do is to select a value in the "Select Traffic Type" field on a campaign item to have the system change the traffic type when visitors trigger the campaign on the first page they visit. (358577)
• Engagement Automation
  • When Sitecore is configured to use a separate automations database, automation state information will now be stored in the automations database instead of the "analytics" database. (358298, 349124)
• Executive Insight Dashboard
  • The following fields on the Dashboard Report template have been made shared instead of versioned to ensure that the Dashboard works correctly independently of the current client language: Report Name, Default Expiration Period, SqlServer, and Oracle. (349486, 352990)
• The /App_Browsers/Form.browser file has been reintroduced (360924, 358242)
  • The /App_Browsers/Form.browser file was removed in 6.4.1 Update-4 (which was merged to 6.5 Update-2). This turned out to have negative side-effects, and the Form.browser file has therefore been added back in 6.5 Update-4.
• Development
  • The MainUtil.GetSortKey() methods will now return keys prefixed with "0" for normal keys and "1" if the key starts with "__". Previously the method replaced "__" with "åå". This change has been made to avoid potential problems where keys are sorted differently based on the server's locale, but it can break existing code if the code depends on the literal value of sort keys or if the code stores sort keys in a persistent cache. (354154)

Improvements

• Engagement Analytics
  • Page Event and Goal categories
    • It is now possible to organize Page Events and Goals in categories (as well as folders), similar to how Campaigns can be organized in categories. (360050, 361826, 361886)
    • The system supports up to 3 levels of categories, storing information about the categories in the Analytics database.
    • The various dialog boxes where users can select page events and goals works as before and do not show categories.
  • Visitor tags
    • To prevent redundant tag values in the database, the system will now check if there already is a record with the same tag name and tag value before adding a new record in the database. (316079)
    • A new VisitorTags.GetAll(...) method allows developers to iterate over all tags with a specific tag name. (354275)
    • A new VisitorTags.Remove(...) method allows developers to remove individual tags with a specific tag name and tag value. (316079, 363270)
    • A new VisitorTags.RemoveAll(...) method allows developers to remove all tags with a specific tag name. (316079)
  • The Tracking field
    • The Tracking field now stores the item IDs of the assigned definition items in addition to the item names. (358378)
    • The Tracking field now uses the link database to maintain a list of links between content items and any assigned goals, page events, campaigns, etc. When an Analytics definition item is renamed or deleted, the Tracking field in affected content items will now be updated accordingly. (358378)
  • It is now possible to modify the scores of a VisitProfile from custom code. (359456)
    • To avoid breaking the current API structure, this is implemented as a new class named UpdatableVisitProfile which gives access to the internal VisitProfile.Score(...) methods.
• Engagement Automation
  • A new condition is available in the "Events" category:
    • The condition with the text "where page event is [specific value]" is evaluated based on the ID of the selected page event. (356297)
• The Page Editor now supports validation rules. (315260, 336447)
  • The Page Editor now executes item and field validation rules whenever a user tries to save items in the Page Editor.
  • The Page Editor evaluates only 'Critical' and 'Fatal' validators, and item validation rules are executed for the current context item only. Field validation rules are only executed for fields that the current user can modify in the Page Editor.
  • The functionality can be disabled using a new web.config setting named WebEdit.EnableValidation.
• Item Cloning
  • In the content tree, clones now appear in gray, just like hidden and virtual items. (356253)
  • Content authors now have access to clone items, even if they do not have permissions to the Configure tab of the Content Editor ribbon. (352283)
    • The "Duplicate" button on the Home tab of the Content Editor ribbon has been changed to a split button. Clicking the bottom part of the button displays a menu with options for duplicating, cloning, and uncloning.
    • The cloning and uncloning options are by default available to members of the Sitecore Client Authoring role.
  • A new web.config setting named ItemCloning.NonInheritedFields has been introduced. (347569)
    • The setting allows developers to configure a list of fields which should be not be inherited by clones from their source item in addition to the default list of fields that are never inherited: Updated, Updated by, Revision, Created, Created by, Source, Workflow, Workflow State, Lock.
• The media API now supports range retrieval requests when serving media requests. (314692)
  • This allows clients to resume interrupted downloads, as well as allowing PDF readers or media players to download only part of a document or video stream.
  • The feature is enabled by default, but can be disabled using a new web.config setting named Media.EnableRangeRetrievalRequest.
• A new argument called RequireApprovedVersion is available in the <filterItems> pipeline. (338178)
  • The argument allows developers to get the latest publishable version of items regardless of whether that version is in a final workflow state. This is for example used by the Page Editor to allow editors to edit items in non-final workflow states, while still respecting workflow permissions.

Issues resolved

• The issues resolved by 6.4.1 Update-6 have now been merged into 6.5.
  • See the 6.4.1 Update-6 release notes for the details about resolved issues.
• Performance
  • In certain scenarios, CMS 6.5 would consume an excessive amount of RAM and CPU when processing requests compared to CMS 6.2. To resolve this, the RenderingItem.GetStandardValuesItemFromParametersTemplate(Item) and RenderingItem.IsAvalableNotBlobNotSystemField(field) methods now use internal caches. (355113)
• Engagement Analytics
  • Issues in Analytics that could cause errors to appear on the website:
    • If Sitecore does not have a connection to the Analytics database, an exception could occur and the website visitor would be presented with an error page. Now, error messages will be written to the log file in such a situation but not make the rendered page fail. (333252, 333236, 358742)
    • If a page event was triggered on a page and the system could not find the page event definition, a PageEventDefinitionNotFoundException would occur and the website visitor would be presented with an error page. Now, the error message will be written to the log file in such a situation but not make the rendered page fail. (353992)
    • If a profile key had been renamed, an InvalidOperationException related to the ProfileItem.MatchPattern() method could occur and the website visitor would be presented with an error page. Now, the error message will be written to the log file in such a situation but not make the rendered page fail. (353993)
  • Issues in Analytics that would typically occur when the site was under heavy load:
    • SQL Server transaction deadlocks could occur when executing the SqlDataAdapterProvider.Update() method. This would typically happen when the site was under heavy load. (359112, 359592)
    • The AnalyticsLogger class was not thread safe. This could cause the EndAnalytics.TrackLogInformation() pipeline processor to fail with an InvalidOperationException message when the site was under heavy load. (355509)
    • The ASP.NET worker process could crash with a stack overflow exception when the site was under heavy load. (359310)
  • Issues in Analytics that would show up as unhandled exceptions in the log file:
    • When the hostname of a referrer website could not be parsed, a HttpUnhandledException would appear in the Sitecore log file with a nested UriFormatException. Now, a warning will be written to the log file with information about the VisitID and the referrer string that could not be parsed. (359887)
    • When writing error tracking messages to the Analytics database where the length of the message exceeded the max length of the column in the database, Sitecore would end up writing one or more very long error messages to the Sitecore log file. Now, long error messages will be truncated before inserting them into the database. (355382)
  • Oracle
    • When running DMS on Oracle, the log file would sometimes fill up with NullReferenceExceptions when the system tried to commit Analytics data to the database. (361858)
  • Analytics reports
    • When the system sent out session reports by email, the link to the session report did not work correctly. If a user clicked the link, Sitecore would display an error page instead of the Visit Detail report. (360160, 360267)
    • The Visit Detail report did not display the last page visited for each visit. (358904)
    • The Visitor Overview and Visit Detail reports did not display the duration of sessions correctly for sessions that had lasted more than 24 hours. (349442, 360895, 361938)
    • After a user had made changes to the design of a report in the Report Designer, the saved report would fail to work and the log file would contain ArgumentOutOfRangeException error messages. (356153, 356864)
    • When a user tried to preview reports in the Report Designer, one or more error messages would be reported. (356828, 356864)
      Note: There are still some known issues related to previewing reports. For example, the Previewer will not always show correct data in the preview.
  • GeoIp lookups
    • GeoIp records did not get inserted into the GeoIps table for requests that supplied the IP address using an X-Forwarded-For header or a similar header configured using the Analytics.ForwardedRequestHttpHeader web.config setting. (354328, 360186)
    • When updating the GeoIp information associated with a VisitRow object, the system used the current culture when converting Latitude and Longitude from strings to numbers. This resulted in incorrect values when running under cultures where the decimal separator is not ".". (359485)
    • The system interpreted the Analytics.GeoIps.CacheSize setting as "maximum cache size in bytes" instead of "maximum number of cache entries", allowing the cache to hold fewer entries than it was configured to. (359303)
  • GeoIps and conditional renderings
    • Conditional renderings with GeoIp conditions such as "where the country is equal to [...]" only worked as expected if the GeoIp information had previously been resolved. (354307)
    • The system will now try to update the visit's GeoIp information on every request, not only when the visit is created. Conditional renderings with GeoIp conditions will therefore take effect as soon as the GeoIp information has been resolved.
    • The system will by default never force GeoIp information to be resolved on the first request, since this could introduce a considerable delay before the page is rendered to the visitor. If you are willing to introduce a delay on the page to wait for GeoIp information to be available to the renderings on the first request, you can do so by inserting a call to visit.UpdateGeoIpData(TimeSpan timeout) into the <createVisit> pipeline.
  • Issues related to the Analytics API:
    • The IsDeployed property that is available on the PageEventItem, ProfileItem, and other classes that correspond to Analytics definition items will now check the workflow state of the definition item in all languages. This solves a number of problems in solutions that contain multiple content languages. (358311)
    • When working with Analytics Filters using the API, the PredefinedFilterValueItem class restricted the location of filters to a specific location in the content tree. This restriction has been removed. (354208)
  • Issues related to Tracker.CurrentPage.Cancel():
    • When calling Tracker.CurrentPage.Cancel(), the VisitPageCount for subsequent request would sometimes be calculated incorrectly. (359438)
    • Tracker.CurrentPage.Cancel() did not cancel tracking of profiles, causing profile values that were updated on the cancelled page to be written to the database. (359178)
      Note: This issue was only partially fixed in the 6.5 Update-4. It was fully fixed in 6.6 Update-2 (ref. no. 365934). [Added December 12, 2012]
    • Tracker.CurrentPage.Cancel() did not cancel tracking of value points for the cancelled page. (359307, 363054)
    • Note: Tracker.CurrentPage.Cancel() still does not cancel tracking of campaigns and goals in 6.5 Update-4. We are planning to resolve this known issue in a future update (please use ref. no. 361591 if contacting Customer Service about this issue).
  • Other issues that could cause visit information to be incorrect or missing:
    • Visitor classifications did not take effect, and all visits would be treated as non-classified visits. This issue only applies to solutions based on 6.5 Update-3. (359351)
    • Campaigns assigned to an item would not be triggered in certain scenarios when a visitor quickly moved between pages on the website. (356397)
    • Visit information was not saved correctly if the current page redirected the user to a different page. This could for example cause goals associated with web forms to not be registered. (357807, 357809, 358020)
    • The value assigned to goals and page events was not calculated and saved correctly if the current page redirected the user to a different page. (359447)
    • Visit information was not saved correctly if triggered when the current context site is null. This could for example cause page events in web forms registered using AJAX calls to not be registered. (358586, 358811)
    • The system did not respect the "Disable Analytics for this Page" setting. Information would be collected and stored into the Analytics database disregarding the value of the setting. (363477, 363803)
    • When going live with a CMS 6.5 solution connected to a DMS Analytics database upgraded from an OMS database, subsequent visits for visitors with active sessions would not be registered correctly. This happened due to differences in the format for the SC_ANALYTICS_SESSION_COOKIE cookie between CMS 6.4 and CMS 6.5. (357881)
  • Issues related to Page Level multivariate tests:
    • When a new visitor requested a page with a Page Level test assigned, a new visit record for the visitor was not added into the Visits table. (361860)
    • When a visitor requested a page with a Page Level test assigned, the TestSetID and TestValues columns were not registered in the record in the Pages table. (361834)
  • The AnalyticsLogger class has been reworked to avoid concurrency problems that could lead to high memory usage and/or writing very long messages to the log file. (358090)
  • The VisitsRow.GetPages() and VisitsRow.Load() methods would sometimes request excessive data from the database server. The problem got worse the more pages the visitor had previously visited. The methods and associated SQL queries have been optimized to reduce the load on the database server. (361261)
• Engagement Automation
  • To determine if an engagement plan is deployed, the Silverlight applications will now check the workflow state of the engagement plan item in all languages. This solves a number of problems in solutions that contain multiple content languages. (353373, 358739)
  • Members of the Analytics Maintaining role did not have sufficient permissions to open the Select Account dialog box and would see an Application Access Denied error message if they tried to use the Supervisor to add visitors to a state in an engagement plan. (358707)
  • The "Send E-Mail Message" action would fail with an InvalidCastException if the visitor did not have an e-mail address. (358831)
  • The AutomationWorker.WakeUp method contained a reference to Tracker.Visitor. (357796)
  • The Execute Trigger Wizard in the Engagement Supervisor evaluated the conditions for the selected state using the user context of the currently logged in user instead of switching the user context to the selected visitor. (350075, 360424)
  • The condition with the text "where the page event name [compares to] [specific value]" always returned false, even when the page event matched the condition. (356297)
  • The AnalyticsItems.EngagementPlans property always returned an empty set, even if the solution contained one or more engagement plans. (356156)
• Executive Insight Dashboard
  • The Dashboard could throw an ArgumentNotNull exception in the ChartAxisLabelTagConverter.FindItem() method. (348304)
  • The "Value per Visits" label has been corrected to "Value per Visit". (360424)
• Profile Cards
  • After assigning an image that had not yet been published to a profile card, the image would show up as a blank rectangle. (362897)
• Page Editor
  • The Page Editor did not respect workflow permissions on items. The Page Editor now takes workflows into account, while still allowing editors to edit items and versions which are not in a final workflow step. (338178)
  • The Page Editor did not allow editors to work on items with publish restrictions. If no valid publishable version was found, the Page Editor will now display the latest item version. (340323)
  • The Page Editor allowed editors to save non-numeric values into Number and Integer fields. Now, such fields are validated server-side when saving the page. (318265, 361007)
  • A Page Not Found error could occur in various situations if the LinkProvider had useDisplayName set to "true". For example, the error could happen after the user inserted a new item or switched to a different content language. (353388, 351930, 361113)
  • While in the Page Editor, if a user did not have write access to the current item (context item), but sublayouts and renderings on the page were using a data source to an item that they did have access to, this would allow the users to edit the sublayouts and rendering (as expected), but when the user went to save the changes, the denied write access to the current item (context item) would prevent those saves from being propagated. (349375)
  • When clicking one of the arrows in the treecrumb below the Page Editor ribbon next to an item with a large number of subitems, the list would extend beyond the screen without a scrollbar. (350335)
  • The value of the WebEdit.UsePopupContentEditor setting was ignored when a user clicked the "Edit" button in the ribbon or the "Edit the related item" command in the floating toolbar. (352945)
  • If the current page is rendered using a fallback device (meaning that the current device does not have any presentation details assigned), the user could experience various problems when trying to work with the page, for example when trying to add components. This has been resolved by introducing a new pipeline processor named PageEditorHandleNoLayout in the <httpRequestBegin> pipeline. The new pipeline processor explicitly switches to the fallback device in such cases. (354159, 354146)
  • The "Show ancestors" drop-down box will now render the display name of placeholder definition items when one is available. (350022)
• Multibrowser support
  • [IE] Some of the context menus and pop-up menus had unnecessary horizontal or vertical scrollbars when "Allow script-initiated windows without size or position constraints" was enabled in Internet Explorer. (360258)
  • [IE9] The Page Editor, Preview, and Sitecore Debugger now works correctly in IE9 and no longer requires editors to enable Compatibility View mode in Internet Explorer. (341909, 347176, 349492, 348382, 360451)
  • [IE9] The inline Content Editor did not work correctly in the Page Editor when using IE9. Instead, the Content Editor will now always open in a pop-up window when a user clicks the "Edit" button in the ribbon or the "Edit the related item" command in the floating toolbar, just as if the WebEdit.UserPopupContentEditor setting was set to true. (357963)
  • [IE9] When using inline editing in the Page Editor, the field control border was not resized to match the text in the field as the user typed. (358567)
  • [IE9] A JavaScript error would occur if the user clicked specific elements in the Insert Sitecore Media or Insert Sitecore Link dialog boxes in the Rich Text Editor. (357984)
  • [IE9] There was too much blank space at the bottom of the Insert Sitecore Media or Insert Sitecore Link dialog boxes in the Rich Text Editor. (357983)
  • [Chrome] When using the Flash-based upload, the browser might become unresponsive and later display a "Plug-in Unresponsive" dialog box when initiating the upload from one of the dialog boxes in the Rich Text Editor. (359313)
  • [Chrome] The ribbon would appear to stop working after some time. This happened because several of the buttons in the ribbon only worked correctly the first time the user clicked them. On subsequent clicks, nothing would happen even if the ribbon had been reloaded in the meantime. (360000, 353812)
  • [Firefox] Inline editing did not work correctly for <sc:text> and other editing controls if the controls were wrapped in P-tags. (351280)
• Content Editor
  • In the Quick Action bar, clones would always be marked as having presentation overridden when the "Presentation Overridden" option was enabled, even when the presentation was inherited from the source item. (358247)
  • The Device Editor dialog box could fail with an ArgumentNullException when the user clicked OK in the dialog box. This could happen if the item did not have any presentation assigned and the user had not made any changes in the dialog box. (361558)
  • When editing items with Standard Fields enabled, there were still some scenarios where the Content Editor would copy the presentation details from the template standard values and store them directly on the item, even when the user had not changed the presentation details. (357664)
    Note: This issue was only partially fixed in 6.5 Update-4. It has been fully fixed in 6.6 Update-7 (ref. no. 388441). [Updated December 13, 2013]
• Publishing
  • Smart Publish operations would sometimes take longer than necessary because the system tried to republish items published previously. This happen because the system did not clean up field values stored in the database after developers removed inherited templates. (347488)
• Item Cloning
  • Only administrators had access to the Clone and Unclone commands on the Configure tab of the Content Editor ribbon.
    • Members of the Sitecore Client Authoring role now have access to the commands by clicking the bottom part of the Duplicate button on the Home tab. (352283)
    • Members of the Sitecore Client Configuring and Sitecore Client Developing roles now have access to the Clone and Unclone commands on the Configure tab by default. (352283)
  • A number of issues have been resolved that could occur if the current user did not have read access to the source item:
    • Blank values could show up on a clone instead of the original values from the source item. (357438, 349108)
    • The system would sometimes throw a NullReferenceException in the RegisterWarnings(...) method when displaying notifications for a clone. (336055)
  • Item cloning notification
    • Notifications that allow the user to change fields or add versions to a clone will now be hidden if the item is locked by a different user. This is done to prevent users from making unexpected changes to locked items. (360214, 361433)
    • Notifications will now be hidden if the user does not have sufficient permissions to perform the operation. (360214)
    • If a user does not have read access to one or more languages, the system will no longer display clone notifications related to those languages. (355317)
    • The notification "A new subitem has been created" only appeared when working in the same content language. The notification will now appear no matter which content language is selected. (342763)
    • After creating the first new language version on a source item in a specific content language, notifications about the new language version will now appear on clones of the items no matter which content language that the user has selected. Previously, the system would only display such notifications in content languages where the clone already had versions. (336506)
  • Issues related to cloning items and/or propagating changes to clones:
    • When cloning an item, a version would be created in the default content language (typically English), even if the original item did not have any versions in this language. (353290)
    • When copying or duplicating a clone, the system did not immediately update the link database. This could cause a number of problems, such as notifications not appearing on the copy when making changes to the original item. (347245)
    • When moving items around in a part of the content tree that is cloned, the system would sometimes offer the user to create new subitems in the cloned structure rather than offering the user to move the existing clones to reflect the changes in the item structure. This could cause duplicate items to appear. (339344)
    • When changing the template of an item that has clones, the template change was not propagated to the clones. Now, the user will be warned that the item has clones when opening the Change Template wizard. After changing the template, a notification will appear on each clone with options for changing the template of the clone or keeping the current template. (336504)
    • When cloning an item structure using the API, the system skipped children where the creation timestamp of the child was equal to or larger than the creation timestamp of the clone. This could cause problems when quickly creating and cloning items or when the value of the Created field had been set programmatically. (336582)
  • The system did not take the current content language into account when displaying the "[original value]" label over fields in the Content Editor. (355922)
  • When resetting field values for a clone, the Reset Fields dialog box always displayed values from the Standard Values item rather than displaying values from the source item of clones. (356298)
• Security applications
  • If the AutomaticDataBind web.config setting was set to "true", several security applications would not display all users/roles and paging did not work properly. This problem applied to the Role Manager, the Domain Manager, and the Select an Account dialog box. (357729)
• WebDAV
  • When opening the WebDAV Drag & Drop window, an error message would appear informing the user "Cannot find http://<hostname/sitecore_files/<guid>/... Make sure the path or Internet address is correct". (364597, 363482)
    Note: This problem still occurs in 6.5 Update-4 if the IIS application pool is configured to run in Classic pipeline mode under the .NET 4.0 framework. As a workaround, it is recommended to use Integrated pipeline mode for .NET 4.0 application pools if you plan to use WebDAV. We are planning to resolve this known issue in a future update (please use ref. no. 364791 if contacting Customer Service about this issue).
    
• Serialization
  • When updating or reverting templates, their Standard Values items would sometimes silently not be updated/reverted/restored. This could happen if the serialized standard values item contained information about fields that are missing from the template. In such cases, the system will now show an error message. (358818)
  • When reverting items from serialized files, the serialized files might point to the ID of parent items that do not exist in the database, but this was not always indicated in the log file. In such cases, the system will now always write an error to the log file to help in troubleshooting. (357771)
• Media API
  • The TransformationOptions and ResizeOptions classes have been extended so that it is now possible to override the following properties using the API: PixelOffsetMode, CompositingMode, and InterpolationMode. (356486)
• Lucene Search
  • HTML entities in Rich Text fields were not indexed correctly, making it impossible to search for characters that are encoded as HTML entities by the Rich Text Editor, such as characters with accents such as "áí" or Danish characters "æøåÆØÅ". (359282)
• Link database
  • When copying or duplicating an item, the link database was not updated immediately. This could cause a number of problems, including missing warnings about breaking links when deleting items or item clone notifications not being displayed when making changes to the original item. (347245)
• Development
  • A number of methods in the LinkBuilder class have been made "protected virtual" to make the class easier to override. Also, a number of properties on the class have been made protected instead of private. (356242)
  • A superfluous text in the heading of the Base Templates dialog box has been removed. (364710)
• Cookies
  • The sitecore_userticket cookie would sometimes be persisted and exist after the browser was restarted, even when the user had not checked the "Remember me" checkbox on the login page. (360182)
  • A cookie named siteName#sc_wede (for example "website#sc_wede") would be set if a visitor browsed the website with a browser that is not recognized by Sitecore as supporting inline editing, such as the Sea Monkey browser. (355474)
• Localization
  • The boost page which is displayed when too many users are logged in at the same time can now be localized, including the related Kick User page that can be used to remove users from the system. (346580, 359954)
  • The language drop-down boxes in the Content Editor and the Page Editor now display the information using the culture of the current client language. For Japanese and other languages that use non-Latin characters, you might need to have the corresponding Windows language pack installed for the language names to be localized in that language. (352554, 352217, 352539, 359746) [Updated June 7, 2012]
    • The Content Editor language drop down displays the language name and country/region first using the culture of the current client language and then using the language itself. [Added June 7, 2012]
    • The Page Editor language drop down displays the language name using the client language only. [Added June 7, 2012] 
  • When creating and modifying engagement plans, the items created in the content tree could end up containing Japanese characters or other non-ASCII characters. In such cases, the item will now get an auto-generated name and the real name of the state or the condition will be stored as a display name. (354710)
  • The Engagement Automation Designer did not always use the client language when displaying the names of available actions, conditions, goals, and page events. (363997, 364041)
  • When creating multivariate tests using the Page Editor, the items created in the content tree could end up containing Japanese characters or other non-ASCII characters. In such cases, the item will now get an auto-generated name and the localized name will be stored in the Name field of the created item. (354710)
  • When using the Executive Dashboard and switching between client languages, some of the information in the Dashboard would be displayed using the wrong language. (354221)
  • When opening the Sample Visit report from the Dashboard, the report would be displayed in English instead of the current client language. (356363)
  • When using the Executive Dashboard and switching the time resolution to "Month", some of the dates would occasionally be formatted using Japanese characters. (359951)
  • A number of phrases could not be translated in various areas of the product. (355923, 355918, 356547, 361105)
  • When using the Japanese client language, some phrases would be cropped in the UI. (356482)
• Miscellaneous
  • When requesting partial content using AJAX requests, any <form> tags in the returned content would have the action attribute pointing to a wrong target page. This was a side-effect of the Form.browser file having been removed. (360924)
  • Accessing ASP.NET web services running in the context of a Sitecore CMS application using URLs like "/TestWebService.asmx/js" could fail with the following server error: "System.InvalidOperationException: No web service found at: /TestWebService.asmx/js." This was a side-effect of the Form.browser file having been removed. (358242)
  • The Packager Designer could fail with a NullReferenceException when trying to generate a package. This would happen when the package contained media items and the Media.CacheFileMediaByModifiedDate setting was set to true. (357922)
  • The operator "is case-insensitively equal to" was evaluated case-sensitively instead of case-insensitively. (361577)
  • The operator "is not case-insensitively equal to" that can be used in conditions for rules returned wrong results. It performed a case-sensitive equals comparison instead of case-insensitive not equals.
  • The default value for the Caching.DisableCacheSizeLimits setting would default to true if the setting was not present in the web.config file, despite the web.config comments indicating that the default value is false. This could cause excessive memory usage if the setting for some reason was not present in web.config file. (358650)
  • The system did not clean up field values stored in the database immediately after developers removed inherited templates. This could cause old field values to be returned by the API, which for example could slow down Smart Publish operations because they would try to republish all items that contained such obsolete field values. (347488)
  • When a user clicked the "Open icon" menu item above an Icon field, an unhandled exception message would sometimes appear related to "Processor is null (method: Sitecore.Pipelines.Processor.Invoke(PipelineArgs args))". (360351)

February 16, 2012

Today, Sitecore has released two tools related to the upgrade procedure for OMS 1.x to DMS 2.0:

• Analytics Upgrade Tool rev. 120206 — a new version of the tool for converting OMS databases to DMS databases when upgrading from CMS 6.4.x to CMS 6.5.
  The new version of the Analytics Upgrade Tool addresses several important issues that can affect the conversion process as well as the quality of the converted data. Also, the Analytics Upgrade Tool Guide has been updated and improved.
  
• UpgradeCampaigns.html — a tool for converting the item structure of campaign items in the master database from OMS to DMS 2.0.

Note: If you are in the process of upgrading to CMS 6.5 and DMS and have not yet gone live, we recommend that you use the new version of the Analytics Upgrade Tool. If you have already gone live on CMS 6.5 and DMS, there is no reason to re-convert your old OMS database with the new version of the tool, but we do recommend that you use the UpgradeCampaigns.html page to convert the item structure of campaign items.

The instructions for upgrading from OMS 1 to DMS 2 have been updated with steps about using the UpgradeCampaigns.html page and with new download links and PDF documentation for the Analytics Upgrade Tool.

Issues resolved

The following issues have been resolved in the Analytics Upgrade Tool:

• Documentation updates
  • The documentation has been updated to clarify that the Analytics Upgrade tool does not support the collection of additional data in the OMS database after starting to transfer meta-data and during the transfer of historical data.
  • The documentation now explains that "robot" visits (with VisitorIdentification and OverridenVisitorIdent > 925) are not transferred from the GlobalSession table of OMS to the Visitors table of DMS. (349364)
  • The documentation has been updated with a section about how to resolve potential issues with cropped data in one or more of the target tables in the DMS database. (349368)
• Step 1: Analyze
  • The schema warnings that are written to the log file if one or more target columns in the DMS database are shorter than the source columns in OMS database has been changed to make them more descriptive. (349270)
• Step 2: Transfer Meta-Data
  • The label for Step 2 has been updated to clarify that the Analytics Upgrade tool does not support the collection of additional data in the OMS database after starting to transfer meta-data. (360326)
  • The records in the Browsers table in the OMS database were not converted correctly into the DMS database. (355576)
  • Visitor tags that contained a single tag value in the OMS database would be incorrectly identified as multi-value tags if the tag contained a "=" or ":" character in the tag value. In such cases, the tag would be stored incorrectly in the DMS database. (349355)
• Common fixes for Step 2 + 3
  • A number of DMS tables contain IDs that are generated using an algorithm. The IDs generated by the Analytics Upgrade Tool did not match the IDs generated by the DMS. This could cause duplicate data to appear in these tables during/after the conversion process. This applies to the Browsers, Keywords, Locations, OS, ReferringSites, Screens, and UserAgents tables. (354779, 355467)
  • For a number of columns in the DMS database, the upgrade tool truncated values to be inserted based on the default length for the column. Now, the tool uses the actual length of the column in the database to avoid unnecessary truncation in case the column lengths were increased to hold more data. (349432, 358873, 359434, 359514)
  • When copying DateTime columns, the millisecond part would be truncated and set to zero in the converted database. (349503)
• Step 3: Transfer and Update History
  • When transferring historical data to a table that was being updated with new data from the website, a SQL Server transaction deadlock would sometimes occur and cause the application to stop transferring data. (349386)
  • When saving data into the UserAgents table, the upgrade tool stored the date "1/1/1970" into the Fetched column. To be consistent with how DMS stores such records, the tool will store a NULL value into the Fetched column when converting records in the UserAgents table. (355950)
  • When saving data into the GeoIPs table (based on OMS data from the IP and Session tables), the upgrade tool stored a NULL value in the CachedData column and the date "1/1/1970" into the Fetched column. When using the converted database with Sitecore 6.5, these values could cause Sitecore to fail with an SqlNullValueException when looking up GeoIp records for a visit or to fail with an ArgumentOutOfRangeException in the background worker process that resolves GeoIp records. (348940)
  • When using a converted database with Sitecore 6.5, the Analytics reports would incorrectly indicate that all visits had a duration of zero seconds. This happened because the Duration field in the Page table of the OMS database was not used in reports and by default always had a value of zero. To avoid these problems, the upgrade tool now calculates and stores the duration for records in the Pages table when converting the database. (352330)
  • The upgrade tool could go into an infinite loop when trying to upgrade the data in the PageEvent table. This could for example happen when converting an OMS database that contained page events created by the Web Forms for Marketers module, or when converting an OMS database that contained invalid or otherwise unexpected values in the CookieValue column. (354390, 354640)
  • When converting an OMS database that contained campaigns created by the Email Campaign Manager module, the conversion of the Campaigns table would fail with an ArgumentOutOfRange exception and the following message: "Value of '101' is not valid for 'Value'." (349509)
  • When transferring historical data, the conversion process would fail with an error if any of the records in the Browser table in the OMS database contained an empty value in the Version column. (356312)
  • After the conversion was completed, the DMS database contained a StepStates table. The upgrade tool will now delete this temporary table when the conversion is complete. (354700)
• Miscellaneous
  • The upgrade tool now uses the Sitecore SqlDataApi to execute SQL commands. This solves various problems with timeouts and connections being closed during the conversion of large OMS databases. (356003)
  • The text boxes for entering the SQL Server passwords will no longer display the password in clear text. (349378)
  • The radio buttons for selecting step 1, 2, and 3 and the Start and Stop buttons were sometimes enabled even when it did not make sense for the user to select them, depending on the previous actions that the user had performed. In such cases, the buttons should now be disabled to more clearly indicate the flow of the conversion process. (348384)
  • When the user clicks the "Stop" button, a confirmation dialog box is now displayed before stopping the current process. (348389)
  • Some labels referred to "OMS 2" instead of "DMS 2". (348668, 354696)

January 4, 2012

Released Sitecore CMS 6.5.0 rev. 111230 (6.5.0 Update-3) and DMS 2.0.0 rev. 111230.

Note: This version is not currently the recommended version. Sitecore advises caution when you are deciding whether to leverage a non-recommended version, especially in production environments. However, it is appropriate to use a non-recommended version when your website requires newer features and functionality, or if the later version resolves issues that might affect your site.

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download this release.

System requirements

• Sitecore CMS 6.5 Update-3 introduces Oracle support for DMS 2.0, in addition to the existing Oracle support for CMS 6.5 which was introduced in 6.5 Update-1.
• Supported Oracle versions
  • Sitecore CMS 6.5 and DMS 2.0 require Oracle 11g R2 (11.2).
  • Starting with 6.5 Update-3, Oracle 10g is no longer supported, since Oracle does not provide active support for 10.2 since July 2010.

New Features

• Oracle support for DMS 2.0
  • Sitecore Analytics, including the Executive Insight Dashboard and Engagement Automation, is now supported on Oracle.
  • The DMS uses Oracle Materialized View for storing Executive Dashboard summary information in the database. There is a stored procedure SP_SC_REFRESH_VIEWS to refresh information in these materialized views. By default, the stored procedure is configured to execute nightly at 23:30 local time. 

Important changes

• Oracle
  • The assembly bindings in the web.config file for Oracle have been updated to reflect that Oracle 11g R2 (11.2) is now the minimum supported version. (357105)

Issues resolved                             

• Performance
  • A performance issue that was introduced in 6.5 Update-1 has been resolved. The issue mainly affected the Page Editor and Live Mode, but could also affect Content Editor performance and overall page response time, as described in the associated known issue on SDN. (356380)
• Oracle
  • Fast Query expressions that evaluated on ID attributes such as @@templateid or @@parentid did not work correctly, due to IDs being stored in a special format in the CMS databases when using the Oracle data provider. (353523, 339135)
• Serialization
  • After upgrading to 6.5 Update-1 from an earlier version, duplicates of serialized items could appear in the serialization folder when serializing items with long paths. When trying to update or revert items for which duplicate serialization files existed, the items would sometimes use the old serialization file and would therefore not be updated/reverted correctly. (357379, 357662)
  • To better support long path names, a new web.config setting called Serialization.SerializationFolderPathMaxLength has been introduced. (357379, 357662)
    • The value of this setting must be the same on all Sitecore instances accessing the serialized data.
    • It is recommended to always leave this setting to the default value of 90 characters, unless the path length of the serialization folder exceeds 90 characters on one or more instances.
    • When changing this value, it's recommended to remove the contents of the serialization folder and serialize all items again. Otherwise duplicates of serialized items may appear in the serialization folder.
• Engagement Analytics          
  • Scheduled email distribution of Analytics reports did not work as expected. The EmailReportTask would fail with a System.Exception each time it tried to generate one or more reports to be emailed, and a message would be written to the log file saying "Assembly 'Stimulsoft.Report.Win' is not found". (355678)
  • New locations were not registered in the Locations table in the Analytics database when a visit was updated by the background thread that resolves GeoIp records. (358153, 351281, 346089)
    Note: Updated with additional reference numbers. [Added May 8, 2012]
  • To support the Analytics upgrade tool and ensure consistent generation of IDs, a new class named Sitecore.Analytics.Data.DataAccess.DataSets has been introduced. This class encapsulates the code that is used for calculating IDs of various definition data in Analytics, such as BrowserId, KeywordsId, LocationId, etc.

November 30, 2011

Released Sitecore CMS 6.5.0 rev. 111123 (6.5.0 Update-2) and DMS 2.0.0 rev. 111123.

Note: This version is not currently the recommended version. Sitecore advises caution when you are deciding whether to leverage a non-recommended version, especially in production environments. However, it is appropriate to use a non-recommended version when your website requires newer features and functionality, or if the later version resolves issues that might affect your site.

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download this release.

Important changes

• [Merged from 6.4.1] Support for running the Sitecore user interfaces in Internet Explorer 9.
  • Notice: To use the Page Editor, Preview or Sitecore Debugger in IE9, you must enable Compatibility View mode in Internet Explorer, as described in the associated known issue on SDN.
  • See the "Issues resolved" section of the 6.4.1 Update-5 release notes for more information about the issues that have been resolved.
• In the previous CMS 6.5 releases, .NET tracing was enabled by default, which is not recommended unless you are troubleshooting problems. Tracing is now disabled by default again in the clean distribution. (354620)
  • Also, the upgrade instructions contain a note about checking the value of this setting.
• The Workflow and Workflow State fields are no longer inheriting their values from the template standard values. This change has been implemented to significantly improve the performance of the Workbox. (328243)
  • When upgrading to 6.5 Update-2, the upgrade package contains a post-step that will check for templates that have Workflow and Workflow State information saved on the template standard values and move such values to the items that are based on the template.

Deprecated functionality

• The "IsAuthorFeedback" field on the Page Event template was never used by the system. It has been marked as obsolete and will be removed in a later release. (346389)

New Features

• A new rules engine macro is available
  • A new macro named "PositiveInteger" is available. The new macro is used for validating that the value entered in a rule condition is a positive integer. (346068)
• Two new Engagement Automation conditions are available in a new group called "Patterns and Profiles":
  • The condition with the text "where the current visit matches the [specific] pattern card in the [specific] profile" is evaluated based on which pattern card the current visit most closely matches for the selected profile.
  • The condition with the text "where the value of [specific] profile key [compares to] [specific value]" is evaluated based on the value of the selected profile key.
• Two new Engagement Automation actions are available:
  • The "Add or Remove Visitor from Roles" action allows you to assign or remove security roles from visitors. (349561)
  • The "Update Value on the Visitor User Profile" action allows you to assign values (in the form text strings) to one or more user profile fields. (350567)

Improvements

• Workbox improvements (328243)
  • To make the Workbox load faster, no workflows will be selected and shown by default, except if the user only has access to a single workflow. The Workbox will, however, remember the selected workflows between sessions.
  • To optimize performance, the Workbox will only use Workflow and Workflow State information that is saved on the item. The Workbox will disregard values stored on the item's standard values.
  • Showing or hiding workflows by clicking the checkboxes in the ribbon will no longer cause a reload, unless the user is showing a workflow that has not yet been loaded into the workbox.
  • The SQL statements that are used to load items in workflows has been optimized to improve the performance of the system.
• Localization of the Sitecore login page (342477, 353536)
  • The Sitecore login page, including the "Change Password" and "Forgot Your Password" pages, can now be localized.
  • Sitecore's standard language resolver is used to determine the language to use for the login page. By default, the DefaultLanguage web.config setting will determine the language. To use a different login page language, simply add a "language" attribute on the "login" site definition. The login page also respects the sc_lang query string parameter.
  • In the initial release, we provide translations of the login page in English, Japanese, and Danish, but the German translation is not yet complete.
  • The Japanese distributions are preconfigured to display the login page in Japanese.
  • The list of user interface languages on the Sitecore login page now displays each language name in the login page language as well as in the language itself, for example "Japanese (Japan) : 日本語 (日本)". (353597)
• Page Editor
  • The Page Editor now works on layouts that make use of .NET Master pages. (309095, 326583, 315418)
    • A new pipeline processor named ExpandMasterPages has been added to the <renderLayout> pipeline. The processor ensures that the control tree is built correctly. The processor only takes effect when the LayoutPageEvent setting is set to "preInit" and when the page is rendered in Page Editor, Preview or Debugger mode.
  • The Page Editor will now display "Loading…" at the top of the page until the page and the ribbon are loaded. During this time, the floating toolbars and hover frames are disabled. This prevents various glitches and error messages that could appear if the user started to interact with the page before it was fully loaded. (345765)
  • The "Select the Associated Content" dialog box now supports having more than one root as a source. To use this feature, simply provide a pipe-separated list of paths in the Datasource Location field. (339606)
  • When selecting a component in the "Components and combinations" control on the Test tab in the ribbon, the selected component will be scrolled into view if it's currently scrolled out of view. (345948)
  • Labels have been added to the controls that display multivariate test statistics to make the statistics easier to understand. (345944)
  • The Change Position button that appear in the floating toolbar when a component is selected in the Page Editor will now be disabled if the currently selected component cannot be moved anywhere on the page. (335952)
• Placeholder settings
  • The Placeholder Settings dialog box that is available from the Page Editor is now also used when editing placeholder settings from the Layout Details dialog box. This makes it easier and more intuitive to pick a Placeholder Settings item from the Content Editor or to create a new Placeholder Settings item for the selected placeholder. (345694)
• Executive Insight Dashboard
  • The timeline slider in the Dashboard now displays a column chart as a background image. The chart illustrates the available data to make it easier for the user to see the distribution of traffic data or campaign visits over the timeline. (346807)

Issues resolved                             

• The issues that were resolved by 6.4.1 Update-4 and 6.4.1 Update-5 have now been merged into 6.5.
  • See the 6.4.1 Update-4 release notes for the details about resolved issues.
  • See the 6.4.1 Update-5 release notes for the details about resolved issues.
• Potential security vulnerabilities
  • Unauthenticated users could open a number of XAML controls that are used in the Sitecore client, although they could not perform any malicious actions by doing so. Now, Sitecore will block access to such URLs under the shell site for unauthenticated users. (349449)
  • Authenticated users that did not normally have sufficient permissions could open a number of XAML controls and dialog boxes if they knew the URL to the control, although they could not perform any malicious actions by doing so. (349281, 346957)
• Marketing Center
  • When selecting the Campaigns folder in the Marketing Center, the insert options for the item would display "Campaign Category" twice in the list. (345562)
• Engagement Analytics
  • When using DMS, Sitecore will now consume significantly less memory when caching visitor and visit data, thanks to reducing the size of the objects cached in session state. (353937)
  • To reduce the risk that any Analytics data is lost when the the ASP.NET worker process is restarted or shut down, Analytics tracker changes are now flushed when the AppDomain unloads. (346236)
  • The Sitecore log file would fill up with "Failed to populate visit information" errors in relation to ArgumentOutOfRangeExceptions in the GeoIp resolver, caused by the background thread that resolves GeoIp records. (349198, 350726)
  • The Analytics tracker would sometimes aggregate information for multiple visits from a visitor into a single record in the DMS database, rather than storing one record per visit. (345044)
  • Visits where the user on the first request downloads a file from the media library would sometimes incorrectly be classified as a robot. This would typically happen if the requested media item contained the string "<tracking />" in the __Tracking field, which could happen if the item at one point had Analytics events assigned which were later removed. (330149)
  • The conditional rendering condition named "Visitor Identification Condition" did not check for illegal values, such as entering a string instead of a positive integer. This could cause an exception to appear on the website. Now, the values entered will be validated when configuring Visitor Identification rules. (346068)
  • When configuring Page Level multivariate tests, the "Page Level Test Variable" insert option will only appear on a Page Level Test Definition item if it doesn't already have a subitem that defines a variable, since having more than one variable is not supported. (346005)
• Engagement Automation
  • A number of issues related to loading the engagement automation applications have been resolved:
    • A progress bar will now be displayed when loading an engagement plan. (347164)
    • The security permissions for the engagement automation applications have been updated, so that only members of the Analytics Maintaining and/or Analytics Reporting roles will see the applications. Previously, the system would show the applications but fail with an error message if such users without sufficient permissions tried to open the applications. (344907)
    • When trying to open an engagement plan without any states, the engagement plan Designer and Monitor would display an ArgumentNull_Generic error message and fail to load the plan. (347037)
    • When trying to open an empty engagement plan in the Monitor or Supervisor, the applications would display an ArgumentNull_Generic error message and fail to load the plan. (346594, 346595)
    • When using InPrivate browsing mode, trying to open the engagement plan Designer, Monitor, or Supervisor would cause an "Operation not permitted" error message to appear. (346007)
  • Engagement Plan Designer
    • The Save button would sometimes not be enabled after the user had made inline changes, such as double clicking the description of a state and modifying the text. (346587)
    • [Chrome] Clicking the Triggers link above a state would cause the Silverlight plugin to become unresponsive and eventually crash. (346502)
  • Engagement Plan Supervisor
    • When adding visitors to a state (either a specific user, all users in a role or importing from a CSV file), the Supervisor will no longer display a message that the users have been imported. A message will only be displayed in case of an error message. (346006)
    • When quickly clicking the Refresh button multiple times, an Arg_NullReferenceException would sometimes appear. (346158)
    • [Chrome] Adding a large number of visitors from a CSV File could cause the Silverlight plugin to become unresponsive and eventually crash. (345199)
    • [Firefox] If a user selected a state and clicked the "Copy" or "Move" buttons and then tried to close the dialog box, an error message would appear. (353836)
  • Engagement Plan Monitor
    • When quickly clicking the Refresh button multiple times, an Arg_NullReferenceException would sometimes appear. (346158)
  • Engagement Automation actions
    • A cosmetic issue has been fixed that appeared if the user resized any of the dialog boxes that are used to configure automation actions and which contain a grouped list with a search box on top. (346013)
    • When configuring a "Send E-Mail Message" action, the user would be informed that the base site URL was invalid if the field contained "http://localhost". This will no longer result in an error. (347334)
    • When a "Move Visitor to Another State" action was configured to move visitors to a state in another engagement plan, the visitor could end up being assigned simultaneously to two different states in the destination plan. This happened if the user was already enrolled in a different state of the destination plan. In such a situation, the visitor will now be removed from the original plan but remain in the current state of the destination plan. (345520)
  • When displaying engagement plans, the applications will now use ellipsis when truncating long names for states and conditions, and the full name will be displayed as a tooltip when hovering the cursor over the name. (347257)
  • A number of texts have been changed for consistency and added clarity. This includes texts on labels, button texts, warning messages, and more. Also, some typos have been corrected. (347390, 347832, 346279, 353624, 346097, 346281)
• Executive Insight Dashboard
  • The Executive Dashboard application is now available in the Sitecore start menu to users that are member of the "sitecore\Analytics Reporting" role. Previously, it was only available to Administrator users by default. (344174)
  • When the timeline contains a large number of ticks (for example if you have a Week resolution and you have 2 years of analytics data), the Dashboard would display fewer ticks to avoid overlapping labels, thereby preventing the user from selecting dates that are not displayed. Now, all ticks will be displayed in the timeline, even when this causes labels to overlap. (346289)
  • The ECM module opens the Dashboard in a special mode where only a specific campaign report is displayed. If no data was available for the selected campaign, the Dashboard would display an error message referring to traffic overview data rather than campaign data. (346362)
  • When clicking a bar in any First Impressions or Engagement charts, a new "contributors" window will appear with additional charts. If the maximum value per visit for the current data set is zero, an error message would appear and the additional charts would fail to load. (347842)
• Page Editor
  • Inline editing
    • After inserting a link around text at the very beginning of a Rich Text field, the field would sometimes no longer be editable. (338106)
    • When pressing the ENTER key in a Multi-Line Text field with the cursor placed at the end of the field, the cursor did not move to a new line, and in non-IE browsers new text typed after pressing ENTER would appear on the same line without a line break being inserted. (334673)
    • When pressing the ENTER key in a Single-Line Text field, the line break will now be suppressed. This is controlled by a new web edit parameter named "prevent-line-break" which is set to true for "Single-Line Text" and "text" fields by the GetTextFieldValue processor of the <renderField> pipeline. (346162)
  • Multivariate testing
    • For consistency with other dialog boxes, the order of test variations in the "Components and Combinations" control on the Test tab of the ribbon have been reversed, so that the most recently created variation is displayed at the top. (345951, 347648)
    • When setting up multivariate test variations, double clicking in the variation name input field will no longer expand/collapse the section. (345947)
    • Two cosmetic issues which appeared when using the Japanese client language have been fixed. (354775, 354776)
  • Creating pages and inserting components
    • The ribbon button for inserting Components will now be disabled when the "Designing" mode is not enabled on the View tab. Also, if the current site does not have enableWebEdit set to true, the Component button will now be hidden. (341307)
    • After creating a new item in the Page Editor, the user would sometimes be redirected to an invalid URL and therefore be presented with a Page Not Found page. This happened due to a hardcoded dependency on the "website" site name. (310754)
    • After creating a new item in the Page Editor with a non-English content language selected, the user would be redirected to the English version of the newly created item. This only happened when the LinkProvider had languageEmbedding set to "always". (333668)
  • Edit frames and Field Editor windows
    • The Field editor did not respect the "Field Read" permission. (322081)
    • The Field editor will no longer display an "Open Media Library" option above Image and Thumbnail fields. (332785)
    • When a Field Editor was opened from an edit frame and the user modified a field to have a blank value, the Save button in the ribbon would not be enabled after clicking "OK" in the Field Editor. (338175)
    • If a page does not render any fields and only contains edit frames that opens a Field Editor dialog box, a JavaScript error would occur in the Field Editor when the user clicked "OK" after making changes to one or more fields in the dialog box. (343282)
    • The default Edit button did not have a tooltip when being displayed in the Page Editor's floating toolbars. (334947)
  • Improved information to the editors
    • If the current item has been deleted by another user or in another browser window, the Page Editor will now display a message under the ribbon. The message is displayed the first time a server request happens after the item was deleted, for example when the user attempts to Save the item or perform other operations on the item. (323560)
    • When the user clicked the Properties button in the floating toolbar above an empty image field, the Page Editor would display a message that the item could not be found and might have been deleted by another user. Instead, the Page Editor will now display a message asking the user to select an image from the Media Library first. (311725)
  • Miscellaneous issues
    • After switching to another content language in the Page Editor, a Page Not Found page would appear if any of the item names in the path started with the language code of the previously selected Page Editor language. (342573)
    • A JavaScript error would occur in the Navigation Bar in the Page Editor ribbon when the user clicked one of the arrows that display the children of an item if the item's children in the meantime had been deleted by another user or in another browser window. (347519)
    • If the Control Properties for a rendering or a sublayout contained an apostrophe in the values of any of the Additional Parameters, one or more JavaScript errors would occur when trying to load a page that contains the component. (315390)
    • If the Data Source for a rendering contained any of the substrings "-q-", "-a-", or "-eq-", the Page Editor would not resolve the data source correctly, and the associated rendering would fail to render any content. (328532)
    • If a Page Editor button with no value in the "Click" field was assigned to a rendering or sublayout, the Page Editor would fail to load with an "Empty strings are not allowed" error message. Now, the Page Editor will load correctly and the button will be visible, but disabled. (337451)
    • The Page Editor will no longer output debug information using console.log() for messages that happen during normal operation. To enable verbose debug information, you can now append a pedebug=1 query string parameter to the URL. (346033)
    • After using keyboard shortcuts in Chrome that make use of the CTRL key, the Page Editor would sometimes stop displaying hover and selection frames around components. (345768)
• Multi-browser support
  • [IE] When enabling Standard Fields in the Content Editor, the Layout section would look incorrect if any of the preceding sections were expanded. (348368)
  • [Firefox] Drag & drop reordering of items in the content tree did not work correctly in Firefox 3.6. The dragged item would appear to get stuck to the cursor instead of being dropped into place when releasing the mouse button. (343389)
  • [Firefox] Editors could not change the language in the Page Editor when using Firefox 3.6. The language pop-up did not appear when clicking the button. (340810)
  • [IE, Firefox] In the Page Editor, modifying a link that is rendered using <sc:link class="ClassName" …> did not work as expected. The specified CSS class would not be applied to the modified link until the page was saved or otherwise reloaded. (341614)
  • [Firefox, Chrome, Safari] The Select Icon dialog box did not display any icons on the "Icon" pane. (354723)
  • [Chrome, Safari] When modifying one or more fields in a Field Editor window, a warning message "There are unsaved changes" would be displayed when the user clicked the OK or Cancel button. (334946)
  • [Firefox, Chrome, Safari] When clicking one of the arrows in the Navigation Bar in the Page Editor ribbon that display the children of an item, the pop-up with the list of children would be cropped if the pop-up exceeded the height of the ribbon. (342346)
• Localization
  • The Japanese translation has been updated.
  • The Danish translation has been updated, including adding translations for a number of previously untranslated phrases. 
  • The Description field that appears on the Page Event template (which is inherited by the Goal template) has been made unversioned instead of shared to make it possible to localize descriptions. (346581)
  • A number of strings in the Executive Dashboard could not be localized. (348561, 354173)
  • A number of strings in the Engagement Automation applications could not be localized. (354683, 347462, 353221, 346496, 346643, 347464, 347460, 347031, 346127)
  • A number of strings related to Profile Cards and content profiling could not be localized. (355204, 355126)
  • A number of strings in the dialog boxes that are used for setting up rules and conditions could not be localized. (346481, 355201, 354685, 355372)
  • The "Rich Text" validation rule item in the master database had an incorrect display name. This only affects translations and not the functionality of the system. (346905)
• Setup.exe installation program
  • The setup.exe program failed to install Sitecore on Windows 7 Home Premium editions. (350712)
  • The setup.exe program failed to install Sitecore on Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 with .NET Framework 2.0 when the IIS metabase already contained ISAPI and CGI restriction entries related to .NET 2.0. (347595, 347942)
  • When installing Sitecore to a .NET 4.0 application pool on a 64-bit IIS 7, Sitecore would sometimes fail to start in ASP.NET Classic application pool mode after installation, as described in the release notes for 6.5 Update-1 (reference numbers 347137, 346656). The setup.exe will now make sure the .NET 4 ISAPI and CGI restrictions are configured to allow the .NET 4 ISAPI extension to execute, and it should no longer be necessary to manually apply a workaround after installing Sitecore. (348747)
• Item Cloning
  • When performing a Smart Publish, clones would get republished on every publish operation if the source item had no versions in one or more languages. (353627)
• Security API           
  • When changing the email address for a user, the value would be saved in two locations. In addition to updating the normal email field on the user, the new email address would be saved as a user profile property. (350641)
• Update Installation Wizard
  • When installing a package with media items that contain multiple language versions, the existing value of shared Media (Blob) fields would be lost, and the new media blobs from the update package would not be installed. (348832)
• Miscellaneous
  • After restoring deleted or archived items that have subitems, Sitecore would occasionally only display the restored top-level item in the content tree, but none of the subitems. This was caused by a cache clearing issue. (349191)
  • A JavaScript error would occasionally occur in the Layout Details dialog box when clicking the "Add" or "Edit" buttons on the "Placeholder Settings" tab. (349049)
  • A JavaScript error would occur if the user clicked certain empty areas of the content tree that appears in the "Select the Associated Content" dialog box (when personalizing control) or the "Select the Placeholder Settings" dialog box. (346980)
  • The description in the web.config file of the available modes for the PublishAgent task was incomplete. It only listed "full" and "incremental", not "smart". (343536)

August 25, 2011

Released Sitecore CMS 6.5.0 rev. 110818 (6.5.0 Update-1) and DMS 2.0.0 rev. 110818.

Note: You should install the current recommended version of Sitecore in your production environment unless you need a fix for a known issue that is contained in a later version. For more information about the recommended versions of Sitecore, see Sitecore’s Recommended Version Policy.

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download this release.

System requirements

• Sitecore CMS 6.5 Update-1 introduces Oracle support for CMS 6.5. (348916)
• Oracle support for DMS 2.0 has been made available starting with CMS 6.5 Update-3 (rev. 111230).

Important changes

• Setup.exe installation program
  • In the previous 6.5 release, the setup.exe restricted anonymous access in IIS to selected folders on the web server. This turned out to cause more problems than it solved, since IIS7 in many cases displays a blank page when trying to open files in the /sitecore/admin folder. Also, this made it more difficult to use Sitecore.Rocks with CMS 6.5. The setup.exe will therefore no longer restrict access to the following folders: (348397, 346909)
    • /sitecore/admin
    • /sitecore/shell/WebService
  • The setup.exe continues to restrict access to:
    • /App_Config
    • /sitecore/debug
  • The log file location for the setup.exe has been changed from C:\ to %TEMP%. (349512, 349513)
  • On uninstall, the installation program will now clean up the auto-generated files and folders in addition to all the regular files and folders that are removed: (349512, 349513)
    • /data (except for /data/packages in case it contains user-generated packages)
    • /App_Data/MediaCache
    • /temp
• Item Cloning
  • [Merged from 6.4.1 Update-3] Clones are now treated as a whole instead of version-by-version, meaning that all versions on the cloned item must refer to the same source item. It is no longer supported that different versions on the cloned item point to different source items or that some versions on a clone do not refer to any source item. This restriction removes potential confusion about which items clones are referencing, and ensures that the value of shared fields is well-defined. If any existing clones in a solution reference different source items, the behavior of shared fields is undefined for these clones. (347551)
• The Application XAML control, which is used to display various windows in the Sitecore Desktop, has been refactored to use a UrlHandle to transfer parameters to the control.
  • [Merged from 6.4.1 Update-3] Notice that this change might break 3rd party code that pass parameters directly to the xmlcontrol in the URL instead of calling one of the Sitecore.Shell.Framework.Windows.RunApplication(...) methods.
• The following XAML controls have been refactored to use a UrlHandle to transfer parameters to the controls:
  • [Merged from 6.4.1 Update-3] The FileLister control which is used in the Log Viewer application.
  • [Merged from 6.4.1 Update-3] The IDEText control which is used in the Developer Center.

Issues resolved                             

• The issues that were resolved by 6.4.1 Update-3 have now been merged into 6.5.
  • See the 6.4.1 Update-3 release notes for the details about resolved issues.
• The following two issues were not included in the initial 6.5 release, but have now been merged to 6.5:
  • [Merged from 6.4.1 Update-2] When Sitecore updated references in a DropTree field (for example when one of the target items was moved), all versions in all languages of the item would be overridden with a reference to the new target item, even if they pointed to other target items. This could cause data to be lost. Sitecore will now only update the relevant versions and languages when updating such links. (330720)
  • [Merged from 6.4.1 Update-2] In Internet Explorer, the size of the rendering properties dialog box in the Developer Center would be incorrect, hiding the controls in the dialog box. The user had to resize the dialog box to be able to modify the properties. This was previously fixed in the Grid Designer and has now also been fixed on the "Design" tab of the Developer Center. (340021, 336341)
• Potential security vulnerabilities
  • Authenticated Sitecore users could start the File Explorer application if they knew the URL of the application. The security permissions on the File Explorer application item have been modified so that only members of the Sitecore Client Developing and Sitecore Client Maintaining roles have access to the application. (350282)
• Engagement Analytics
  • The scores for profile keys were not summed correctly. In many cases, each profile key would contain the value of the last assigned score instead of the sum of all previously assigned scores. (348298)
  • Security permissions on the Analytics Workflow meant that by default, only Administrators were allowed to modify items in the workflow and execute workflow commands. The Analytics Maintaining role and the Sitecore Client Developing role have been granted access to modify items in the workflow and to execute the Deploy workflow command. (348497)
  • The non-English versions of the default page events and goals were not in the "Deployed" state of the Analytics workflow. (345539)
  • If no campaigns had been triggered for the current visit, the conditional rendering condition "where the specific campaign has been triggered in the current visit" would throw a "Specified cast is not valid" exception when visiting any page where this condition was used. (348158)
  • The Visit Detail (Session) report displayed an "[Event]" label below each page visited, no matter if any page events had been triggered on that page or not. (346582)
• Engagement Automation
  • In Internet Explorer, the engagement plan Designer, Monitor, and Supervisor applications would sometimes not start until a mouse event occurred inside the window frame, and occasionally the Silverlight applications would work correctly for a while and then suddenly get hidden until a mouse event occurred. (347845)
  • The engagement plan Designer did not specify a sort order for conditions and automation actions when persisting the plan as Sitecore items. The automation engine would therefore sometimes evaluate conditions in the wrong order, which could lead to visitors being moved to the wrong state as well as causing the actions associated with this condition to be executed, rather than the actions for the correct condition. (348198)
  • The automation engine incorrectly evaluated all the states in engagement plan if a page event (such as a campaign) occurred and none of the states in the engagement plan subscribed to this specific event. This could cause automation actions to be executed prematurely. (346038, 348049)
  • The dialog boxes that are used to configure the "Move Visitor to Another State" and "Copy Visitor to Another Plan" automation actions did not display engagement plans correctly when the plans were organized into folders. (346098)
  • Subscribing to the "Session End" event from an automation state did not work as expected. The state was not evaluated when the Session End event was raised. (348249).
  • The SqlAutomationProvider.GetVisitorStates() method did not load automation states correctly due to an error in the SQL that was executed when trying to retrieve one or more states. (348249)
  • The "RunAutomation" pipeline processor in the <sessionEnd> pipeline was using the Context.Database (which is always null in the sessionEnd pipeline) instead of Tracker.DefinitionDatabase. (348249)
• Executive Insight Dashboard
  • In Internet Explorer, the Executive Insight Dashboard would sometimes not start until a mouse event occurred inside the window frame, and occasionally the Silverlight application would work correctly for a while and then suddenly get hidden until a mouse event occurred. (347845)
  • The ECM module opens the Dashboard in a special mode where only a specific campaign report is displayed. In this mode, the Entry Pages, Goal Conversions, and Assets Consumed reports displayed incorrect data. (347776, 347771, 347874)
• Setup.exe installation program
  • When installing Sitecore to a .NET 4.0 application pool on a 64-bit IIS 7, the installation program will no longer try to modify the IIS metabase to update the "ISAPI and CGI restrictions" that corresponds to .NET 4.0 64-bit, since this operation could cause the installation program to fail. (347137, 346656)
    • Due to this change, Sitecore might fail to start in ASP.NET Classic application pool mode after installation if the IIS configuration does not allow the .NET 4 ISAPI extension to execute. If you encounter this problem, see the associated known issue which explains how to remove the ISAPI restrictions.
• Oracle
  • Sitecore would fail to start when trying to run Sitecore on Oracle in a .NET 4.0 application pool. This happened because the <assemblyBinding …> section in the default web.config file was marked with an appliesTo="v2.0.50727" attribute. (349131)
  • The membership provider would fail to authenticate users when running Sitecore on Oracle in a .NET 4.0 application pool. This is caused by Microsoft changing the default hash algorithm from SHA1 to HMACSHA256 in the .NET 4.0 framework. (347406, 349263)
  • The "Clean Up Databases" wizard failed with an exception when trying to run it using the Oracle data provider. (349117)
  • The Oracle data provider is now using the DefaultSQLTimeout setting to make it possible to configure the command timeout. (343091)
• Miscellaneous
  • A number of license files for 3rd party components were missing from the /Website/sitecore/Copyrights folder. (349379, 350096)
  • The assembly version number of the Sitecore.Update.dll that shipped with the initial 6.5 release was incorrectly set to "0.0.0.0" instead of "6.0.0.0". (348444, 348863)
  • The /sitecore/service/keepalive.html page threw an error if Analytics was disabled or if the DMS was not installed. (347352)

June 8, 2011

Released Sitecore CMS 6.5 rev.110602 and DMS 2.0 rev.110602.

Note: You should install the current recommended version of Sitecore in your production environment unless you need a fix for a known issue that is contained in a later version. For more information about the recommended versions of Sitecore, see Sitecore’s Recommended Version Policy.

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download this release

Change log.

System requirements

• Supported SQL Server versions
  • Sitecore CMS 6.5 does not support SQL Server 2005.
  • Sitecore CMS 6.5 and DMS 2.0 require SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, or later.
  • Sitecore CMS 6.5 also supports the corresponding SQL Server Express editions.
• The initial release of CMS 6.5 and DMS 2.0 only supports Microsoft SQL Server.
  • Oracle support for CMS 6.5 has been made available starting with 6.5 Update-1 (rev. 110818).
  • Oracle support for DMS 2.0 has been made available starting with 6.5 Update-3 (rev. 111230).

New features

• Inline multivariate testing using the Page Editor
  • Editors can easily set up multivariate testing of components right on the page and toggle among the variations to see the visitor experience. (344201)
  • When creating variations, an item structure is created in the database to hold the variations. For this reason, the user is not allowed to delete renderings for which a test is configured. Instead, they can open the Variations dialog box and select "Remove All and Close" to stop the test and remove the related items for the variations. (344178)
  • The Page Editor will display test statistics for any running tests on the current page. To optimize performance, the test statistics is cached in memory. The web.config setting named WebEdit.TestStatisticsCacheExpiration determines how often the statistics are refreshed. (345527)
• Ability to configure separate connection strings for data collection, reporting and engagement automation.
  • By default, the connection string named "analytics" will be used for data collection, automation, and reporting.
  • Reporting applications such as the Executive Insight Dashboard and the Engagement Analytics applications use the connection named "reporting" if it exists. (322363)
  • Engagement automation applications and the underlying API use the connection string named "automations" if it exists. (343628)
    Note.
    Sitecore provides documentation and support on implementing distributed DMS setups using these features starting with CMS 6.6. Only setups with a single instance of Analytics database are supported for CMS 6.5. [Updated September 24, 2012]
• For a description of the new features in CMS 6.5 that were already made available in the technical preview, please refer to release notes for the technical preview. The headlines are summarized here:
  • Inline Personalization using the Page Editor
  • Profile Cards and Patterns
  • Introduction of the Digital Marketing System 2.0 (DMS 2.0), formerly known as Online Marketing Suite (OMS)
  • Optimized Analytics API
  • Optimized Analytics database schema
  • Executive Insight Dashboard
  • Completely re-written Analytics reports
  • Engagement Automation

Deprecated and removed features

• For a description of the deprecated and removed features in CMS 6., please refer to release notes for the technical preview. The headlines are summarized here:
  • The Sitecore.Data.Indexing namespace has been deprecated and will be removed in a future version of the CMS in favor of the more powerful and flexible Sitecore.Search classes and corresponding index definitions.
  • A number of reports and report filters that were available in OMS 1.x have been deprecated, removed, or replaced with new functionality.
  • The DataProviderTimeout setting has been deprecated in favor of the DefaultSQLTimeout setting.
  • A number of classes and controls have been removed.

Improvements

• Engagement Analytics
  • Improved GeoIP lookup functionality and API. (344672)
    • A new GeoIpManager.GetGeoIpData(...) method makes it easy to retrieve GeoIp information and use it when resolving the request or rendering the website.
    • To avoid making the website slow, it's possible to specify a timeout when calling the GetGeoIpData(...) method. If the GeopIp information has not been resolved within that timespan, the method will simply return without a result.
    • The GeoIp feature still makes use of a background thread that resolves GeoIp records which have been registered but never resolved, in addition to updating location information for Visit records that reference an "empty" location.
  • It is now possible to apply filters to the redesigned reports in the "Engagement Analytics" application (formerly known as the "Sitecore Analytics" application).  (345598)
    • Filtering is only available for the Sales reports.
    • To optimize performance, business users are only allowed to filter by Business Classification (also known as VisitorIdentification), Country, and State (for USA only).
    • Adding additional filter types is not supported, but new values can be added to existing filters, and multiple values per entry can be specified as a pipe-separated list (e.g. Country / DACH = DE|AT|CH)
  • To better support multisite solutions, it is now possible to specify on a site-level which database the Analytics Tracker should use for Analytics definition data, such as page events, goals, campaigns, etc. This can be configured by specifying an analyticsDefinitions attribute on site definitions. (345197)
• Login page
  • It is now possible to hide the "Change Password" and "Forgot Your Password" links on the login page and disable the associated ASPX pages. This is for example useful in organizations that use Active Directory to manage user accounts and passwords. The links and pages are disabled using two new web.config settings named Login.DisableChangePassword and Login.DisablePasswordRecovery. (342753)
• Localization
  • The logic for getting localized titles for Rich Text Editor toolbar buttons has been changed to avoid problems with empty names. If a display name is set on the item in Sitecore, it will be used. Otherwise the Telerik localization for the toolbar button will be used and if no such localization exists, the Rich Text Editor will fall back to using the item name from Sitecore. (345381)
    Note: This issue was only partially fixed in the initial 6.5 release. It was fully fixed in 6.4.1 Update-2 and 6.5 Update-2. [Added November 30, 2011]
• For a description of the improvements in CMS 6.5 that were already made available in the technical preview, please refer to release notes for the technical preview. The most important headlines are summarized here:
  • Improved options for deploying definition data to the Analytics database
  • Definition items for Page Events, Goals, Campaigns, and Profiles can now be organized into subfolders.
  • A number of new conditional rendering conditions have been added to allow business users to set up rules that use conditions related to campaigns, goals, keywords, and traffic types.
  • The Page Editor has been made more compatible with many different types of visual designs, especially with designs that use floats, absolute positioning, and various other CSS aspects.
  • The Page Editor has been made more compatible with various JavaScript libraries and code developed by website authors.
  • The Placeholder Settings functionality has been improved.
  • The Page Editor should now work better with Sitecore and .NET web controls.
  • A new Component Settings dialog box is available for renderings, sublayouts, and other components.
  • The installation wizard UI has been significantly reworked with simplicity in mind.
  • The installation wizard can create .NET 4.0 application pools.
  • Sitecore CMS 6.5 includes two alternative web.config files that allow you to use ASP.NET MVC in your Sitecore solution.

Important changes

• Changes to the Sitecore Start menu
  • A new "Sitecore App Center" application has been added to the Sitecore Start menu. By default, this item is only available to Administrators. (345580)
  • The Developer Center application has been moved to the Development Tools submenu. (345580)
• Page Editor
  • Starting with CMS 6.5, it is recommended as a best practice in the Page Editor to have renderings and user controls wrap top-level text nodes in a span or div tag instead of having such text nodes appear outside any HTML tags. Otherwise, the text nodes will not be moved visually when changing rendering position in the Page Editor, until the page is refreshed. [Updated June 20, 2011]
• Changes to the Sample Rendering
  • The default sample rendering.xslt file has been modified to have a div tag surrounding the output, to comply with the new best practice to only output a single top-level tag in renderings. (345407)
• For a description of the important changes in CMS 6.5 that were already made in the technical preview, please refer to release notes for the technical preview. The most important headlines are summarized here:
  • In the "Control Properties" dialog box, the "Personalization" section no longer displays by default, but a new user-level setting allows users to display it again.
  • In the New Language wizard, if you select Danish from the list of predefined languages, Sitecore creates the language using the code "da" rather than "da-DK".
  • Calls to String.ToLower() in the Sitecore API has been replaced with calls to String.ToLowerInvariant() to prevent issues when the application runs under specific cultures, such as Turkish where "I" (upper-case i) is converted to "ı" (a dot-less i), thereby potentially causing item keys, field keys, path names and many other strings to be lowercased incorrectly.
  • This release contains updated versions of 3rd party JavaScript libraries (jQuery, Prototype, and Scriptaculous).
  • The Telerik.Web.UI.dll and HtmlAgilityPack.dll assembly have been updated to a newer version.
  • This release does not contain the RadSpell.NET2.dll assembly.
  • The default timeout for Sitecore SQL queries is now 5 minutes instead of 3 minutes.

Issues resolved                             

In addition to the issues resolved in the 6.5 Technical Preview, the following issues has been resolved:

• Potential security vulnerabilities
  • Sitecore Corp. wants to give credit to ProCheckUp, Richard Brain, for the discovery of all of the following vulnerabilities and for their cooperation.
  • URLs containing embedded languages in the URL might be able to bypass IIS security. To support IIS authentication, a new web.config setting called RedirectURLPrefixes has been introduced which allows you to configure redirection for all URLs secured with IIS authentication. The redirect will only take place when the requested URL contains an embedded language. For example, under the default configuration, Sitecore redirects URLs such as "/en/sitecore" to "/sitecore?sc_lang=en" to ensure that IIS authentication is enforced for such URLs. (342750)
  • URLs containing nonexistent virtual folder prefixes might be able to bypass IIS security due to a bug in how the SiteResolver pipeline processor matches virtual folder prefixes when resolving the site context. (339849)
  • In case of a login error, the login page displayed different error messages in different situations. This could potentially be used to enumerate user names and/or as part of a brute force attack on one or more accounts. The login page will now display a generic error message no matter why the login attempt fails. (342752)
  • Authenticated Sitecore users could start the Sitecore Debugger by entering specific query string parameters when viewing the website. This could reveal information about the site to non-developers. Sitecore will now check that the user is an Administrator or a member of the "Sitecore Client Developing" role before entering debug mode. (342759)
  • Unprivileged authors could get access to a number of applications and dialogs in Sitecore if they knew the URL of the applications. (326144, 343204)
  • Three JavaScript injection vulnerabilities have been fixed in the Sitecore client. The customers and partners that have reported these problems have been informed. (342756, 342755, 342758, 342757)
• Engagement Analytics
  • A racing condition in DMS 2 that affected submitting of Analytics data has been solved. The racing condition had an impact on code being executed in the httpRequestEnd pipeline in situations where the server was processing several requests related to the same session concurrently. (346026)
  • The Engagement Analytics application is now by default only available to users that are member of the "sitecore\Analytics Reporting" role. (326196)
  • The Marketing Center application is now by default only available to users that are member of the "sitecore\Analytics Reporting" or the "sitecore\Analytics Maintaining" role. (326196)
  • When the system sent out session reports by email, the "Unsubscribe" links did not work correctly. If a user clicked "Unsubscribe" in such an email, Sitecore would fail with a "System.NotSupportedException: curr_state" error message. (324521, 340878)
  • When exporting the reports in the Engagement Analytics application, HTML tags will be removed from the output to avoid problems with HTML tags showing up as text in PDF reports. (316768, 341072)
  • In OMS 1.x, a number of problems might occur when duplicating profile definition items, when creating a profile with the same name as an existing profile definition, or when deleting a profile definition and recreating it with the same name. These problems no longer occur in DMS 2. (324703)
  • In the DMS 2 Technical Preview, the sc_trk query string parameter was not backwards-compatible with the syntax used in OMS 1. The format is now sc_trk={Event Name} [,[Item Id][,{Data Key}[,{Data}[,{Text}]]]], where the parameters in [] are optional and where all values must be URL-encoded. (344405)
  • In the DMS 2 Technical Preview, campaigns would not be triggered when passing a campaign ID to Sitecore using the sc_camp query string parameter in a URL. (346370)
  • In the DMS 2 Technical Preview, calling the Tracker.CurrentVisit.PreviousPage.Register(…) method several time on a page would cause the page events to be registered as belonging to separate pages instead of all being associated with the previous page. (342385)
  • In the DMS 2 Technical Preview, the "where the value of specific profile key […]" condition never evaluated to true. (344207)
  • In the DMS 2 Technical Preview, the "where the current device […]" condition did not work as expected, since it only checked the device attribute on the site definition instead of basing the evaluation on Sitecore.Context.GetDeviceName(). (345346)
  • A new rule condition is available to evaluate Engagement Value Points in condition rendering rules and marketing workflow rules. (346198)
  • The "OMS Workflow" and "OMS Testing Workflow" that were present in the DMS 2 Technical Preview have been renamed to "Analytics Workflow" and "Analytics Testing Workflow". (344844)
  • After deleting or renaming a profile key definition item, a Null Reference exception would be displayed when opening items in the Content Item that had the previous profile key assigned. (344265, 344325)
  • A number of issues were fixed in relation to configuring and running Page Level multivariate tests. (343540, 343537, 343544, 342310)
  • The InitializeTracker.Initialize pipeline processor would fail with an exception if a Visit object had already been created for the current session, for example if the Sitecore.Analytics.Tracker.CurrentVisit property had been access prior to the InitializeTracker pipeline being executed. (342307)
  • The metadata of the Sitecore.Analytics.dll has been updated with the correct version number, revision number, and copyright information. (344171)
• Executive Insight Dashboard
  • It's now possible for developers to reuse the Dashboard application for specific reporting needs by being able to open the Dashboard in a mode where it displays a specific report, optionally applying a filter to the report, without displaying any of the usual Dashboard navigation controls. This is for example used by the Email Campaign Manager module. (345831)
  • The Value and Visit charts did not display the data when there was only a single data point to be displayed. (343384)
  • When exporting Dashboard data to Excel, the dates in the Excel file would sometimes be incorrect. (343392)
  • In certain situations, the Dashboard would fail with a "Divide by zero" exception when a user opened the application. (343918)
  • An error would occur if a user selected the First Impression report type when viewing reports for specific data types, such as campaigns. (345638)
  • A number of cosmetic issues have been fixed in the Dashboard. (343763, 344144, 344559, 344142, 344606, 343865, 343866, 343867)
• Engagement Automation applications
  • A Refresh button has been added to the ribbon of the Engagement Automation Supervisor and Monitor applications. (344911)
  • It is now supported that users can duplicate engagement plans in the Marketing Center or using the Content Editor. As a consequence of this, the "Save As" button has been removed from the Engagement Automation Designer application. (344982, 344309, 345342, 344232)
  • When selecting an engagement plan in the Marketing Center and the plan is not in a final workflow state, a message will appear to inform the user that the plan has not yet been deployed. (345111)
  • The full screen mode has been removed from the Designer, since a limitation in the Silverlight framework could cause the browser to hang when using full screen mode in Firefox or Chrome. (345320)
  • When configuring a "Copy Visitor to Another Plan" action in the Engagement Automation Designer, the user can no longer select the current plan, since it's not supported to have a user in multiple states within the same engagement plan. (343893)
  • An error would occur when trying to edit an action in an engagement plan if the action contained references to a deleted engagement state or engagement plan. (343841)
  • Profiles organized into folders would not be available for selection when configuring actions, such as the "Add to Visit Profile" action (now named "Increase the Profile Value"). (344057)
  • The Supervisor will now display a warning if the user opens an engagement plan that has not yet been deployed and all commands in the ribbon will be disabled. (344850, 344910)
  • The Supervisor and Monitor applications will now be disabled if Analytics is disabled. (345145)
  • The Execute command in the Supervisor no longer allows the user to select multiple visitors, since the Execute command is only designed to work with a single visitor at a time. (345301)
  • The Supervisor would display a "Data is Null" error message when trying to execute a plan if a visitor in the automation state has no user name, for example if one or more visitors were subscribed from a campaign. (343921)
  • The Supervisor would display an error message when a user clicked the "Move All Visitors" command in the context menu. (345435)
  • The Supervisor would sometimes not add visitors from a CSV file correctly if the CSV file contained empty rows or rows with more or less fields than the header row contains. (344598)
  • When adding visitors from a CSV file, the file is now processed in a background job. (345248)
  • In rare cases, an error message would be displayed if a user opened the Supervisor or Monitor and selected a state before the plan had been fully loaded. (345300)
  • A number of cosmetic issues have been fixed in the Designer, Supervisor, and Monitor applications. (344225, 344230, 343910, 344335, 345304, 346013, 346136, 344198, 345376, 345380, 344319, 342069, 342869, 343689, 345583, 344551, 343118, 345628, 346214)
• Engagement Automation actions
  • The automation API now supports floating point values for profile key values, making the system work as expected when profile key values are calculated as an average of multiple profile cards. (343914)
  • With certain configurations, the "Send Email Message" action did not work in the 6.5 technical preview. It would always write an error message to the log file and not send the emails. (343810)
  • The "Send Email Message" action now supports specifying a semi-colon separate list of email addresses to send the email to multiple recipients. (345138)
  • The emails sent by the "Send Email Message" action did not display images correctly. Now, a Base Site URL can be specified when configuring the action. (344905)
  • The emails sent by the "Send Email Message" action were sent as plain text instead of as HTML mails, causing any HTML tags to appear as text in the message body. (344115)
  • The "Subtract from Visit Profile" and "Add to Visit Profile" actions (now named "Decrease the Profile Value" and "Increase the Profile Value") did not always subtract or add values as expected. (343869)
  • In some situations, the "Remove Visitor From Plan" action could fail with a "Collection was modified" exception when executed. (343846)
  • The "Copy Visitor to Another Plan" action did not check if the visitor was already enrolled in the target plan, which could cause the action to move an already enrolled visitor away from its current automation state in the target plan. (345563)
  • The "Apply Profile Card" action was a preliminary action that was not fully implemented. It has therefore been removed for now. (343816)
  • After an automation action had removed a visitor from an automation state, one or more errors would sometimes be written to the log file. (345856)
• Setup.exe installation program
  • The setup.exe wizard will no longer list SQL Server instances running SQL Server 2005 or older, since these database engines are not supported by CMS 6.5. (343433)
  • When installing Sitecore on IIS7, the setup.exe program used an incorrect format when trying to set the content expiration setting (also known as "Expire web content" setting) to the default value of 7 days. (343299, 343372)
  • The setup.exe wizard did not add the hostname to the hosts system file if the new hostname matched the beginning of an existing hostname in the file. (324697)
  • After uninstalling Sitecore, two empty folders below \sitecore\shell\RadControls would remain in the file system. (346077)
  • After uninstalling Sitecore, Windows registry would sometimes still contain registry keys related to Sitecore. (343821)
  • Two cosmetic issues have been fixed in the Japanese setup.exe. (343278)
• Page Editor
  • Before applying a layout preset, the Page Editor will now ask the user to confirm that they wish to overwrite all layout settings for all devices on the item. (339240)
  • When changing the position of a component, empty placeholders did not display a "Move to here" marker. (343097)
  • If an editable field was output as a top-level element by an xslt rendering (as opposed to being surrounded by a span or div tag), the user would not be able to select edit it in the Page Editor. (343149, 342658)
  • With certain designs and page structures, the browser might become unresponsive after the user moves a component from one position on the page to another. In some cases, the browser would eventually display a slow script error message to the user. (342632)
  • In the "Personalize component" dialog box, it was possible to rename the condition named "Default". (342878)
  • When switching between personalization variations in the Page Editor, the rendering parameters from the rendering definition item would not be taken into account when displaying the variation. (344331)
  • When using Internet Explorer, switching between personalization variations for sublayouts would sometimes not take effect. (344635)
  • Users without sufficient permissions could encounter an AccessDeniedException:AddFromTemplate exception message when clicking the "Edit the placeholder settings" button in the Page Editor. (340484)
  • When the WebEdit.PlaceholdersEditableWithoutSetting was set to the default value of false, the "Select parent element" command would not be available if the components parent was not editable, even if other ancestors were editable. (344603)
  • When the WebEdit.PlaceholdersEditableWithoutSettings was set to true and one or more sublayouts and/or placeholders were not configured to be editable, the "Add to here" marker would sometimes appear in the wrong location when selecting a placeholder. (345372)
  • When using placeholder names with a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, a JavaScript error would occur when trying to perform certain operations in the Page Editor, such as trying to add components to the placeholder. (344627) [Added December 14, 2011] 
• Profile Cards and Pattern Cards
  • A number of items and templates have been renamed to make the terminology clearer. For example, the "Pattern" template has been renamed to "Pattern Card" and the "Patterns" folders in the Marketing Center have been renamed to "Pattern Cards". (343525, 344212)
  • When configuring the "where pattern card matches […]" rule in the Rule Set Editor, the pattern card can now be selected in a dialog box rather than having to type the name. (343701)
  • The radar charts will now display the profile keys on the axes using their sort order, rather than using alphabetical order. (341496)
  • Items based on the Pattern Card template would display a broken icon in the content tree. (341901)
  • When assigning a customized profile card using only default values for the profile keys, the customized card would not be assigned to the item when closing the dialog box. (341253)
  • When one or more profile keys was configured with a non-zero minimal value, the Content Editor would display an icon on all content items and make it appear as if a Profile Card with customized values had been assigned to the item. (343375, 344607)
  • The Select Profile Card dialog no longer allow the user to configure negative values for a profile key since such values are not supported. (339636)
  • A JavaScript error would occur when opening the Select Profile Card dialog box if any of the profile keys was configured with a minimum value that was larger than the maximum value. (344267)
  • If two profiles has profile keys with identical names, an exception message would sometimes appear when trying to assign or edit profile cards. An error will no longer occur in such circumstances, but such a configuration can lead to unexpected behavior, since the underlying tracking field does not support keys with the same name correctly. (339323, 344611)
  • A number of cosmetic issues have been fixed in relation to Profile Cards and Pattern Cards. (342131, 343546, 344608, 339401, 338683, 344616, 345021, 344179)
• Content Editor
  • In 6.4.1 Update-1, changes to placeholder settings in the Layout Details dialog box would sometimes disappear after the user saved the item in the Content Editor. (340023)
  • In 6.4.1 Update-1, the Content Editor did not show raw values for layout fields correctly. Instead of showing the value stored in the database, the value was shown after layout deltas had been applied, making it difficult to see if the field contained a full layout definition or a layout delta. (343657)
• Word Document field
  • When an editor inserts images into a Word Document field using a Japanese edition of Microsoft Word on a Japanese edition of Windows, the images would not be uploaded correctly to Sitecore, resulting in broken image icons and one or more messages similar to "ERROR Failed to get a url for the image with part id 'image001.jpg'" would be written to the Sitecore log file. (344092, 344783)
• Security Applications
  • When the Security Editor displayed security rights for user accounts, it displayed security permissions inherited from roles as if they had been assigned to the user accounts instead of only displaying permissions that have been assigned directly to the user accounts. (309581)
  • The Access Viewer did not display the effective permissions for field:read and field:write correctly when no explicit assignments had been made for these two access rights. The application will now correctly indicate that these two access rights are allowed by default if no access rule denies access. (312387)
• Localization
  • The names of profiles, profile keys, goals, and campaigns could not be localized. (346302, 345227, 345901, 345899, 345904)
  • A number of strings in the Executive Dashboard could not be localized and the application did not use the correct culture when formatting dates. (345642, 345518, 345633, 345519, 345587)
  • In 6.4.1 Update-1, custom Rich Text Editor toolbar buttons were required to have a display name - otherwise the tooltip would be missing. This caused various problems, including problems for the Web Forms for Marketers module where the dropdown list for inserting fields into the email body would be empty. (345381)
  • The ValidationText field that appears on template field items has been made unversioned instead of shared to make it possible to localize validation warnings. (345242)
  • The status messages displayed in the Publishing dialog box after a publishing operation completes always appeared in English. (331477)
  • The dialog boxes displayed when serializing, updating, or reverting items were always displayed in English. (331567)
  • The Inheritance tab of the Template Manager now render field names and field section names using their display names. (341216)
  • The classic Search application displayed field names in the search result using the content language instead of the current client language. (342330)
  • The drop tree control, which for example is used for selecting a layout in the Layout Details dialog box, showed display names of items in the drop-down but not when displaying the currently selected item path. (340745)
  • The Customize My Toolbar dialog box displayed several names of chunks and buttons in English, even when a localized text was available in the Header field of the items. (340935)
    Note: This issue was only partially fixed in the initial 6.5 release. It was fully fixed in 6.4.1 Update-2 and 6.5 Update-2. [Added November 30, 2011]
  • When using the Japanese client language, some button texts were wrapped to two lines, for example the "Upload" button in the Insert Sitecore Media dialog box in the Rich Text Editor. (342974)
  • The Workbox will now format dates using the current user's locale. (342233)
  • When using the Japanese client language, a horizontal scrollbar appeared in the Select an Account Edit User Roles dialog boxes. (333348, 333508, 335081)
  • A display name has been added on a number of items to make it easier to localize the text. The changes have been made for some of the buttons in the default Html Editor Profiles toolbars and for some of the items that define the Content Editor ribbon. (342955, 342941, 343099)
  • A number of phrases could not be translated in various areas of the product. (342372, 342222, 331528, 341058, 341060, 342088)
• Serialization
  • When a user tried to serialize and subsequently restore a subtree, items with very long paths might be missing after the restore operation. (339734, 340207)
    Note: This issue was only partially fixed. There are still scenarios where serializing and restoring items or folders with very long paths does not work as expected. [Added July 8, 2011]
  • When a user serialized an item with a long path, then moved the item and serialized the content tree again, the serialization file corresponding to the original location of the item would sometimes not be cleaned up from disk. (339734, 340207)
  • When a user tried to serialize an item with a long path, Sitecore would sometimes fail with an error message similar to "System.InvalidOperationException: Could not find configuration node: databases/database[@id='D06DE6E6']". (343307)
    Note: This issue was only partially fixed. There are still scenarios where serializing and restoring items or folders with very long paths does not work as expected. [Added September 16, 2011]
• Miscellaneous
  • The TreeList, TreeViewEx and Listbox controls now support a new DisplayFieldName property. If specified, the control will use the value of this field when rendering items and, if no value is set for an item, it will fall back to using the display name or name of the item. (340935)
  • When calling the ItemPath.GetPath(string, string, ItemPathType) method with a value of ItemPathType.DisplayName for the last parameter, the method would return the path using English display names instead of using the display names of the current context language. (340745)
  • The processors in the sessionEnd pipeline was never called. This functionality is now available, but be careful to depend on this pipeline, since the pipeline is not guaranteed to be executed, for example if the ASP.NET process is terminated. (342694)
  • The SiteResolver processor in the httpRequestBegin pipeline would sometimes match virtualFolder prefixes incorrectly and switch the site context even if the incoming URL did not match the virtualFolder prefix. (339849)
  • When a user pressed the backspace key while being logged in to the Sitecore Desktop, the browser would navigate back to the login screen. This default behavior of the browser is now suppressed to avoid that users accidentally leave Sitecore by means of a wrong keystroke. The backspace key still works as expected when editing text fields. (339505)
  • The "Select Datasource" dialog box created data source items in the client language instead of the current content language. (345308)
  • A number of labels and texts have been updated for clarity and consistency, for example in the Page Designer and the Engagement Automation applications. (345523)
  • A cosmetic issue has been fixed in the Rule Set Editor dialog box which affected rules with very long descriptions. (344617)
  • For consistency with the Add New Language wizard, the "More Languages" dialog box that is available when switching between languages in the Content Editor and which can be used to add versions in languages will now display the same list of languages as the Add New Language wizard and use the same language and regional ISO codes. (345889)
  • In certain use cases, Sitecore could be made to serve data from the database without a valid license file. Additional license checks have been added to avoid such a situation where a customer potentially would be violating their Sitecore license, possibly without realizing it. (338485)
  • Rebuilding the Descendants table in the database, for example by executing the Database Cleanup wizard, required the SQL Server user to have db_owner role due to using a TRUNCATE statement. The SQL has been changed to use a DELETE statement instead. (339440)
  • In the 6.5 Technical Preview, a new system rendering named "Hidden Rendering.xslt" was introduced. It has been moved to the "/xsl/system/WebEdit/" in 6.5 for consistency. (345162)
  • In the 6.5 Technical Preview, a number of Page Events and Goals appeared in the Workbox in non-final workflow states. (343240)
  • In the 6.5 Technical Preview, an error message would be displayed if the user opened the Layout Details for an item and tried to remove the all the currently assigned controls. (345134)
  • In the 6.5 Technical Preview, the icon for the "Campaign" template would sometimes appear as a broken image. (345678)
  • When running the Broken Links report tool on the clean master, web and core databases, a number of broken links would be reported. The items in question have been modified so that they no longer contain broken links. In addition to this, the system will no longer report a number of false warnings related to e.g. complex datasources. (344312)
  • A number of 3rd party DLLs installed into the /bin folder by Sitecore were not digitally signed with an Authenticode signature. All DLLs installed by Sitecore are now signed for the benefit of customers who wish to ensure that the DLLs are provided as part of the Sitecore distribution. (346116, 343602)  

April 20, 2011

Released Sitecore CMS 6.5 rev.110419 and DMS 2.0 rev.110419 technical preview.

Note: You should install the current recommended version of Sitecore in your production environment unless you need a fix for a known issue that is contained in a later version. For more information about the recommended versions of Sitecore, see Sitecore’s Recommended Version Policy.

Change log.

System requirements

• Supported SQL Server versions
  • Sitecore CMS 6.5 does not support SQL Server 2005.
  • Sitecore CMS 6.5 and DMS 2.0 require SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, or later.
  • Sitecore CMS 6.5 also supports the corresponding SQL Server Express editions.
• The initial release of CMS 6.5 and DMS 2.0 only supports Microsoft SQL Server.
  • Oracle support for CMS 6.5 has been made available starting with 6.5 Update-1 (rev. 110818).
  • Oracle support for DMS 2.0 has been made available starting with 6.5 Update-3 (rev. 111230).

New features

• Inline Personalization using the Page Editor
  • Editors can personalize or create new personalization variations right on the page and toggle among the variations to see the visitor experience.
  • A new security role named "sitecore\Analytics Personalization" controls access to the inline personalization feature. By default, the "sitecore\Author" role is a member of the new role, granting access for all regular editors to personalize pages.
  • The personalization variations and the conditions for displaying them are stored as part of the layout details for the page.
• Profile Cards and Patterns
  • Profiles and profile keys now roll up into profile cards. This allows business users to focus on profile cards when assigning profiles to content items, rather than specifying the values of individual profile keys. To support this feature, Sitecore redesigned the "Profiles" dialog to focus on profile cards, while still allowing custom values to be configured.
  • To make it easier for content editors to configure Profile Cards, the Content Editor now features a button in the upper right-hand corner that opens the Profile Cards dialog box. To avoid duplicate functionality, Sitecore removed the "Profiles" button from the "Analyze" tab of the Content Editor ribbon.
  • When content profiling is configured, the Content Editor displays icons for the selected profile cards so that editors easily can see what profile cards that are associated with the current content item. The profile cards are displayed next to the Profile Card button in the upper right-hand area of the Content Editor.
  • A new user-level setting called "Profile Presets Section" appears on the "Content Editor" tab in the Application Options dialog box. This allows users to hide the Profile Cards button and the profile card icons in case they don't work with content profiling.
  • CMS 6.5 introduces a new security permission named "profile:customize". In the user interfaces, this access right appears with the title "Customize Profile Key Values". This permission can be assigned to profile items and allows non-Administrator users to specify profile key values that are outside of the normal min/max values.
  • Business users can define one or more patterns for each profile in the Marketing Center. Sitecore includes rules that allow business users to configure website personalization based on the similarity of the current visitor's profile to one of the defined patterns.
• Digital Marketing System 2.0 (DMS 2.0), formerly known as Online Marketing Suite (OMS)
  • Optimized Analytics API
    • The Analytics API has completely redesigned to improve performance for both read and write operations. DMS uses a memory cache for current visit data as well as visit history, and a separate memory cache for storing shared data. The data API makes use of a commit queue and bulk inserts to increase performance.
    • The API has much better support for reading and modifying data related to the current visit and visitor, as well as historic data for the visitor. The model largely depends on explicit loading of data to prevent developers from unexpectedly loading large amounts of data from the database.
  • Optimized database schema
    • The Analytics database schema has redesigned and optimized to reduce the amount of data to be transferred and the number of complex table joins. To achieve this, some tables have been denormalized and some data appears in individual columns rather than related tables.
  • Executive Insight Dashboard
    • Using an elegant Silverlight interface, the Executive Insight Dashboard enables business users to measure the qualitative value of their campaigns vs. a narrow quantitative performance view.
  • Completely re-written Analytics reports
    • The "Engagement Analytics" application replaces "Sitecore Analytics" and contains a new set of reports.
    • The new reports are optimized for better usability and now also incorporate an engagement value metric.
    • The SQL statements that define the reports in the Engagement Analytics application are now stored in the database as part of the report definition items instead of inside the report *.mrt files.
  • Engagement Automation
    • Engagement Automation includes an intuitive visual campaign designer, monitor and supervisor that integrates with email, web and engagement analytics. These applications and the underlying API enable business users to build and manage integrated campaigns flows that cross channels, all from a single browser-based user interface.
  • Ability to configure separate connection strings for data collection and reporting.
    • By default, the connection string named "analytics" will be used for data collection, automations, and reporting.
    • Reporting applications such as the Executive Insight Dashboard and the Engagement Analytics applications use the connection named "reporting" if it exists. (322363)
      Note.
      Sitecore provides documentation and support on implementing distributed DMS setups using these features starting with CMS 6.6. Only setups with a single instance of Analytics database are supported for CMS 6.5. [Updated September 24, 2012]

Deprecated and removed features

• The Sitecore.Data.Indexing namespace has been deprecated and will be removed in a future version of the CMS in favor of the more powerful and flexible Sitecore.Search classes and corresponding index definitions. (339497)
  • The clean installation of Sitecore no longer contains index definitions related to the Sitecore.Data.Indexing namespace, but such index definitions can be added if needed - for example when upgrading existing solutions to CMS 6.5 or if you are using code in your solution that depends on the old search indexes to be present. 
  • Code that depends on classes in the Sitecore.Data.Indexing namespace and the corresponding index definitions will continue to work until Sitecore removes the namespace; this change should not yet affect existing solutions.
  • A number of classes have been moved to the Sitecore.Search namespace and the old classes in the Sitecore.Data.Indexing namespace are now deprecated. The old classes have been changed to inherit from the new classes to ensure that the locks will work correctly if both the new and old classes are used concurrently in a solution. The affected classes are:
    • LockScope
    • IndexLocker
    • FSDirectory
    • FSLock
    • DebugFSDirectory
• Engagement Analytics
  • The previous way of adding filters to reports in the "Engagement Analytics" application (formerly known as the "Sitecore Analytics" application) has been deprecated and removed. They will be superseded by a new way of defining report filters. 
  • The reports that were previously available in the "Sitecore Analytics" application have been replaced by a new set of reports.
  • The "Control" field has been removed from the profile key definition template. All profile keys will be displayed using a TextBoxSlider control in the UI. (342332)
  • The conditional rendering condition named "If Multivariate Testing Enabled" and the global conditional rendering rule named "Multivariate Tests" have been removed, as this logic has been converted into a pipeline step. (342075, 342036)
  • The predefined conditions named "visitor is IT Executive" and "visitor is Marketing Executive" have been removed. (342062)
  • The <renderingCondition> pipeline was not used in the Sitecore OMS and has been removed. (325396)
• The DataProviderTimeout setting has been deprecated in favor of the DefaultSQLTimeout setting. (333897)
  • All internal usages of the DataProviderTimeout setting has been replaced with the DefaultSQLTimeout setting.
  • The DataProviderTimeout setting was not present in the clean web.config file. If you have manually added this setting to the web.config file to increase the timeouts for SQL commands, you might need to adjust the default value of the DefaultSQLTimeout setting.
• A number of classes and controls have been removed:
  • The PublishManager.Publish(PublishOptions) method was deprecated in CMS 6.3 and has now been removed completely. Notice that the PublishManager.Publish(PublishOptions[]) method is still available. (338041)
  • The Sitecore.Shell.Applications.ContentManager.Galleries.Find.GalleryFindForm class was unused and therefore removed. (337304)
  • The Sitecore.Web.UI.HtmlControls.QuickFind class was unused and therefore removed. (337309)
  • The SaveRichTextContent.EmbedInParagraph pipeline processor was empty and therefore removed. (335142)

Improvements

• Engagement Analytics
  • [Added July 13, 2011] To provide better support for staged setups, a new Analytics.DefaultDefinitionDatabase setting was introduced. The setting is currently not present in the Sitecore.Analytics.config file, but it can be added manually to the <settings> section if needed. The setting defines the database which will be used for storing Analytics definition data. It defaults to the "master" database and should be changed to another database (typically "web") on Sitecore instances that do not have access to the "master" database. (327769, 341648)
  • Deployment of definition data to the Analytics database
    • Workflow support has been added to the item event handler that copies Page Events, Goals, and other definition data from the Sitecore "master" database to the Analytics database. If such definition items are in a workflow, the definition data will only be deployed to the Analytics database when the saved item is in a final workflow state. (340937)
    • To give better control over when definition data is deployed to the Analytics database, new items based on the Page Event, Goal, Campaign, and Engagement Plan templates are now by default placed in a workflow called "OMS Workflow". The name of the workflow is subject to change.
    • A new pipeline named <deployDefinition> has been introduced to give more control over the deployment of definition data to the Analytics database.
  • Definition items for Page Events, Goals, Campaigns, and Profiles can now be organized into subfolders. (324218)
  • A number of new conditional rendering conditions have been added to allow business users to set up rules that use conditions related to campaigns, goals, keywords, and traffic types.
• Page Editor
  • The Page Editor has been made more compatible with many different types of visual designs, especially with designs that use floats, absolute positioning, and various other CSS aspects.
    • To achieve this, the Page Editor no longer injects DIV tags into the page in edit mode to surround placeholders, sublayouts, or edit frames. Instead, the beginning and end of such elements are marked with <code> tags which have a minimal impact on the DOM tree and CSS rules.
    • The Page Editor continues to surround editing controls for fields with various HTML tags to support editing. These tags are required to facilitate inline editing, and in most cases, these extra tags only have a small impact on the DOM tree and CSS rules and should not break the visual design of the website.
  • The Page Editor has been more compatible with various JavaScript libraries and code developed by website authors.
    • The Page Editor in CMS 6.5 only relies on the jQuery library in "noConflict" mode.
    • The Page Editor no longer makes use of the prototype.js library.
  • The Placeholder Settings functionality has been improved. (340038)
    • Placeholder editing is now disabled in the Page Editor by default. Editors are only allowed to edit and insert components into placeholders that are associated with a corresponding placeholder settings item.
    • For backwards compatibility, placeholder editing can be enabled for all placeholders by default by setting WebEdit.PlaceholdersEditableWithoutSettings to "true" in the web.config file.
    • Placeholder Setting items are no longer "magically" matched to placeholders based on their item name (and path).
      • Instead, a new field called "Placeholder Key" has been introduced where you can specify a placeholder key (such as "content") or a full placeholder path (such as "/content/sidebar/banner"). If the field is left empty, the placeholder settings should be applied to individual placeholders using the Presentation Details dialog box. 
      • This makes the configuration easier to understand and reduces the risk that the Page Editor stops working as expected, for example if a placeholder settings item is renamed.
      • Also, this allows Placeholder Settings items to be organized into subfolders without affecting the way placeholder settings are matched to placeholders.
      • It has been made easier and more intuitive to pick a Placeholder Settings item from the Page Editor or to create a new Placeholder Settings item for the selected placeholder.
      • The link database is now registering when one or more placeholder settings mappings have been configured in the Presentation Details dialog box. Global mappings using the "Placeholder Key" field are not registered in the link database.
  • The Page Editor should now work better with Sitecore and .NET web controls. Previously, various .NET lifecycle event were not called after adding new web controls in the Page Editor, which would cause some controls not to be rendered correctly until the page was saved. Now, most web controls should be rendered as soon as they have been added to a placeholder. (336360)
    • Notice: If a web control outputs inline JavaScript code, the JavaScript will be ignored when adding the control to a page. Please consider using external JavaScript files instead.
  • A new Component Settings dialog box is available for renderings, sublayouts, and other components. The dialog box makes it easy for developers to configure global settings for the component, such as defining a thumbnail, the default data source location, and compatible renderings.
    • In the 6.5 Technical Preview, the command for opening this dialog box is named "Edit Page Editor Options" and is located in the "More" menu in the floating toolbar. The naming is subject to change.
  • A new "Editable" field has been added to the rendering and sublayout definition templates. This allows developers and designers to disable editing of individual renderings and sublayouts. This makes it easier to protect parts of the page that editors should not be able to modify. (339190)
  • When a placeholder is disabled for editing, it is no longer possible to delete or change the sort order of components that dynamically bound to that placeholder. (339466)
  • To avoid conflicts when multiple instances of the same field exist on the same page, the Page Editor will now make other field instances on the page read only when a user modifies the field value of one of the instances. The field that has been modified continues to be editable. The other field instances will remain read only until the page is saved. (338860)
  • A new web.config setting called WebEdit.DisableAnimations has been introduced that allows customers to disable Page Editor animations. This can increase the performance of the Page Editor by removing the animations that, for example, show you when fields, renderings, and sublayouts are selected, added, or removed. (339503)
  • The "Select Associated Content" dialog has been made more extensible. (339396)
    • Developers can now specify multiple allowed templates by hooking into the <getRenderingDatasource> pipeline and populating the new TemplatesForSelection property.
    • The default behavior is to use value of the "Datasource Template" field on the rendering item.
• Setup.exe installation program
  • The installation wizard UI has been significantly reworked with simplicity in mind.
  • The wizard no longer requires the user to choose between a Simple and an Expert mode. Instead, the wizard provides "Advanced..." buttons that allow the user to configure the options that were previously only available in "Expert" mode.
  • The wizard can create .NET 4.0 application pools. This option is available by clicking the new button named "Advanced" on the "Web site" step in the wizard. By default, when this option is not selected, the application pool will be configured to run under the .NET 2.0 framework. (336338)
  • To avoid problems with the Sitecore installation, the wizard no longer offers an option to use an existing website and/or application pool. The wizard will always add a new website and application pool in the IIS. 
  • A new option to use the database prefix as a prefix for the physical MDF/LDF files has been added.
  • The setup.exe no longer requires the "IIS6 Compatibility" feature to be installed in Windows.
  • The bootstrapper for the setup.exe loads faster.
• Content Editor
  • The content tree now has support for drag & drop reordering of items when using Chrome and Safari, allowing the user to place the dragged item as either a child or a sibling. In contrast to using Internet Explorer, the user can place the dragged item as a sibling without pressing the ALT key. Drag & drop reordering in Firefox has been changed to match Chrome and Safari behavior. (341335, 335399) [Updated May 19, 2011]
• Update Package Installation Wizard
  • When The Update Package Installation Wizard checks for template usages, it is now using the TemplateItem.GetUsageIDs() method that was introduced in CMS 6.4.1. This ensures that the wizard will report and handle any template usage conflicts correctly, even if the link database is not up-to-date. (340988)
• The clean installation
  • Sitecore CMS 6.5 includes two alternative web.config files that allow you to use ASP.NET MVC in your Sitecore solution. If you wish to integrate an MVC web application into an existing Sitecore solution, Sitecore continues to provide documentation on how to manually apply the required web.config changes.
    The two alternative web.config files are named: (335796)
    • web.config.Net3_5.MVC (for sites running in a .NET 2.0/3.5 application pool)
    • web.config.Net4.MVC (for sites running in a .NET 4.0 application pool)

Important changes

• Digital Marketing System 2.0 (formerly known as OMS)
  • The distribution (zip-file) that contains the Analytics database and the Analytics configuration files has been renamed from OMS to DMS to be consistent with the product nomenclature.
• Personalization
  • In the "Control Properties" dialog box, the "Personalization" section no longer displays by default, because for most use cases the new inline personalization features of the Page Editor supersede this functionality.
  • A new user-level setting called "Show the Personalization Section" appears on the "View" tab in the Application Options dialog box. This allows users to display the Personalization section in case they still need it.
• Localization
  • In the New Language wizard, if you select Danish from the list of predefined languages, Sitecore creates the language using the code "da" rather than "da-DK". (309663)
    • This change has been made ensure that the same language code is used for Danish in the master and core databases, thereby making it easier to localize template names and other field values from the master database that are displayed in the Sitecore Client interfaces.
    • To create a "da-DK" language definition using the wizard, enter "DK" in the "Country/Region Code" field.
• Calls to String.ToLower() in the Sitecore API has been replaced with calls to String.ToLowerInvariant() to prevent issues when the application runs under specific cultures, such as Turkish where "I" (upper-case i) is converted to "ı" (a dot-less i), thereby potentially causing item keys, field keys, path names and many other strings to be lowercased incorrectly. (334266, 342394)
  • This change could potentially break existing code, for example if culture dependent characters were used in item names, or if item keys that include such special characters is compared using custom code, or if Sitecore-generated item keys are compared in custom code to strings that have been lower-cased using .ToLower() instead of .ToLowerInvariant().
  • It is recommended to review custom code and change .ToLower() to .ToLowerInvariant() when comparing item keys, field keys, etc. if the code is expected to run under the Turkish culture.
• This release contains updated versions of the following 3rd party JavaScript libraries:
  • The jQuery and jQuery.noconflict libraries have been updated from v1.5 to the minified versions of v1.5.1. (341432)
  • The Prototype library has been updated from v1.7 RC1 to v1.7. (338997)
  • The Scriptaculous library has been updated from v1.8.0 to v1.9.0. (338997)
• The following 3rd party assemblies (.dll files) have been updated to a newer version. You might have to update and recompile your code if you are referencing these assemblies from your code:
  • The Telerik.Web.UI.dll assembly has been updated from 2010.2.826.35 to 2011.1.315.35. (342220)
  • The HtmlAgilityPack.dll assembly has been upgraded from version 1.3.0 to 1.4.0. (339498)
• This release does not contain the RadSpell.NET2.dll assembly. The SpellcheckerValidator class has been updated to use the spellchecker from the Rich Text Editor in the Telerik.Web.UI.dll. (337962)
• The default timeout for Sitecore SQL queries is now 5 minutes instead of 3 minutes.
  • This is a consequence of deprecating the DataProviderTimeout setting (which had a default value of 3 minutes) in favor of the DefaultSQLTimeout setting (which has a default value of 5 minutes). (333897)

Issues resolved

• Engagement Analytics
  • The conditional rendering condition named "Visitor Identification Condition" only triggered for unclassified visitors. This happened because condition was configured to store the value to check for using the property name "identification" while the code that reads the property was using the name "VisitorIdentification".  (342062)
  • Most of the predefined conditional rendering conditions in OMS 1.x were evaluating the conditions by reading values from the Analytics database. As a consequence of this, changes to the in-memory information would not take effect until the next request, which made many conditional rendering rules appear to be "delayed". (332640, 332639)
  • The purpose of the rule condition named "Persona" was not clear from the name. The new name for this condition is "Predefined Condition" and the text is changed from "where [persona]" to "where [predefined condition is true]". (342047)
• Setup.exe installation program
  • The setup.exe did not restrict anonymous access in the IIS to selected folders on the web server. The setup.exe will now remove anonymous access in the IIS for the following folders when installing Sitcore: (336333)
    • /App_Config
    • /sitecore/debug
    • /sitecore/admin - [Added August 25, 2011] Starting with 6.5 Update-1, the setup.exe does not restrict access to this folder.
    • /sitecore/shell/WebService - [Added August 25, 2011] Starting with 6.5 Update-1, the setup.exe does not restrict access to this folder.
  • Sitecore would sometimes fail to start after installation if the IIS application pool was configured to run in Classic pipeline mode under the .NET 4.0 framework. (335275)
    • This happened if the IIS configuration did not allow the .NET 4 aspnet_isapi.dll extension to execute. To avoid this, the setup.exe will now automatically allow this extension in the IIS if the user has chosen to run the application pool under the .NET 4.0 framework.
• Page Editor
  • The "Insert" dialog in the Page Editor did not respect Insert Rules, which could cause the dialog to show too many or too few insert options. The dialog will now execute the <uiGetMasters> pipeline to ensure that the Page Editor displays the same insert options as the Content Editor. (305792)
  • The "Insert" dialog in the Page Editor did not respect the "Show in insert" security permission which can be set on templates and branch items. (310263)
  • Users that are member of the "Sitecore Minimal Page Editor" role did not have access to the "Insert" button on the Page Editor ribbon, and therefore could not create new items. (338677)
  • The "Compatible Renderings" field available on rendering items is now shared instead of versioned. (339740)
• Rich Text Editor
  • When using a non-English client language, the Rich Text Editor would sometimes display one or more English phrases in the "Undo" and "Redo" drop-down boxes, even if the phrases existed in the localization files for the Rich Text Editor. This problem was solved by upgrading to a newer version of the Telerik.Web.UI.dll assembly. (342382)
• Multi-browser support
  • [Firefox, Chrome and Safari] Drag & Drop reordering of items did not work in the Content Editor tree. (341335)
  • [IE9] Dialog boxes opened from a pop-up menu did not work correctly. This applied to dialog boxes opened from right-click menus, such as the "Insert from Template" or "Copy To" wizards, as well as dialog boxes opened from drop-down boxes in the ribbon, such as the "Publish Item" wizard. (341503, 342311, 342703)
• Media API
  • The OpenBlobStream() and SetBlobStream() methods in the SqlServerDataProvider class used the default timeout for the connection. For consistency and for better configurability, these methods now use the value of the DefaultSQLTimeout setting in the web.config file. (342935)
• Cosmetic issues
  • When using dual monitors in certain configurations, the Sitecore start menu would sometimes appear on a different monitor than the current browser window. (340248)
• Miscellaneous
  • The label "Drag a column to this area to group by it" has been removed from the grid control in a number of applications and dialog boxes where the grid control's grouping feature is disabled for performance reasons. This change affects user interfaces including  the User Manager, the Role Manager, and other security applications and dialogs. (332882)
  • The sort order for the template sections from the Standard Template in the core database was not consistent with the sort order in the master database. This could cause the Standard Field sections to be displayed above normal template sections when displaying items in the core database with "Standard Fields" enabled on the View tab. (337457)
  • This release adds a description to the /sitecore/layout/Placeholder Settings/webedit item explaining that this item is present in 6.4 and later for compatibility with previous releases. (335800)
  • The Dispose() method in the ShutdownGuard class in the Sitecore.Update.dll assembly did not explicitly close all objects, causing FxCop to report a warning. (327736)
  • The description of the "DefaultPublishingTargets" setting in the web.config file was potentially confusing. The description no longer uses the term "publishing groups" and uses the "publishing targets" instead. (338196)

1.3.  Release History for Sitecore CMS 6.4

Some of the issues described on this page contain internal reference numbers. You can use these reference numbers when communicating with Sitecore about a particular issue or feature.

As part of our commitment to continually improving our software and listening to our customer’s feedback, Sitecore regularly releases new versions of our CMS product. Each release undergoes careful quality assurance procedures to minimize the number of issues.

January 25, 2012

Released Sitecore CMS 6.4.1 rev. 120113 (6.4.1 Service Pack-1, originally released as 6.4.1 Update-6).

Note: This is a product Service Pack. Sitecore encourages customers to install service packs for any feature release that the customer has installed.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.
Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

Improvements

• Analytics
  • [Merged from 6.5] To provide better support for staged setups, a new Analytics.DefaultDefinitionDatabase setting was introduced. The setting is currently not present in the Sitecore.Analytics.config file, but it can be added manually to the <settings> section if needed. The setting defines the database which will be used for storing Analytics definition data. It defaults to the "master" database and should be changed to another database (typically "web") on Sitecore instances that do not have access to the "master" database. (351863, 327769)
• Link Provider
  • The logic for resolving cross-site links has been improved with the help of two new settings. Notice that Sitecore only generate cross-site links when the Rendering.SiteResolving setting is set to true, just like in previous versions. (355957, 308592, 308594)
    • A new web.config setting called Rendering.SiteResolvingMatchCurrentSite has been introduced. If true, the link provider will check if the target item is located under the start item for the current site before it tries to find a match in the full list of site definitions. This ensures that when the target item can be resolved using the current site, the target link will not change to a different site/hostname.
    • A new web.config setting called Rendering.SiteResolvingMatchCurrentLanguage has been introduced. If true, the link provider will take the language attribute of the site definitions into consideration when resolving which site/hostname to use when rendering a cross-site link. This setting is enabled by default.
  • A new attribute named "lowercaseUrls" has been added to the linkManager/providers section of the web.config file. If set to true, the link provider will generate all non-media URLs in lowercase. (356720)
  • When the LinkProvider was configured with alwaysIncludeServerUrl set to true and you inserted an external media URLs (pointing to a media item in a different Sitecore solution) in the Rich Text editor, the link would be rendered as an invalid link on the website (361173). [Added January 27, 2014]
• Media API
  • It is now possible to easily override the MediaProvider class using a web.config setting. The MediaProvider class is used to generate media URLs, create media items, control media caching, parse media requests, and other media related functionality. (312358)
  • All media URLs are now built using the MediaProvider.GetMediaUrl() method. In previous versions, some media URLs were built in the LinkProvider.LinkParser class. (312358)
  • By default, media URLs will now be generated relative to the site root (such as /~/media/images/picture.ashx or /virtualFolder/~/media/picture.ashx) instead of relative to the current page. Such URLs are considered SEO friendly, and also improve caching. (346213, 332285)
    • Media URLs generated in the context of the "shell" site continues to be relative to the current page, otherwise media links would be inserted incorrectly into Rich Text fields and unpublished media might not work correctly in the Sitecore clients.
  • A new web.config setting called Media.AlwaysIncludeServerUrl has been introduced. (353850)
    • When set to true, Sitecore will generate absolute URLs when rendering media URLs using the MediaProvider API and/or the link provider. When blank, Sitecore will use the same value as the alwaysIncludeServerUrl attribute from the link provider. The default value is blank.
  • A new web.config setting called Media.DefaultImageBackgroundColor has been introduced which specifies the default background color for dynamically resizing images to different aspect ratios than the original's aspect ratio. Sitecore only applies the background color for image types that do not support transparency (image/jpeg, image/gif and image/bmp). (341054)
  • Three new web.config setting have been introduced for configuring dynamic image scaling. The settings correspond to options that are available in the System.Drawing namespace. (352840, 356667)
    • The Media.Resizing.DefaultQuality setting specifies the level of compression to use when resizing images.
    • The Media.Resizing.CompositingMode setting specifies how the colors of the source image are combined with the background colors when resizing images.
    • The Media.Resizing.PixelOffsetMode specifies how pixels are offset when resizing images.
  • The default JPEG image resizing quality (which is now configured using the Media.Resizing.DefaultQuality setting) has been changed from 100 to 95. This reduces the file size of resized images considerably, while still maintaining high image quality. Notice that already resized images in the media cache will not be regenerated using the new media resizing settings until the media cache is cleared. (353058)
  • It is now possible to dynamically resize an image without keeping the original aspect ratio. When using the API, this can be enabled by setting MediaOptions.IgnoreAspectRatio to true. When using the <sc:image> XSL controls, it can be enabled adding an ignoreAspectRatio="true" attribute (or use iar="true" for shorthand). (312041)

Important changes

• By default, the Rich Text Editor is now configured to remove scripts tags from rich text field values before saving. This change has been implemented to reduce the potential for cross-site scripting and other script-related issues. (350967, 350957, 328614)
  • A new web.config setting called HtmlEditor.RemoveScripts has been introduced. The value of this setting is used in EditorConfiguration.SetupFilters() to enable or disable the Telerik.Web.UI.EditorFilters.RemoveScripts content filter.
  • It is recommended to leave this setting set to "true" (meaning that script tags will be removed), unless the solution contains existing RTE fields with script tags. Also, it's appropriate to set the setting to "false" if editors should be allowed to add script tags in rich text fields.
• The interpolation mode for dynamically scaled images will now be using the value of the Media.InterpolationMode setting in the web.config, which by default is set to "High", whereas dynamically scaled images in previous versions would be resized using the "HighQualityBicubic" interpolation mode. (334936)
  • The difference should be minor for most use cases, but we recommend that customers who need the best possible quality change the Media.InterpolationMode setting to "HighQualityBicubic".

Issues resolved

• Performance
  • [Backported from 6.5] A performance issue that was introduced in 6.4.1 Update-3 and in 6.5 Update-1 has been resolved. The issue mainly affected the Page Editor and Live Mode, but could also affect Content Editor performance and overall page response time, as described in the associated known issue on SDN. (355338, 356380)
• Potential security vulnerabilities
  • Unauthenticated users could download unpublished media files from the Sitecore media library by appending a "sc_mode=preview" query string parameter to the media URL. This vulnerability could only be exploited if the Sitecore solution was connected to the "master" database and if outside users knew or were able to guess the URL to one or more media files. This issue has been fixed. (353347)
  • A potential URL redirection vulnerability in the LoginUsers XAML control has been fixed. The control no longer allows redirects to external, possibly malicious, websites. (346109)
  • Authenticated users that did not normally have sufficient permissions could create user accounts by opening the CreateNewUser.html directly in their browser. The created user accounts would however not have any role assignments, and could therefore not be used to log in to Sitecore or to escalate user permissions. (352997)
  • In case of a username/password mismatch, the Change Password page would prefix the username with the domain name of the user account if the user name existed. This could potentially be used to enumerate user names and/or as part of a brute force attack on one or more accounts. The Change Password page will no longer change the text in the user name field in such cases. (352344)
  • A potential cross-site scripting vulnerability has been fixed in the Set Password XAML control. (351452)
  • A potential cross-site scripting vulnerability has been fixed in the Template Builder. (351093)
  • A potential cross-site scripting vulnerability has been fixed in the Rich Text Editor. As described in the "Important Changes" section above, the Rich Text Editor is now configured to remove script tags from rich text field values before saving. (350967, 350957, 328614)
• Analytics
  • The first time profile scores were saved to the Profile table in the Analytics database for a visit, the total and count were switched around and saved in the wrong columns - the count information was saved in the "Total" column and the total was saved in the "Count" column. On subsequent updates, the total and count would be saved to the correct columns. (354568)
  • On content delivery servers that do not have a connection to the "master" database, an exception would be written to the log file when trying to trigger a page event/campaign or to add profile scores if the corresponding definition data did not exist in the Analytics database. Now, a more descriptive warning will be written in such cases. Also, the new Analytics.DefaultDefinitionDatabase setting (which is not present in the configuration file by default) can be useful in such a scenario, as described in the "Improvements" section above. (351863)
• Content Editor
  • When editing items with Standard Fields enabled, the Content Editor would sometimes copy the presentation details from the template standard values and store them directly on the item, even when the user had not changed the presentation details. (353236, 341929)
    Note: This was only partially fixed in 6.4.1 Update-6 with further fixes in 6.5 Update-4 (ref. no. 357664). It has been fully fixed in 6.6 Update-7 (ref. no. 388441) [Updated December 13, 2013]
  • When leaving the Content Editor open for a long time without using the application, editors would sometimes find that certain buttons in the ribbon no longer responded or that clicking the button caused a JavaScript error message to appear. This would happen if the ASP.NET session had timed out in the meantime. The following buttons were affected: (308517)
    • Publish Site (Publish tab)
    • Publish Item (Publish tab)
    • Layout Details (Presentation tab)
    • Log out
  • Trying to download file from a File or File Drop Area field would silently fail if the Media.UseItemPath setting was set to false. (350779)
  • The Field Bookmarks menu that is displayed in the right-hand corner of the Content Editor and which allows the user to quickly navigate to fields and sections did not display a scrollbar when the list did not fit within the browser window. (349495)
• Publishing
  • After uploading a new file to the media library from a dialog box (such as the Media Browser dialog box or the Insert Sitecore Link or Insert Sitecore Media dialog boxes in the Rich Text Editor), a Content Editor window will open to allow the editor to edit the metadata for the media item. If the editor selected the "Publish Item" or "Publish Site" commands in the ribbon of this Content Editor window, the Publish Wizard failed to open, making it difficult to publish the newly uploaded media item. (339085, 356354, 357292)
• Lucene Search
  • When indexing items, field values inherited from the item's template standard values were not added to the search index. This also applied to item clones, as mentioned below. (350108)
  • If the DatabaseCrawler encountered an item where the template was null, it would fail with an exception. Now, a warning will be written to the log file in such cases. (350831)
• Item Cloning
  • [Backported from 6.5 Update-2] When performing a Smart Publish, clones would get republished on every publish operation if the source item had no versions in one or more languages. (353627, 354180)
  • When indexing item clones, only overridden field values stored on the clone itself were added to Lucene search index, while field values inherited from the source item were not added to the search index. (350108)
• Security applications
  • The AccessResultCache was not cleared after changing the "Field Read" or "Field Write" permissions on a template field definition item. (355716)
  • The AccessResultCache was not cleared after making a user account an Administrator or removing Administrator privileges from a user account. (319767)
  • The Security Editor and Access Viewer did not work correctly if the user selected an account with a single quote in the account name. (351598)
  • Working with roles that contained special characters such as exclamations marks, semicolons, ampersands, single quotes in the role name did not work as expected. When trying to make a user or a role a member of such a role, the exclamation marks would be replaced by spaces. Also, it was not possible delete such roles using the Role Manager. (351560)
  • Working with roles that contained special characters, such as Danish characters, did not work as expected. When trying to make a user or a role a member of such a role, the characters would be replaced by various escape character sequences and the role would not be added correctly. Also, it was not possible delete such roles using the Role Manager. (326674)
• Dynamic image scaling
  • The Media.InterpolationMode setting was ignored when Sitecore dynamically resized images, except when the Media.UseLegacyResizing setting was set to true. (334936)
  • Dynamically resized images would sometimes have a black 1px border on one of the sides when specifying both a width and a height for the resized image. (323979)
• Media Library
  • When a user uploaded media files by right-clicking a media folder and selecting "Upload File" in the context menu, the new media item was created below the currently selected media folder rather than the media folder that the user right-clicked. Apart from being confusing for users, this could be used by users to upload files to media folders for which they did not have item:create permissions. (316883, 315490)
  • When uploading files with the Media.IncludeExtensionsInItemNames setting set to true, underscores and dashes would be removed when generating the name of the media item, despite these characters being valid to use in item names. (312878)
• Media API
  • Sitecore would sometimes fail to serve images and files from the media library due to file locking. In such cases, visitors would either see a broken image icon or an error page, and an exception would be written to the log file stating that "The process cannot access the file '…' because it is being used by another process." (330865)
  • Dynamic media URLs in Rich Text fields were not rendered according to the Media.RequestExtension setting if the value of the setting was changed. Dynamic media URLs in Rich Text fields were always rendered on the website using the extension that was set in the Media.RequestExtension setting when the links were originally inserted in the Rich Text field instead of using the current value. Notice that media URLs in the context of the "shell" site continue to always be rendered with an "ashx" extension to make sure the Sitecore clients work as expected. (331666, 347246)
  • When the LinkProvider was configured with alwaysIncludeServerUrl set to true, certain types of media URLs would be rendered on the website without containing the server URL. This was for example the case when rendering a General Link field that pointed to a media item using <sc:link> XSL extension control. (351398)
  • The Media.UseItemPaths setting was not respected when media URLs were rendered by the <sc:image> or <sc:text> XSL extension controls. Notice that the Media.UseItemPaths setting is now ignored when rendering media URLs in the context of the "shell" site. In the "shell" site, media URLs are now always rendered using the GUID of the media item to make sure the Sitecore clients work as expected. (312840, 349295)
• Multi-browser support
  • A number of issues that affected uploading to the media library using the Flash-based upload have been resolved:
    • [IE9] When trying to upload from the Rich Text Editor in the Page Editor, the browser would hang after the user clicked the Browse button in the Upload a File dialog box. (356379)
    • [IE9] When trying to upload from a Media Browser window that was opened from an Image field, the browser would hang after the user clicked the Browse button in the Upload a File dialog box. (355297)
    • [Firefox, Chrome, Safari] When uploading a file by selecting "Upload File" in the media library, the upload would fail with an error message after the user has selected a file and clicked "OK". The Sitecore log file contained error messages indicating "The user is not authenticated". (330826, 335430)
    • [Chrome] The browser might become unresponsive and later display a "Plug-in Unresponsive" dialog box when initiating the upload from a Media Browser dialog box. (351826)
    • [Firefox] When initiating an upload from the Rich Text Editor or from a Media Browser dialog box, the browser would sometimes hang when displaying the pop-up window that allows the user to edit the media item properties for the uploaded file. In other cases, the browser would open the media item properties window correctly but hang when the user clicked the "Save and Close" button. (338170, 343513)
  • [IE9] Assigning images to Image fields did not work. When clicking OK in the Media Browser dialog box, the dialog box would close, but the selected image would not be assigned to the Image field. (356326)
  • [Firefox] Keyboard shortcuts such as CTRL+C, CTRL+V to copy/paste did not work. (338168)
  • [Firefox] Icons displayed in the Quick Action bar could end up being scrolled outside content tree frame when scrolling the content tree. (342093, 340362)
  • [Chrome, Safari] Icons displayed in the Quick Action bar remained at fixed positions and did not scroll with the content tree. (342093, 340362)
  • [Firefox, Chrome, Safari] Trying to move or close the Sitecore App Center window could cause Sitecore to hang and prevent further work with Sitecore until the browser was refreshed. (353521, 353168, 353169)
  • [Chrome] In the Select Role dialog box, pressing ENTER after entering a search term in the search field would cause the dialog box to close instead of searching. (349810)
• Developer Center
  • When editing layouts and sublayouts, the rich text toolbars on the Design pane would sometimes wrap to multiple lines and thereby take up too much space. (351754)
• Miscellaneous
  • The Sitecore.Web.RewriteModule (which was introduced in 6.4.1 Update-4) was missing from the <httpModules> section of the web.config file. This could cause problems when the IIS application pool was configured to run in Classic pipeline mode, most noticeable that "action" attribute of HTML forms pointed to layout file path instead of the item URL. (353541)
  • If several requests called DomainAccessGuard.GetSession() at the same time, an InvalidOperationException could occur in the DomainAccessGuard class. (350121)
  • After changing the IIS application pool mode from the .NET 2.0 Framework to the .NET 4.0 Framework (or the other way around), already logged in users working in Preview mode could encounter an "Unable to validate data." error page caused by an exception in the PreviewProvider.GetShellUser() method. (338921)
  • Shortcuts on the Sitecore Desktop could not be renamed. They would always be displayed using the Display Name from the target item, even when the user provided a different name in the properties for the shortcut. (352106)
  • If a user modified the link field of a shortcut on the Sitecore Desktop to contain a caret ("^") or pipe ("|") character, an exception message would be displayed when clicking "OK" and the Sitecore Desktop would fail with an exception when refreshing the browser or the next time the user logged in. (356314)
• The clean installation
  • A small number of items in the clean databases had the owner set to "sitecore\Anonymous". (354787)

October 18, 2011

Released Sitecore CMS 6.4.1 rev. 111003 (6.4.1 Update-5).

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.
Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download this release.

Improvements

• Support for running the Sitecore user interfaces in Internet Explorer 9.
  • Notice: To use the Page Editor, Preview or Sitecore Debugger in IE9, you must enable Compatibility View mode in Internet Explorer, as described in the associated known issue on SDN.
  • See the "Issues resolved" section for more information about the issues that have been resolved.
• Analytics
  • Better support for load-balanced environments. (338345)
    • When a load balancer is used to forward traffic to Content Delivery servers, it is common that it replaces the originating IP address with its own and places the original IP address in a HTTP header (typically named "X-Forwarded-For").
    • A new setting called Analytics.ForwardedRequestHttpHeader has been introduced in the Sitecore.Analytics.config file. It allows customers to specify the name of an HTTP header variable containing the IP address of the webclient, such as "X-Forwarded-For". The default value is "" (disabled).
    • You should only use this setting behind load-balancers that mask web client IP addresses from webservers. If you use this setting improperly it could allow IP address spoofing.
• Serialization
  • In the User Manager, it is now possible to select multiple users and serialize them to disk in one operation. Reverting multiple users is also supported. (351889)
  • In the Role Manager, it is now possible to revert multiple roles in one operation. (312860)

Important changes

• The File Browser XAML control, which is used to browse the file system, has been refactored to use a UrlHandle to transfer parameters to the control. (350767)
  • Notice: This change could break 3rd party code that passes parameters directly to the xmlcontrol in the URL instead of calling the Sitecore.Shell.Framework.Files.OpenFile(...) method.

Issues resolved

• Potential security vulnerabilities
  • The "SC_ANALYTICS_SESSION_COOKIE" and "SC_ANALYTICS_GLOBAL_COOKIE" cookies are now sent with an HttpOnly flag to prevent client-side scripts from reading the value of the cookies. (351424)
  • Authenticated users that did not normally have sufficient permissions could open the File Browser application. (350767)
  • The Rich Text Editor control could be opened by unauthorized users. (352279, 352290, 352316)
  • Sitecore Corp. wants to give credit to Iron Mountain Ltd., Hue Han for the discovery of the following vulnerability and for their cooperation.
    • A potential URL redirection vulnerability on the login page has been fixed. (350924)
    • A potential cross-site scripting vulnerability has been fixed in the DBBrowser application. (350928)
  • Sitecore Corp. wants to give credit to Context Information Security Ltd. for the discovery of the following vulnerabilities and for their cooperation.
    • A potential cross-site scripting vulnerability has been fixed in the PortalSidebar XAML control, used in the Developer Center. (351548, 351613)
    • A potential security vulnerability has been fixed in the Package Designer. (351557, 351613)
• Multi-browser support
  • [IE9] The Sitecore start menu would extend beyond the border of the browser window when Compatibility View mode was enabled in Internet Explorer. (342298)
  • [IE9] When using the Flash-based upload, the file upload would not complete correctly if the upload was initiated by selecting Insert > Upload File from the context-menu. (341320)
  • [IE9] When using the "classic" non-Flash upload, the size of the Advanced upload dialog box would be too small to display the contents of the dialog box, and the user would manually have to resize the pop-up window. Also, a JavaScript error would occur if the user clicked the Close button in the dialog box. (348223, 348250)
  • [IE9] If the user added a new field in the Template Builder and clicked Save, then a JavaScript error occurred. (342285)
  • [IE9] When using the Design mode in the Developer Center, JavaScript errors would sometimes occur. For example when clicking a placeholder or straight away when switching to Design mode. (342286)
  • [IE9] In the File Explorer, files and folders would sometimes be positioned incorrectly. (348293)
  • [IE9] Treelist fields did not display any scrollbars in the tree control (the left-hand part of the field). (345175, 344566)
  • [Firefox] Treelist fields did not display scrollbars in the tree control (the left-hand part of the field), and the list (the right-hand part) did not expand correctly if the field was configured to have a larger height than the default height. (345175, 320507)
  • [Firefox] The size of the Select Role dialog box was too small, causing the OK and Cancel buttons to be displayed out of view. (351202)
• Cosmetic issues
  • [Backported from 6.5] When using dual monitors in certain configurations, the Sitecore start menu appeared on a different monitor than the current browser window. (340248, 338735)
• Content Editor
  • The full page XHtml validator, which is available by clicking the Validation button on the Review tab, did not work as expected. The validator did not transfer cookies when requesting the page, causing the validator to validate the Sitecore login page instead of the requested page. (324300, 350340)
• Rich Text Editor
  • An exception could occur when opening the Document Manager in the Rich Text Editor if the media library contained media folders with names that looked like XPath expressions. For example, "1 - 2" or if the folder name contained keywords such as "and" or "or". (351330)
• Security applications
  • If the AutomaticDataBind web.config setting was set to "true", the User Manager would not display all users and paging did not work properly. (312111)
    Note: The same problem has been resolved for the Role Manager, the Domain Manager, and the Select an Account dialog box in 6.5 Update-4 (rev. no. 357729). [Added May 8, 2012]
• Link database
  • The Treelist field did not add links to the link database if the field contained a complex data source such as "DataSource=/sitecore/content/home". (321899, 306878)
• Installation Wizard
  • When installing a package with media items, the media blobs would not be installed if the field type for the Attachment had been changed from "attachment" to "Attachment". (337386)
• Miscellaneous
  • To make troubleshooting easier, Sitecore will now log information about the pipeline mode of the current IIS Application Pool when Sitecore starts. Example: "Managed pipeline mode: Integrated". (350382)
  • The Sitecore App Center application did not display an icon in the taskbar. (346337, 352632)
  • The Select Icon dialog box is now used to change the icons for shortcuts on the Sitecore Desktop, instead of the File Explorer. (350962) 

October 3, 2011

Released Sitecore CMS 6.4.1 rev. 110928 (6.4.1 Update-4).

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.
Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download this release.

New features

• It is now possible to globally restrict the maximum dimensions of dynamically resized images. (323322)
  • The web.config settings named Media.Resizing.MaxWidth and Media.Resizing.MaxHeight determines the maximum dimensions in pixels. The default values are 1280 for the width and 1024 for the height.
• It is now possible to globally disable all cache size restrictions. (340762)
  • A new web.config setting called Caching.DisableCacheSizeLimits has been introduced. When set to true, Sitecore ignores any maximum cache sizes specified in the web.config file.
  • Enabling this setting can improve the application's performance in 64-bit environments by allowing Sitecore to take full advantage of the available memory. After setting this value to true, monitor the system at regular intervals, as this configuration can cause Sitecore to consume too much memory and cause Out Of Memory errors.
  • It is only recommended to set the setting to true in 64-bit environments.
• The timeout for client sessions can be configured. (323551)
  • A new web.config setting called Authentication.ClientSessionTimeout has been introduced that specifies the number of minutes before Sitecore considers user authentication session tickets as expired. The default value is 60 minutes.
  • This setting is only relevant for users logging in to Sitecore Client and when the Sitecore license has a limited number of concurrent editors. All expired sessions will automatically be removed when a new user tries to log in and the maximum number of concurrent editors has been reached.

Important changes

• Changes to the Sitecore Start menu
  • [Backported from 6.5] A new "Sitecore App Center" application has been added to the Sitecore Start menu. By default, this item is only available to Administrators. (345580)
  • [Backported from 6.5] The Developer Center application has been moved to the Development Tools submenu. (345580)
• Setup.exe installation program
  • [Backported from 6.5] The log file location for the setup.exe has been changed from C:\ to %TEMP%. (349512, 349513)
  • [Backported from 6.5] On uninstall, the installation program will now clean up the auto-generated files and folders in addition to all the regular files and folders that are removed: (349512, 349513)
    • /data (except for /data/packages in case it contains user-generated packages)
    • /App_Data/MediaCache
    • /temp
• By default, the SiteResolver pipeline processor will no longer check for site.config files. (322014)
  • A little-used feature of the SiteResolver pipeline processor is the ability to check for the existence of a "site.config" file in the physical subdirectory corresponding to the requested URL. If a "site.config" file exists, Sitecore uses that file to determine the context site for the current request.
  • This feature is now disabled by default, but can be enabled by changing the value of the new web.config setting called EnableSiteConfigFiles.

Deprecated functionality

• The /App_Browsers/Form.browser file is no longer needed and has been removed. Also, the associated FormAdapter class is no longer needed and has been deprecated. (325984)
  Note: Removing the Form.browser file turned out to have negative side-effects. The Form.browser file was therefore added back in 6.5 Update-4. (ref. no. 360924). [Added May 8, 2012]

Improvements

• The Serialization API will now encode special characters in item names when serializing items (345209, 344943)
  • When generating file names that correspond to item names, the serialization API now encodes the "$" and "%" characters, as well as any characters that are invalid in path names as returned by the System.IO.Path.GetInvalidFileNameChars() method.
  • This resolves an issue where serialization of items would fail with an ArgumentException and the message "Illegal characters in path" if the item name contained any characters that are illegal in file or path names, for example asterisk (*) or backslash (\).
  • This also resolves an issue where serialized items with dollar signs ($) in the name of the serialized file could not be added to Microsoft TFS source control.
  • A new web.config setting named Serialization.InvalidFileNameChars has been introduced which allows you to specify additional characters that must be encoded, such as to meet the requirements of a source control system that does not allow specific characters in file names. (345209, 344943)
• The UrlString class has been made more robust. (344706)
  • When parsing the URL, the class will auto-detect the separator ("&" vs. "&amp;").
  • If the separator is detected as "&amp;" the output will be generated using "&amp;" separators, no matter if the xhtml parameter is set.
  • For compatibility, the class supports parsing query strings that use a mixture of "&" and "&amp;" separators, although the output will be rendered using only "&amp;" separators.
• The AccessResultCache has been optimized to reduce how often the cache is being cleared. (349789, 349946)
  • The AccessResultCache is no longer cleared on the following events: "user:updated", "user:updated:remote", "user:created", "user:created:remote".
  • When security permissions are changed for items, we no longer clear the entire cache, but only the records that are related to this item.
  • When a user is added to or removed from a role, or when a user is deleted, we no longer clear the entire cache, but only records that are related to this user.
  • The entire AccessResultCache is still cleared when creating or deleting roles, when adding/removing roles in roles, and when the "/App_Config/Security/GlobalRoles.config" file is modified.
• In order to troubleshoot cache clearing issues, Sitecore will now write a warning to the log file whenever the CacheManager.ClearAllCaches() method is called. (334241)
  • In addition, Sitecore will write a DEBUG message to the log file with the current stack trace to make it easier to troubleshoot why all the caches are being cleared.
• In order to troubleshoot cache clearing issues, it is now possible to configure the system to log additional debug information whenever a full cache clearing is performed. (349369, 349482)
  • This feature should only be enabled when troubleshooting, since it can have a small performance impact to retrieve and log the full stack traces.
  • There are two ways to enable this feature:
    • To have the feature enabled when Sitecore starts, add the following setting to the web.config file (it is not present in the web.config file by default): <setting name="Caching.DebugEnabled" value="true"/>
    • Alternatively, the feature can be enabled/disabled in runtime by changing the value of the Sitecore.Caching.Cache.DebugEnabled property from custom code.
  • To see these messages, make sure the log level is set to "DEBUG" on the <log4net><root><priority> node in the web.config file:    
    <root>      
     <priority value="DEBUG" />      
     <appender-ref ref="LogFileAppender" />    
    </root>
• It is now possible to select multiple roles in the Role Manager and serialize them to disk in one operation. (312860)
• The item ID of the destination item is now passed as a 3rd parameter to the "item:moving" event. (345779)
• The Package Designer now displays the email addresses of users when adding security accounts to a package. (306467)

Issues resolved

• Analytics
  • If several Page Events in the system had the same name, the system would write "Failed to insert Analytics data" errors to the log file with the additional message "An item with the same key has already been added". Instead of this error message, the system will now write a warning to the log file with information about the conflicting page events. (334840)
• Potential security vulnerabilities
  • [Backported from 6.5] Authenticated Sitecore users could start the File Explorer application if they knew the URL of the application. The security permissions on the File Explorer application item have been modified so that only members of the Sitecore Client Developing and Sitecore Client Maintaining roles have access to the application. (350282)
  • A potential non-persistent HTML injection vulnerability has been fixed on the NoAccess page. (350440)
  • The "sitecore_userticket" cookie is now sent with an HttpOnly flag to avoid that client-side scripts can read the value of the cookie. (334837)
  • Sitecore Corp. wants to give credit to Iron Mountain Ltd., Hue Han for the discovery of the following vulnerability and for the cooperation.
    • A potential security vulnerability has been fixed in the Log Viewer application. (350476)
  • Sitecore Corp. wants to give credit to Context Information Security Ltd. for the discovery of the following vulnerabilities and for their cooperation.
    • Potential cross-site scripting vulnerabilities have been fixed in the EditUser XAML control. (347710, 347712, 347699)
    • A potential cross-site scripting vulnerability has been fixed in the Search application. (347700)
    • A potential cross-site scripting vulnerability has been fixed in the Desktop application. (347714)
• Performance
  • 6.4.1 Update-3 introduced a performance issue related to resolving standard values. This could lead to a significant performance decrease when using the Page Editor, the Preview client, and for sites running in Live Mode. (351354)
    Note: This issue was fixed in Sitecore 6.4.1 Update-6 and Sitecore 6.5 Update-3. [Updated: February 15, 2012].
  • The DatabaseResolver processor in the HttpRequestBegin pipeline no longer checks the user's role assignments unless the query string contains a "sc_database" parameter. This reduces the number of calls to the security provider. (344795)
• Item Cloning
  • When publishing item clones in multi-language solutions, the value of shared fields would be overwritten with empty field values on clones that did not have any versions in one or more of the languages being published to. (349683) [Updated January 12, 2012]
  • When performing a Smart Publish, clones would get republished on each every publish operation, no matter if they had any modifications or not. (349690)
    Note: This issue was only partially fixed. It was fully fixed in 6.5 Update-2 (see ref. number 353627). [Added November 30, 2011]
• Content Editor
  • When using Internet Explorer, the content tree pane did not display any visible scrollbars if any of the item names in the content tree exceeded the width of the pane. (342091)
  • The search function located above the content tree will now take the current content language into account, so that search results are displayed in the content language if any are available. (343038)
  • The Change Publishing Restrictions dialog box did not disable editing controls for users that do not have language:write permissions to the current language. (339647)
  • The following buttons in the Content Editor were not disabled for users that do not have language:write permissions to the current content language:
    • The Edit button on the Home tab of the ribbon (324403)
    • The Workflow commands on the Review tab (324403)
    • The Add Version commands in the ribbon and in the version selector (324402)
    • The Display Name button in the ribbon (338863)
  • When performing any of the following operations on an item that did not have any versions in the current language, the system would create an empty version:
  • When specifying publishing restrictions for the entire item. (338784)
  • When a user set or cleared the archive date. (338850)
  • When changing the sort order or items, including setting the subitem sorting. (336514)
  • When using the "Move To" command to move an item. (336514)
  • The following buttons in the Content Editor were not disabled when the currently selected item did not have any versions in the current language:
  • The Display Name button in the ribbon (338870)
  • The Set Reminder button on the Review tab (338866)
  • When assigning an icon to a field based on the "Icon" field type, the selected icon would be assigned to the item itself instead of being stored in the correct field on the item. (338166)
  • The Content Editor warning that appears on a child item when publishing options for the parent is set to "Never Publish" indicated that version 1 of the child item would be published. The message will now indicate that no version will be published. (349758)
  • The Content Editor warning that appears when displaying Raw Values was missing a hint that the user should clear the Raw Values checkbox to display input boxes. This hint instead incorrectly was displayed when an item was set to "Never Publish" in the publishing options. The hint is now displayed under the right circumstances. (334281)
• Page Editor
  • If an editor made changes to a Rich Text field using the inline formatting options (bold/italic/underline) but did not make any other changes in the field, the formatting changes would be lost when saving the page. (341414)
  • A JavaScript error would occur when the user clicked "Show Editor" above a rich text field in a Field Editor window if Sitecore was running in a .NET 4.0 application pool. (338305)
• Multi-browser support
  • [Firefox, Chrome and Safari] When using the Flash-based upload, a new Sitecore user session would be registered for each upload, causing the number of concurrent user sessions to grow unexpectedly. (344158)
• Media Library
  • When using file media, Sitecore will now by default vary media cache entries for file media by both file path and the last modification date of the media file in addition to varying by the standard media request parameters such as height and width. (335600)
    • A new web.config setting called Media.CacheFileMediaByModifiedDate can be used to disable this functionality so that Sitecore only vary file media cache entries by file path and standard media request parameters. This will decrease the number of file I/O operations performed for each media request, but could cause Sitecore to serve stale data for file media items if a process other than the Sitecore CMS user interfaces initiated that change.
  • After attaching new content to a media item, the system did not update the thumbnail and icon for the media item to represent the newly uploaded image or file. (336735, 340024)
  • If the Media Browser dialog box is opened from custom code in a mode where it shows the entire content tree (as opposed to only showing the media library), the WebDAV Drag & Drop button would be displayed for non-media items. (339268)
• Publishing
  • Sitecore published too many items when performing an Incremental Publish operation. Instead of only publishing the items in the publish queue, Sitecore also republished all their subitems. (323294)
  • Smart Publish did not republish items that had been moved to a new parent in the master database. To make ensure that moved items are republished, the revision number of the latest version will now be updated when an item is moved. (349816)
• Login
  • After a security administrator had disabled a user's account, the user could still get access to the Sitecore clients if the user's browser had a valid "Remember Me" authentication cookie stored. (350543)
• Security API
  • After a security administrator had disabled a user's account, the user could still continue to work in the system if they had an active user session. Now, the changed status of the account will take effect immediately. (350543)
  • When changing security permissions for the descendants of an item, the AccessResultCache was not cleared for the descendants. The new permissions would therefore not always take effect immediately, and would often require the user to manually clear the cache. (322544)
  • The AccessResultCache was not cleared after granting or denying access to the language:read and language:write permissions. (330318)
• Security applications
  • The Access Viewer would sometimes display out-of-date security permissions after changing security permissions for the descendants of one or more items due to AccessResultCache not being cleared correctly. (322544)
  • A JavaScript error would occur when clicking the Domains button on the "Member of" tab in the User Editor. (346327)
• Lucene Search
  • After publishing data from the master to the web database, the search index for the web database would sometimes contain obsolete information related to item versions that were no longer present in the web database. This only happened when using the indexes in the Sitecore.Data.Indexing namespace and only when the solution was configured with search indexes for the web database or other content delivery databases. (339415, 326271)
• Layouts and renderings
  • After deleting presentation details from a template's Standard Values, navigating to items based on the template with a layout delta would cause the Content Editor to fail with an error page. Also, other parts of the system such as trying to rebuild the link database would fail. (346373)
  • If the XML that defines the presentation details for an item was missing an "id" attribute one on or more rendering nodes, the item could no longer be saved in the Content Editor, and a number of operations would fail, such as trying to publish, rebuild the link database, or rebuild the search index. (345924)
  • The <sc:image> xsl control did not encode the value of Alt attributes, which could cause the image tag to become corrupted. (327675)
  • The Additional rendering parameters field in the rendering parameters dialog box did not respect field:read and field:write permissions. (347753)
• Serialization
  • When a user tried to serialize an item with a long path, Sitecore would sometimes fail with an error message similar to "System.InvalidOperationException: Could not find configuration node: databases/database[@id='D06DE6E6']". (336797)
  • When a user tried to execute the Serialize Tree command after moving one or more items in the content tree, the operation would sometimes fail with an IOException and the message "The directory is not empty". (343283)
  • When executing the "Update Tree" command on an item which had itself not been serialized to disk, the descendants would sometimes not be updated/restored correctly. (343453)
  • Reverting items with shared field values did not always work correctly. (328843)
  • Reverting templates that have Standard Values items did not always work correctly. Sometimes the standard values items would be created from serialization before all the template fields had been created, causing the standard values items to contain blank field values for some or all of the fields. (328843)
  • After reverting one or more items, it would sometimes be impossible to change some of the field values. This could happen if field sharing of the template field had been changed from unversioned to shared between the time the item was serialized and when it was restored. (346331)
• Localization
  • The Rich Text Editor would sometimes appear in English instead of the user's current client language. (344588)
  • A number of editing controls in the Content Editor presented the selected values using the display name from the client language instead of the content language. This has been resolved for all the relevant field types, for example DropList, DropLink, TreeList, and Internal Link. (321097, 321513, 336023)
    Note: This issue was only partially fixed in 6.4.1 Update-4. It has been fully fixed in 6.6 Update-7 (ref. no. 361945). [Updated December 4, 2013]
  • The search function in the Content Editor tree did not use the display name of Sitecore items when presenting the search results. (342290)
  • A number of cosmetic issues have been fixed which appear when using the Japanese client language. (343600, 341511, 333120)
  • A number of phrases could not be translated in various areas of the product. (343610, 343596, 341587, 342564, 342571)
• Setup.exe installation program
  • The file details for the setup.exe contained an incorrect File Version and copyright year. (343458)
  • The setup.exe file now has an embedded manifest that specifies that the requested execution level is "requireAdministrator" and that uiAccess is not required. (349425, 349428)
• WebDAV
  • When Sitecore starts, the application attempts to check if WebDAV is configured correctly. In many cases, the log file would contain messages related to WebDAV, even when WebDAV worked correctly. Such messages should no longer appear. Examples of the typical messages that would appear: (326555)
    • "WARN Cannot check WebDAV configuration. […]"
    • "FATAL WebDAV is not configured properly: […]"
    • "FATAL WebDAV feature is not configured correctly in IIS. […]"
• Oracle
  • [Backported from 6.5] The membership provider would fail to authenticate users when running Sitecore on Oracle in a .NET 4.0 application pool. This is caused by Microsoft changing the default hash algorithm from SHA1 to HMACSHA256 in the .NET 4.0 framework. (347406, 349263)
• Package Designer
  • A JavaScript error would occur when clicking the OK button in the Add Security Accounts dialog box. (339688)
• Miscellaneous
  • A new HttpModule named Sitecore.Web.RewriteModule has been introduced. The new module rewrites the path back to the original URL after the request has been mapped to an HttpHandler which resolves the following issues:
    • When using IIS7 integrated pipeline mode, the IIS logs would contain the path of layout files rather than the originally requested URL. (325984)
    • The standard ASP.NET Login controls did not work as expected due to the way Sitecore rewrites the HttpContext path to point to the relevant Sitecore layout file. (331026)
  • The system would throw a "Value cannot be null" exception when responding to web requests that passed a value in the "User-Agent" HTTP header which could not be parsed by ASP.NET. (324846)
  • When expanding dynamic links, the LinkProvider would sometimes prepend links with "/sitecore/content", even when this was not necessary. (308750)
  • The UrlString class did not work correctly with "&amp;" separators in the query string part of the URL, which could cause key/value pairs to be appended to the URL instead of replacing any existing value with the same key. (344706)
    • Due to this problem, the Web Forms module would sometimes fail with a "Could not parse the language" exception.
  • The "expandInitialFieldValue" pipeline was executed for shared fields even when the item already had one or more versions in other languages. This could cause tokens such as $name to be replaced across languages, for example when adding a version in new language to a Standard Values item or when importing dictionary phrases that contain tokens. (341894)
  • The SitecoreIdentity class has been marked as serializable to allow customers to integrate identity management systems such as Windows Identity Foundation with Sitecore. (340942)
  • Setting the Icons.UseZippedIcons web.config setting to false and unzipping the icons to disk did not work correctly. Icons would be missing in the Sitecore clients and exceptions would be written to the log file stating that icon files could not be loaded. (320978)
  • A typo has been corrected in an assert statement in the AuthenticationHelper.Helper property. (338258)
• The clean installation
  • The Authentication.TicketTimeout setting was present in the web.config file, despite having been deprecated in CMS 6.2.0. (344005)

August 5, 2011

Released Sitecore CMS 6.4.1 rev.110803 (Japanese).

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Sitecore 6.4.1 rev.110803 is a re-release of CMS 6.4.1 rev.110720 with updated Japanese translations.
The Updates page for 6.4.1 rev.110720 has been updated so that the download links for the Japanese version now points to 6.4.1 rev.110803.

Change log.

Issues resolved

• The Japanese translation has been updated in the Japanese distribution.

July 27, 2011

Released Sitecore CMS 6.4.1 rev. 110720 (6.4.1 Update-3).

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.


Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download this release.

Important changes

• Item Cloning
  • Clones are now treated as a whole instead of version-by-version, meaning that all versions on the cloned item must refer to the same source item. It is no longer supported that different versions on the cloned item point to different source items or that some versions on a clone do not refer to any source item. This restriction removes potential confusion about which items clones are referencing, and ensures that the value of shared fields is well-defined. If any existing clones in a solution reference different source items, the behavior of shared fields is undefined for these clones. (347551)
• The Application XAML control, which is used to display various windows in the Sitecore Desktop, has been refactored to use a UrlHandle to transfer parameters to the control.
  • Notice that this change might break 3rd party code that pass parameters directly to the xmlcontrol in the URL instead of calling one of the Sitecore.Shell.Framework.Windows.RunApplication(...) methods.
• Also, the following XAML controls have been refactored to use a UrlHandle to transfer parameters to the controls:
  • The FileLister control which is used in the Log Viewer application.
  • The IDEText control which is used in the Developer Center.

Issues resolved

• Analytics
  • To comply with RFC 2109, the Analytics cookie for the current session is no longer using a comma in the cookie value. Instead, a pipe-character is used as separator. (334383)
• Scaling and multi-instance setups
  • After changing field sharing, a SQL Server transaction deadlock would sometimes occur on one or more of the instances. This happened because the SqlServerDataProvider.ChangeFieldSharing method was executed by all instances instead of only the instance where the field sharing was changed. (344564)
• Potential security vulnerabilities
  • Sitecore Corp. wants to give credit to Tom Neaves, Verizon Business, for the discovery of the following vulnerability and for his cooperation.
    • A potential URL redirection vulnerability in the Application XAML control has been fixed. (348199)
  • Sitecore Corp. wants to give credit to Context Information Security Ltd. for the discovery of the following vulnerabilities and for their cooperation.
    • Potential security vulnerabilities have been fixed in the FileLister XAML control. (347671, 347669)
    • Potential security vulnerabilities have been fixed in the IDEText XAML control. (347680, 347694, 347684)
• Item Cloning
  • Shared fields did not work as expected for cloned items in multi-language solutions. This could cause empty or wrong field values to appear on the site when publishing cloned items, including the item presentation stored in the layout field. (347551)
    Note: This issue was only partially fixed. It was fully fixed in 6.4.1 Update-4 (see ref. number 349683). [Added January 12, 2012] 
• Content Editor
  • When editing items with Standard Fields enabled, the Content Editor would sometimes copy the presentation details from the template standard values and store them directly on the item, even when the user had not changed the presentation details. (341929)
    Note: This issue was only partially fixed in 6.4.1 Update-3. It was fully fixed in 6.4.1 Update-6 with further fixes in 6.5 Update-4 (ref. no. 357664). It has been fully fixed in 6.6 Update-7 (ref. no. 388441) [Updated December 13, 2013]
  • Duplicate renderings and sublayouts would sometimes be saved onto an item after editing the presentation details for the item. This would happen for devices that had no layout assignment in the template standard values. (345275, 347394)
• Rich Text Editor
  • The Document Manager, Media Manager, and Flash Manager dialogs in the Rich Text Editor took a long time to load, especially when the Sitecore media library contained a large number of files and folders. (345217)
• Security Applications
  • In 6.4.1 Update-2, the Access Viewer only displayed the "Field Read" and "Field Write" access rights for template fields in the grid, not in the "Assign" dialog box. (348884)
  • In 6.4.1 Update-2, the Access Viewer grid displayed information about language and workflow permissions for template fields, although these access rights do not apply to template fields. (348941)
• Lucene Search
  • In multi-instance setups, the Lucene index would occasionally not get updated correctly on all other instances after one or more items were changed on a specific instance. (338753)
  • A potential memory leak related to instances of Lucene's StandardAnalyzer class has been fixed. Changes from Lucene 2.4 and 2.9 have been backported to the Lucene 2.3.1.3 DLL that is distributed with Sitecore. In addition to this, instances of the Sitecore.Data.Indexing.Index class are now sharing a single instance of the StandardAnalyzer class. (346911)
• Serialization
  • In a number of scenarios, serializing and restoring items or folders with very long paths did not work as expected. (343307, 345720)
    Note: This issue was only partially fixed. There are still scenarios where serializing and restoring items or folders with very long paths does not work as expected. [Added September 16, 2011]
  • In certain scenarios, item names would not be refreshed in the content tree after reverting one or more items. (344445, 345720)

June 30, 2011

Released Sitecore CMS 6.4.1 rev.110621 (6.4.1 Update-2).

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Please refer to the known issue for more information.
 
Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download this release.

Change Log.

Improvements

• Login page
  • [Merged from 6.5] It is now possible to hide the "Change Password" and "Forgot Your Password" links on the login page and disable the associated ASPX pages. This is for example useful in organizations that use Active Directory to manage user accounts and passwords. The links and pages are disabled using two new web.config settings named Login.DisableChangePassword and Login.DisablePasswordRecovery. (342753)
• Localization
  • [Merged from 6.5] The logic for getting localized titles for Rich Text Editor toolbar buttons has been changed to avoid problems with empty names. If a display name is set on the item in Sitecore, it will be used. Otherwise the Telerik localization for the toolbar button will be used and if no such localization exists, the Rich Text Editor will fall back to using the item name from Sitecore. (345381)

Issues resolved

• Link database
  • When Sitecore updated references in a DropTree field (for example when one of the target items was moved), all versions in all languages of the item would be overridden with a reference to the new target item, even if they pointed to other target items. This could cause data to be lost. Sitecore will now only update the relevant versions and languages when updating such links. (330720)
• Developer Center
  • In Internet Explorer, the size of the rendering properties dialog box in the Developer Center would be incorrect, hiding the controls in the dialog box. The user had to resize the dialog box to be able to modify the properties. This was previously fixed in the Grid Designer and has now also been fixed on the "Design" tab. (340021, 336341)
• Analytics
  • [Merged from 6.5] When the system sent out session reports by email, the "Unsubscribe" links did not work correctly. If a user clicked "Unsubscribe" in such an email, Sitecore would fail with a "System.NotSupportedException: curr_state" error message. (324521, 340878)
• Setup.exe installation program
  • [Merged from 6.5] When installing Sitecore on IIS7, the setup.exe program used an incorrect format when trying to set the content expiration setting (also known as "Expire web content" setting) to the default value of 7 days. (343299, 343372)
  • [Merged from 6.5] After uninstalling Sitecore, two empty folders below \sitecore\shell\RadControls would remain in the file system. (346077)
  • [Merged from 6.5] Two cosmetic issues have been fixed in the Japanese setup.exe. (343278)
• Potential security vulnerabilities
  • Sitecore Corp. wants to give credit to ProCheckUp, Richard Brain, for the discovery of all of the following vulnerabilities and for their cooperation.
  • [Merged from 6.5] URLs containing embedded languages in the URL might be able to bypass IIS security. To support IIS authentication, a new web.config setting called RedirectURLPrefixes has been introduced which allows you to configure redirection for all URLs secured with IIS authentication. The redirect will only take place when the requested URL contains an embedded language. For example, under the default configuration, Sitecore redirects URLs such as "/en/sitecore" to "/sitecore?sc_lang=en" to ensure that IIS authentication is enforced for such URLs. (342750)
  • [Merged from 6.5] URLs containing nonexistent virtual folder prefixes might be able to bypass IIS security due to a bug in how the SiteResolver pipeline processor matches virtual folder prefixes when resolving the site context. (339849)
  • [Merged from 6.5] In case of a login error, the login page displayed different error messages in different situations. This could potentially be used to enumerate user names and/or as part of a brute force attack on one or more accounts. The login page will now display a generic error message no matter why the login attempt fails. (342752)
  • [Merged from 6.5] Authenticated Sitecore users could start the Sitecore Debugger by entering specific query string parameters when viewing the website. This could reveal information about the site to non-developers. Sitecore will now check that the user is an Administrator or a member of the "Sitecore Client Developing" role before entering debug mode. (342759)
  • [Merged from 6.5] Unprivileged authors could get access to a number of applications and dialogs in Sitecore if they knew the URL of the applications. (326144, 343204)
  • [Merged from 6.5] Three JavaScript injection vulnerabilities have been fixed in the Sitecore client. The customers and partners that have reported these problems have been informed. (342756, 342755, 342758, 342757)
• Content Editor
  • [Merged from 6.5] In 6.4.1 Update-1, changes to placeholder settings in the Layout Details dialog box would sometimes disappear after the user saved the item in the Content Editor. (340023)
  • [Merged from 6.5] In 6.4.1 Update-1, the Content Editor did not show raw values for layout fields correctly. Instead of showing the value stored in the database, the value was shown after layout deltas had been applied, making it difficult to see if the field contained a full layout definition or a layout delta. (343657)
• Multi-browser support
  • [Merged from the 6.5] In IE9, dialog boxes opened from a pop-up menu did not work correctly. This applied to dialog boxes opened from right-click menus, such as the "Insert from Template" or "Copy To" wizards, as well as dialog boxes opened from drop-down boxes in the ribbon, such as the "Publish Item" wizard. (341503, 342311, 342703)
• Word Document field
  • [Merged from 6.5] When an editor inserts images into a Word Document field using a Japanese edition of Microsoft Word on a Japanese edition of Windows, the images would not be uploaded correctly to Sitecore, resulting in broken image icons and one or more messages similar to "ERROR Failed to get a url for the image with part id 'image001.jpg'" would be written to the Sitecore log file. (344092, 344783)
• Security Applications
  • [Merged from 6.5] When the Security Editor displayed security rights for user accounts, it displayed security permissions inherited from roles as if they had been assigned to the user accounts instead of only displaying permissions that have been assigned directly to the user accounts. (309581)
  • [Merged from 6.5] The Access Viewer did not display the effective permissions for field:read and field:write correctly when no explicit assignments had been made for these two access rights. The application will now correctly indicate that these two access rights are allowed by default if no access rule denies access. (312387)
• Localization
  • [Merged from 6.5] In 6.4.1 Update-1, custom Rich Text Editor toolbar buttons were required to have a display name - otherwise the tooltip would be missing. This caused various problems, including problems for the Web Forms for Marketers module where the dropdown list for inserting fields into the email body would be empty. (345381)
  • [Merged from 6.5] The status messages displayed in the Publishing dialog box after a publishing operation completes always appeared in English. (331477)
  • [Merged from 6.5] The dialog boxes displayed when serializing, updating, or reverting items were always displayed in English. (331567)
  • [Merged from 6.5] The Inheritance tab of the Template Manager now render field names and field section names using their display names. (341216)
  • [Merged from 6.5] The classic Search application displayed field names in the search result using the content language instead of the current client language. (342330)
  • [Merged from 6.5] The drop tree control, which for example is used for selecting a layout in the Layout Details dialog box, showed display names of items in the drop-down but not when displaying the currently selected item path. (340745)
  • [Merged from 6.5] The Customize My Toolbar dialog box displayed several names of chunks and buttons in English, even when a localized text was available in the Header field of the items. (340935)
  • [Merged from 6.5] When using the Japanese client language, some button texts were wrapped to two lines, for example the "Upload" button in the Insert Sitecore Media dialog box in the Rich Text Editor. (342974)
  • [Merged from 6.5] The Workbox will now format dates using the current user's locale. (342233)
  • [Merged from 6.5] When using the Japanese client language, a horizontal scrollbar appeared in the Select an Account Edit User Roles dialog boxes. (333348, 333508, 335081)
  • [Merged from 6.5] A display name has been added on a number of items to make it easier to localize the text. The changes have been made for some of the buttons in the default Html Editor Profiles toolbars and for some of the items that define the Content Editor ribbon. (342955, 342941, 343099)
  • [Merged from 6.5] A number of phrases could not be translated in various areas of the product. (342372, 342222, 331528, 341058, 341060, 342088)
• Serialization
  • [Merged from 6.5] When a user tried to serialize and subsequently restore a subtree, items with very long paths might be missing after the restore operation. (339734, 340207)
    Note: This issue was only partially fixed. There are still scenarios where serializing and restoring items or folders with very long paths does not work as expected. [Added July 8, 2011]
  • [Merged from 6.5] When a user serialized an item with a long path, then moved the item and serialized the content tree again, the serialization file corresponding to the original location of the item would sometimes not be cleaned up from disk. (339734, 340207)
  • [Merged from 6.5] When a user tried to serialize an item with a long path, Sitecore would sometimes fail with an error message similar to "System.InvalidOperationException: Could not find configuration node: databases/database[@id='D06DE6E6']". (343307)
    Note: This issue was only partially fixed. There are still scenarios where serializing and restoring items or folders with very long paths does not work as expected. [Added September 16, 2011]
• Miscellaneous 
  • [Merged from 6.5] The SiteResolver processor in the httpRequestBegin pipeline would sometimes match virtualFolder prefixes incorrectly and switch the site context even if the incoming URL did not match the virtualFolder prefix. (339849)
  • [Merged from 6.5] The TreeList, TreeViewEx and Listbox controls now support a new DisplayFieldName property. If specified, the control will use the value of this field when rendering items and, if no value is set for an item, it will fall back to using the display name or name of the item. (340935)
  • [Merged from 6.5] When calling the ItemPath.GetPath(string, string, ItemPathType) method with a value of ItemPathType.DisplayName for the last parameter, the method would return the path using English display names instead of using the display names of the current context language. (340745)
  • [Merged from 6.5] A number of 3rd party DLLs installed into the /bin folder by Sitecore were not digitally signed with an Authenticode signature. All DLLs installed by Sitecore are now signed for the benefit of customers who wish to ensure that the DLLs are provided as part of the Sitecore distribution. (346116, 343602)

March 28, 2011

Released Sitecore CMS 6.4.1 rev.110324 (6.4.1 Update-1).

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download this release.

Change log.

Improvements

• Rich Text Editor
  • The EditorConfiguration.SetupEditor() method has been made virtual to simplify customizations of the Rich Text Editor. (339557)
  • A new virtual method EditorConfiguration.SetupStylesheets() has been introduced to make it easier to customize which stylesheets that are loaded into the Rich Text Editor. (339557)
• Media API
  • Several methods in the Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaRequestHandler class have been made virtual to make it easier to override and customize the media request functionality: (325887)
    • DoProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
    • DoProcessRequest(HttpContext context, MediaRequest request, Media media)
    • Modified(HttpContext context, Media media, MediaOptions options)
    • SendMediaHeaders(Media media, HttpContext context)
    • SendStreamHeaders(MediaStream stream, HttpContext context)

Important changes

• Media API
  • [Merged from 6.3.1] The default value of the MediaResponse.Cacheability setting has been changed from "public" to "private" to prevent various issues such as media items not being updated on the site after publishing a new version of the item or Analytics not recording document download events for cached media. See the associated known issue on SDN for a full explanation. (337515)
• Clean solution
  • The IIS Kernel Output Cache has been disabled in the web.config file by default by adding an enableKernelOutputCache="false" attribute to the httpRuntime element. Having the Kernel Output Cache enabled could cause problems with serving images when using IIS 6 and earlier. (330637)

Issues resolved

• Analytics
  • [Merged from 6.3.1] Sitecore would sometimes fail to insert Analytics data and write the following exception the log file: "Violation of PRIMARY KEY constraint 'PK_Session_1'. Cannot insert duplicate key in object 'dbo.Session'". This would happen if the ASP.NET session ID had changed during the request, for example due to calling Session.Abandon() in custom code. (331745)
  • [Merged from 6.3.1] When a user opened the Latest Human Session report or other reports showing the latest sessions, the report would render correctly, but one or more SqlExceptions would be written to the log file reporting that a SessionIdObject was not supplied to a parameterized query. (334573)
  • Two issues related to using non-English profile names or using special characters in profile names have been resolved:
    • The Profiles dialog box displayed profiles using the item name of the profile definition instead of the value entered into the "Name" field on the profile definition item. (329370)
    • When saving Profile settings for an item, the settings would not be saved for profile keys where the value in the "Name" field on the profile key definition item is different from the item name. (329366, 319113)
• Setup.exe installation program
  • When trying to install Sitecore on an operating system running with a non-English language pack (except from Danish and Japanese), the setup.exe would fail with a "Path to Transform file not found..." message. (333863)
• Scaling and multi-instance setups
  • Sitecore CMS 6.4.1 would fail on Oracle when trying to configure multi-instance functionality. Remote events would not be processed after setting the EnableEventQueues setting to true. Instead, the system would write exceptions to the log file with the following message: " ORA-00904: "STAMP": invalid identifier". (340219, 339766)
  • [Merged from 6.3.1] If an error occurred when deserializing remote event data, Sitecore would not process the remaining remote events in the event queue. This could happen if the remote event data contained a large amount of non-ANSI characters. (338130)
• Potential security vulnerabilities
  • [Merged from 6.3.1] Some .html pages related to the Sitecore login page have been modified to not allow redirects to external, possibly malicious, websites. (337984)
  • [Merged from 6.3.1] Three JavaScript injection vulnerabilities have been fixed in the Sitecore client. The customers and partners that have reported these problems have been informed.
    Sitecore Corp. wants to give credit to ProCheckUp, Richard Brain, for the discovery of these vulnerabilities (both the external redirects and the JavaScript injection vulnerabilities) and for their cooperation.
• Media Library
  • Previous CMS 6.4 versions generated incorrect paths for icons in the media library. This caused a number of problems:
    • The full-size image would be requested instead of a scaled down version of the image when displaying icons for media items, and sometimes the full-size image would even be displayed in the browser above the item name in the Content Editor when editing a media item. (336453, 338173)
    • Media item icons would sometimes be stretched disproportionally instead of maintaining the aspect ratio. (338303)
  • Two issues related to file-based media and using the "Attach" button to replace the associated media have been resolved:
    • When attaching a new file to a file-based media item, the system would save the new file in the /App_Data/MediaFiles folder using an inconsistent path format compared to paths generated for file-based media when using one of the upload dialogs to create new media. (324167)
    • When attaching a new file to a file-based media item, the upload would sometimes fail with a PathTooLongException and Sitecore would display an error message indicating that "An error occurred while uploading a file. The reason may be that the file does not exist or the path is wrong." This was caused by the inconsistent path formats used when attaching media to an existing media item. (317594)
• Media API
  • Media requests did not respect the RequestErrors.UseServerSideRedirect setting. Sitecore always returned a 302 redirect response (which then lead to the "404 Not Found" page), even when the RequestErrors.UseServerSideRedirect setting was set to true. (326413)
  • Requests to restricted media items would redirect the user to the website's "404 Not Found" page if no login page was configured in the site definition for the current site. (312368)
  • When running Sitecore on IIS 6 or earlier, requests to Sitecore images could occasionally cause the server to respond with a "400 Bad Request" response. This was caused by an issue in IIS Kernel Cache and the IIS being unable to process "Etag/If-None-Match" headers for the caches requests. (330637)
  • Sitecore parsed and compared timestamps in the "If-Modified-Since" HTTP header incorrectly, causing the server to never return a "304 Not Modified" response. This prevented browsers from using their cached versions of media files and caused unnecessary data to be transferred from the server to the client. (320278, 325114)
  • When a web client requested media files using the default ".ashx" extension, Sitecore did not output a "Content-Length" HTTP header to the response. (315179)
  • When the Extension field of a media item was empty, an UnauthorizedAccessException error would occur when Sitecore tried to save the media to Sitecore's media cache. (329145)
• Content Editor
  • If a user opened the Presentation Details dialog box on an item with explicit layout assignments and clicked OK without making any changes, the layout assignments would be cleared. (338688)
  • When using the Japanese client language, the labels on the ribbon groups were not aligned correctly, making some of the group names unreadable. (337624)
  • If Sitecore was configured to use the original media extensions for media requests (by setting the Media.RequestExtension setting to an empty string in the web.config file), the Content Editor would sometimes fail when a user selected a media item that was locked by a different user. The error message would look similar to "'/temp/<path>' is not a valid virtual path." (326981)
  • When a user clicks the "Favorites" button in the ribbon, the "Favorites" root node is no longer displayed. This gives a cleaner view of the favorites. (340885)
• Page Editor
  • A JavaScript error would occur when trying to use the Page Editor in Internet Explorer 7. (339338)
  • The mode selector button in the Page Editor ribbon that allows the user to switch to Preview or Debug mode only displayed the drop-down box with the available modes if the Home tab was selected. On the other tabs, the drop-down box would not be displayed when clicking the lower part of the button. (337014)
  • Under very specific conditions, the Page Editor could accidentally remove the presentation details that were assigned to an item. This would happen if a user clicked "Edit the related item" and used the inline Content Editor to make changes, but only if the Content Editor was configured to display Standard Fields. (332367)
• Rich Text Editor
  • When opening Telerik's Image Manager or Flash Manager in the Rich Text Editor, the Image Manager displayed an empty item tree. The Image Manager can for example be opened from the Image Properties dialog in the Rich Text editor. (333603, 336963)
  • When inserting HTML code to display Flash movies into the Rich Text editor using Internet Explorer, the Rich Text editor would often add a number of unnecessary properties and JavaScript methods to the <object> tag. These properties and methods did not prevent the Flash from playing, but should not be added to the HTML. In most cases, such properties and methods will no longer be added, but Sitecore is aware that there are still some cases where unnecessary properties or methods could appear. (335664, 329238)
• Multi-browser support
  • [Firefox, Chrome and Safari] When Sitecore displayed a dropdown window inside a dialog box (such as the date selectors in the Publishing Restrictions dialog box), the dropdown window did not close if the user clicked outside the dropdown window. The user had to click once more before the dropdown window was closed. (339737)
• Security applications
  • When a user tried to open the Security Editor or Access Viewer using the User Manager ribbon, the applications would fail with a "User name 'sitecore\Admin' is not valid" exception. (337883)
• Localization
  • In the Page Editor ribbon, the label on the mode selector (the button for switching to Preview/Debug mode) always appeared in English.
  • The "Suppress Validation Rule" text in the context menu for the validation bar could not be localized. (339711)
  • The DatePicker control will now format today's date using the current user's locale. This control is used in the Publishing Restrictions dialog box, the Search application and in the Package Designer. (340743)
  • A number of phrases could not be translated in various areas of the product.
• Miscellaneous
  • [Merged from 6.3.1] The Sitecore.Common.Serializer.Deserialize(string, Type) method would fail with an exception if the data contained more than 648 non-ANSI characters. This was caused by a defect in the Microsoft JSON reader. As a workaround for this defect, the Deserialize method has been changed to use a buffer instead of a stream when passing data to the JSON reader. (338130)
  • When adding new configuration nodes to the Sitecore configuration using include files (/App_Config/Include/*.config), the child nodes were not inserted correctly if they all had the same tag name and attribute values. See the associated known issue for more details. (337746)
  • The WebUtil.ParseUrlParameters(string, char) method would sometimes return incorrect results when the provided query string contained one or more keys with no value (i.e. without an equal sign after the key) or with an empty value. (337316)
  • When clearing one or more fields in the rendering parameters dialog box and clicking "OK", some of the fields might not be cleared correctly due to the WebUtil.ParseUrlParameters method returning incorrect results. (337316)
  • The quick search function at the bottom right corner of the Sitecore desktop will now open the instant search results in a wider window to allow for longer category and search result names. (342149)

February 4, 2011

Released Sitecore CMS 6.4.1 rev.110202 (Japanese).

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

Issues resolved

• The Japanese translation has been updated in the Japanese distribution.

January 11, 2011

Released Sitecore CMS 6.4.1 rev.101221.

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.


Sitecore 6.4.1 is a regular maintenance update. The version number has been changed from 6.4.0 to 6.4.1 because of the database schema changes in the EventQueue table. Please visit the Updates page for instructions describing how to download this version.

Change log.

Improvements

• Lucene Search
  • The Search application now uses the "system" search index instead of the search index for the "master" database. This ensures that search results in the quick search pane and the Search application are consistent. (337024)
• Workflow
  • The "Set Initial Workflow" dialog box no longer depends on the search index. Instead, it uses fast query to retrieve the relevant items to ensure that the correct results are returned. (337307)
• Language handling
  • The Sitecore.Globalization.Language.Name property now always returns the related CultureInfo.IetfLanguageTag instead of the language code that was provided when instantiating the Language instance. This solves a number of problems related to languages and case-sensitivity. (336739, 311419)
• Development
  • The Sitecore package format has been extended with information about field sharing so that it is now possible to determine whether a field was shared, unversioned or versioned in the original solution. The field properties can be deserialized with the help of the ItemFieldsProperties class. (336784)

Important changes

• Scaling and multi-instance setups
  • The algorithm for retrieving remote events from the EventQueue tables have been changed to make it work correctly with replicated databases. A new Stamp column has been added to the EventQueue tables. The Sequence column is now obsolete and has been removed. (335415)
  • To make replication work correctly, it's important that SQL Server replication is configured to replicate data in the EventQueue table after data from other tables. The SQL Server Replication Guide has been updated with instructions for doing so.
  • When Sitecore instances start, they will now raise remote events that were written to the event queue during ASP.NET worker process restarts or during times when the instance was down for other reasons. This is required to make sure publishing jobs are started correctly, and that instances can monitor the progress of publish operations. (336668)
    • The "EventQueue.PersistStampMaxAge" setting specifies the maximum age of remote events to be replayed at application startup.  Remote events that are older than this age will not be raised. The default value is 10 minutes.
    • The "EventQueue.PersistStampInterval" setting specifies the minimum interval between saving the event queue's last processed event stamp to avoid putting too much load on the database when storing the stamp. The default value is 10 seconds.
    • Notice that some of the events that are replayed at application startup might already have been raised before the server was shut down, depending on when the stamp was persisted to the database. Custom remote event handlers should be constructed in a way so that they don't fail when this happens.
• Template usages
  • The TemplateItem.GetUsages() method has been deprecated and has been replaced with a GetUsageIDs() method. The new method uses fast query to return the results instead of using the search index. This ensures that the correct results are returned even if the search index is disabled or out of date. The new method will only return results from data providers that support fast query. (337435)

Issues resolved

• Scaling and multi-instance setups
  • After restoring deleted items that have subitems, Sitecore did not always update the data cache and the path cache. (336869)
  • Remote events would not be replayed on an instance if the events were queued between the time the ASP.NET process started on the instance and the first time it polled the event queue for new events. (336232)
  • Changes to server-specific properties caused remote events to be raised on the other instances in the server group. Sitecore will no longer add a remote event to the event queue if the property name starts with "EQStamp_" or "IndexingProvider_LastUpdate". (338101)

• Publishing

  • Publishing jobs would not be executed if the publish operation was initiated after a restart of the Sitecore Publishing instance or while it was down. The publish dialog would display "Initializing..." and never show any progress. (336232, 336668)
• Content Editor
  • The Content Editor would prevent editors from saving changes to the standard values item for a template if one or more validation rules reported a "fatal" error. The error level of such errors will now be changed to "critical" instead of fatal when editing standard values items, allowing editors to save changes despite any validation errors. (334723)
  • When clicking the Favorites button on the Navigate tab in the ribbon, an exception would occur if the user did not have sufficient permissions to create items in the relevant location in the core database where favorites are stored. (336728, 337553)
  • After adding a new version to an item, the Content Editor would sometimes end up adding two identical versions that both had the same version number. This was related to the case used for language names. (311419)
  • A JavaScript error occurred when clicking the Preview button on the Presentation tab in the Content Editor ribbon. (322342)

• Page Editor

  • The Page Editor would sometimes ignore the assigned placeholder settings for items. (337054)
  • When the Insert item dialog box was opened by clicking an Insert button associated with a rendering, the dialog box ignored the rendering's data source. This caused it to display the insert options from the context item and to create the new item below the context item instead of the item that the data source pointed to. (337546)
• Rich Text Editor
  • The "Suggest Fix" command wrapped the content in an extra <div> tag every time the command was run. (336852)
  • When using Internet Explorer, the rich text editor would sometimes add an _extendedByPrototype attribute to one or more of the HTML tags. (331207)
• Word Document field
  • One or more JavaScript errors would occur when trying to insert images from the Sitecore media library into a Word Document field using the "Insert Media" button in the Word Document field pop-up window. (334910)
• Multi-browser support
  • [Internet Explorer] The "Location" pane in the Create New Template wizard was incorrectly sized. (335178)
  • [Safari] Inserting links into rich text fields directly from the page did not work. The insert link dialog box was opened correctly, but Sitecore did not insert a link when the user clicked "OK". (335635)
  • [Firefox, Chrome and Safari] When clicking an item in the content tree, the browser would scroll to the top of the content tree after loading the item. (336229)
    Note: This issue was only partially fixed for Firefox in 6.4.1 rev. 101221. It has been fully fixed in 6.6 Update-7 (ref. no. 382186). [Added December 13, 2013]
  • [Firefox, Chrome and Safari] The Sitecore start menu was only closed when starting an application or when clicking on the Sitecore desktop background. When clicking an open application such as the Content Editor, the start menu would stay open. (334588)
  • [Firefox, Chrome and Safari] Switching between windows in the Sitecore desktop required the user to click the window title of the non-active window. It is now possible to click anywhere in a window to activate that window, with the exception of clicking inside rich text fields and other content that is rendered inside iframes. (334570)
    Note: This issue was fixed for clicking inside rich text fields and other content that is rendered inside iframes in 6.6 Update-2 (ref. no. 337532). [Added December 12, 2012]
  • [Firefox, Chrome and Safari] When Sitecore displayed a tree in a dropdown (such as droptree fields or when selecting a layout), the dropdown window did not close if the user clicked outside the dropdown window. The user had to click once more before the dropdown window was closed. (336691)
  • [Firefox, Chrome and Safari] The columns in the "Compare Versions" dialog box did not have the correct width, making it difficult to compare versions. (335629)
  • [Firefox] If a user clicked the Sitecore logo button when using the standalone Content Editor client, the system would in certain circumstances log the user out instead of displaying the dropdown menu that is associated with this button. (337513)
  • [Chrome] A cosmetic issue has been fixed in the way wizard windows are presented. The divider between the head block and the wizard pages was too thick and had too much spacing around it. (337430)
• Localization
  • A display name has been added to the Undo buttons in the default Html Editor profiles to make it easier to localize the text of the button. (336849)
• Cosmetic issues
  • The Security Explainer in the Access Viewer looked incorrect due to a missing CSS style sheet. (335579)
• Link database
  • Complex template data sources that consist of name/value parameters would be replaced by a simple link without name/value parameters if the target data source item was renamed. Such data sources will now be updated correctly when renaming items. (335728)
• Language handling
  • The LanguageResolver would sometimes provide inconsistent data when language names are embedded in the URL using different case for different requests. (336739)
  • The Dictionary did not translate strings correctly if the context language used a different case compared to the name of the language definition item in the database. This could for example happen when language names were embedded in the URL using different case for different requests. (338115)
• Lucene search
  • When running the Rebuild Search Index wizard, the system would in certain situations fail with a DirectoryNotFoundException error. (337585)
• Miscellaneous
  • In Internet Explorer, the size of the rendering properties dialog box in the Developer Center would be incorrect, hiding the controls in the dialog box. The user had to resize the dialog box to be able to modify the properties. (336341)
• The clean installation
  • The site definition named "testing" is not used by Sitecore and has been removed from the <sites> section in the clean web.config file. (336624).

November 26, 2010

Released Sitecore CMS 6.4.0 rev.101124 (Update-1).

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

Improvements

• Setup.exe installation program
  • The setup.exe supports installing up to 20 instances of the CMS. The pool of instances is shared between CMS 6.2, 6.3 and 6.4 rev. 101012. Starting with 6.4 Update-1, a separate pool will be used for 6.4 instances, thereby allowing you to install up to 20 instances of 6.4 no matter if any 6.2 or 6.3 are installed on the same machine. (335705)
• Page Editor
  • When the Page Editor invokes custom Page Editor commands, the CommandContext object will now contain "renderingId" and "referenceId" in the Parameters collection to make it easier to identify the rendering that the command is executed for. (335921)
• Rich Text Editor
  • A new "XHTML Validator" button has been added to the toolbar in the "Rich Text Full" Html Editor profile. This button replaces the XHTML Validator module that was available in the Rich Text Editor in CMS 6.3 and earlier. (334574)
  • Two new templates have been introduced for making it easier to extend the Rich Text Editor toolbars with custom drop down buttons. Items based on the "Html Editor Custom Drop Down" template will be rendered as a drop down. Items based on the "Html Editor Custom Drop Down Button" will be rendered as a "split" button. You can add static options to such drop downs by creating one or more child items based on the "Html Editor List Item" template. (334658, 336606)
• Threshold warnings
  • To make troubleshooting easier, the StopMeasurements processor in the HttpRequestEnd pipeline will now write the value of the ShowThresholdSettings and the individual threshold values to the log file when Sitecore starts. (330900)

Important changes

• Page Editor
  • Since the Page Editor no longer supports Internet Explorer 6 (starting with the 6.4 Technical Preview), the option to start the Page Editor will be hidden from the login screen, the Sitecore start menu and the Content Editor ribbons for IE6 users. (335277)
  • In the Sitecore.Pipelines.GetChromeData.GetChromeDataProcessor class, the AddButtonToChromeArgs has been deprecated and replaced by a new AddButtonsToChromeArgs method (using plural instead of singular). (335662)
• Rich Text Editor
  • Using the button name as the tooltip for items based on the "HTML Editor Drop Down" or "HTML Editor Drop Down Button" data templates prevented the editor from displaying the default Telerik localizations of these elements. To provide a custom tooltip for such items, set the display name. (336661)
  • Toolbar buttons based on the "HTML Editor Drop Down" or "HTML Editor Drop Down Button" templates now support localization using display names. (336661)

Issues resolved

• Analytics
  • Conditional renderings and multivariate tests did not work correctly due to a defect in the AddRenderings processor in the <insertRenderings> pipeline. (335577, 335589)
• This release incorporates changes made for 6.2 Update-5, 6.3 Update-2 and 6.3 Update-3. For additional information about these changes, please refer to the release notes for each update:
  • Release notes for 6.2 Update-5
  • Release notes for 6.3 Update-2
  • Release notes for 6.3 Update-3
• Setup.exe installation program
  • The Japanese setup.exe now displays the license agreement in Japanese. (336643)
  • A couple of cosmetic issues have been fixed in the Japanese setup.exe. (333334, 333337)
  • [Merged from 6.3 Update-3] The Japanese setup.exe is now using the more common Japanese font "Meiryo" for the core part of the UI. (335520)
• Page Editor
  • Setting the DisableWebEditing property to "true" on a FieldRenderer web control (sc:Text, sc:Image, etc.) did not disable inline editing in the Page Editor. (315492)
  • If the user pressed CTRL+X or CTRL+V to cut or paste text in the Page Editor, a JavaScript error occurred. (336137)
  • The "Cancel" button in the Insert Media dialog box did not work correctly. In IE, a JavaScript error appeared when the user clicked the Cancel button. Other browsers would insert the image into the Rich Text field. Also, a warning message would be displayed when clicking "Cancel" if the user had selected a non-image file. (334726, 334727)
  • The "Cancel" button in the Insert Link dialog box did not work correctly. In IE, a JavaScript error would occur when the user clicked the Cancel button. Other browsers would insert the link into the Rich Text field. (334975)
  • The Page Editor did not strip tags from "Single-Line Text" fields when saving. This could result in unexpected tags in such fields when using the EnclosingTag property on a sc:FieldRenderer control. (336603)
  • A JavaScript error would occur when the user clicked "Show Editor" above a rich text field in a Field Editor window. (334945)
    Note: This issue was only partially fixed. When Sitecore was running in a.NET 4.0 application pool, a JavaScript error would still occur. This was fixed in 6.4.1 Update-4. [Added October 03, 2011].
  • The "Save" button did not appear in the Page Editor ribbon if the user was member of the Sitecore Minimal Page Editor, Sitecore Client Designing or Sitecore Client Translating role. (333169)
  • For consistency with the normal Page Editor ribbon, the "Log Off" group on the ribbon has been renamed to "Close" in the Debugger and in the simple ribbon displayed to minimal page editors. (335794)
• Content Editor
  • When a user clicked the label of the Insert group on the Home tab of the ribbon, the system would display an error message instead of opening the dialog box for assigning insert options. (335626)
  • When a user clicked the label of the Sorting group on the Home tab of the ribbon, the system would display an error message instead of opening the dialog box for setting the sort order for subitems. (335627)
  • The XHtml validation rule in the Content Editor would incorrectly report a validation error if the content of a rich text field contained text not wrapped in an HTML tag such as <p> or <div>. (334701)
  • The Fix Html dialog box would incorrectly report an error in the original text if the field contained text not wrapped in an HTML tag such as <p> or <div>. (334701) 
  • The Preview button on the Presentation tab always opened Preview in the default content language for the shell site instead of using the currently selected language from the Content Editor. (321848)
• Rich Text Editor
  • Several buttons on the Rich Text Editor toolbars showed English text when using non-English client languages. (334582)
• Rules and conditions
  • The "User Name" condition which compares the user name of the current context user to a specific value did not work correctly when the value contained a domain prefix. (335066)
  • Changing one or more rule conditions did not always clear the rules cache. (332205)
• Login page
  • Clicking the "Forgot Your Password" and "Change Password" links caused the "The requested page could not be found" error page to appear. (316108)
  • The password recovery page no longer requires the user to fill in the full user name. If no domain is specified, the login page will automatically use the default domain for the context site. (335671)
  • The password recovery page would try to send e-mail messages using both the Sitecore MailServer settings and the standard .NET <mailSettings><smpt> settings from the web.config file. This could result in two password recovery e-mail messages to the user or an InvalidOperationException if the <mailSettings> element did not contain relevant settings. (316112)
  • The footer of the password recovery page displayed two slashes caused by an incorrectly closed <div> tag. (335672)
• Item Cloning
  • Moving a clone under the item it clones and later accepting the option to create a clone of the new subitem resulted in an infinite loop. (335398)
• Installation Wizard
  • After installing a package, Internet Explorer might report, "The web page you are viewing is trying to close the tab.", at the last step of the Installation Wizard. (335287)
  • When using Firefox and Chrome and the Japanese client language, the text on some of the buttons in the "Overwrite Options" dialog box would wrap on two lines. (335145)
• Localization
  • The "Import Languages from a File" wizard could accidentally overwrite the value of shared fields. The wizard will now skip such phrases and keep the value of shared fields. (336027)
• Development
  • The Page Editor and Content Editor did not respect the "Customize Page" field on the rendering or sublayout definition item. When a URL is specified in the "Customize Page" field and a user edits the properties for the control, Sitecore will now open this URL instead of the standard Control Properties dialog box. The custom dialog box will receive the same parameters as the standard dialog box and must return an URL-encoded string using the ClientPage.ClientResponse.SetDialogValue() method. (336172)
• Miscellaneous
  • Several methods in the default processors for the <insertRenderings> pipeline have been made virtual to make it easier to override the functionality of the pipeline: (328845)
    • AddPageDesignerRenderings.GetRenderings()
    • EvaluateConditions.Evaluate()
    • EvaluateConditions.GetConditionItems()
    • EvaluateConditions.GetGlobalRules()
  • When editing template fields in the Content Editor, the "Validation Rules" field section appeared above the "Data" section. (335810)
  • Item thumbnail images supported individual item serialization, but would not be serialized correctly when serializing the entire System folder in the Media Library. (335023)
• The clean installation
  • The clean databases contained a number of orphan items with cyclic dependencies between the orphans. (334838)
  • The clean core database in 6.4 rev. 101012 contained a number of obsolete versions in French, Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian. (335293)
  • The 6.4 rev. 101012 Technical Preview inadvertently included a number of unintentional changes to the Sample Layout.html, Sample Inner Sublayout.ascx, and default.css files. These files are now identical to the files distributed with 6.3 and earlier versions. (336181)
  • The clean web.config file now contains comments to explain the purpose of a number of pipelines in the <pipelines> and <processors> sections. (335797)
  • The database schema for the "web" database contained some differences in comparison with the database schema of the "master" and "core" databases. (336410)
  • ALLOW_PAGE_LOCK was set to OFF for the ndxBlobId index in some of the clean databases, causing problems when configuring maintenance plans to rebuild indexes. (336412)

October 18, 2010

Released Sitecore CMS 6.4.0 rev.101012 (Technical Preview).

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.
Please visit the Updates section for instructions describing how to download this version.

Change log.

New features

• Page Editor and Page Designer
  • The Page Editor and Page Designer have been combined into one application with a consistent interface, allowing content editors to seamlessly edit and design the page at the same time. The interface also integrates Preview and the Debugger.
  • Improved usability, making it easier to both edit and change the design of a page.
  • The ribbon will now stay at the top of the browser window and not be scrolled out of sight when the page is scrolled (unless you have a placeholder with key="webedit" which is still supported for backwards compatibility, but which is no longer recommended).
  • Layout deltas. When changing the presentation of a page, the changes will now be stored as a "delta" that is dynamically merged with the presentation information stored in the standard values for the template. This process is completely transparent to Sitecore users, and does not introduce any new UI concepts.
  • The Page Editor now supports Layout Presets. Applying a preset completely overwrites the current layout configuration of the item with the new one. However, the item is not saved, allowing the editor to review the changes before applying them.
  • Item thumbnails allow you to take screenshots of renderings, sublayouts, etc. and use that as a thumbnail in the Page Editor to make it easier for editors to select the right components.
  • It is now possible to set the data source or create a new data source when inserting renderings and other components into the page.
  • It is now possible to easily replace renderings with other compatible renderings while keeping the data source and all parameters. This feature is enabled by defining one or more compatible renderings on definition items for the rendering and sublayouts.
  • It has been made easier to display custom commands/buttons for fields in the Page Editor. This can be configured for any template field and no longer involves setting up a new field type.
• Multi-browser support.
  • Sitecore now supports all the Sitecore client interfaces in the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, in addition to Internet Explorer 7 and 8. Sitecore supports these browsers running on Mac and PC. Using the Sitecore clients with these browsers on other operating systems and device platforms might work, but is currently not supported.
• Rich Text Editor
  • The Rich Text Editor in Sitecore has been upgraded to RadEditor for ASP.NET AJAX, the newest version of the Telerik's RadEditor which provides some architectural changes and major improvements such as inline AJAX spellchecker and automated HTML indenting to allow more efficient HTML editing.
  • To ensure a smoother experience for content editors, the Rich Text Editor will now open in an "inline" pop-up window instead of opening a new browser pop-up window. Also, the Rich Text Editor pop-up should open more quickly in most situations.
  • Sitecore now performs fewer transformations of the HTML when loading and saving the contents of rich text fields. Also, the HTML is no longer processed by HtmlAgilityPack utility before it is loaded into the Rich Text Editor. These changes resolve a number of issues where the transformations would produce HTML that was not valid or where tags or formatting would be changed.
• Item Cloning
  • Item cloning gives editors a powerful and flexible way of reusing content in multiple locations in the content tree, including the ability to override individual field values on the clones (including standard fields such as security and presentation).
• Support for running Sitecore under ASP.NET 4.0 application pools.
• Support for using MVC in Sitecore websites
  • Sitecore now provides instructions for applying a number of changes to the web.config file which will allow customers to use MVC in the same solution where Sitecore is running.
• Include files
  • It is now possible to remove nodes from configuration files using include files. Simply add a <patch:delete /> element to remove the containing node, assuming that the namespaces is defined as xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/". [Added November 22, 2010]
  • A new "http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/set/" namespace allows shorter, inline syntax for attribute assignments. For example, the following element selects the website with name="website" and sets the value of the filterItems and enableWorkflow attributes to true: <site name="website" set:filterItems="true" set:enableWorkflow="true" />. [Added November 22, 2010]
    

Deprecated features

• Internet Explorer 6 is no longer supported for use with the Sitecore client interfaces.
• As of CMS 6.4, Sitecore has deprecated proxy items.
  • CMS 6.4 introduces item cloning as a new feature which will eventually act as an alternative to the proxy item facility. Sitecore recommends that partners and customers begin studying item cloning and using item clones in place of proxy items when possible.
  • Sitecore will continue to improve the item cloning feature in subsequent releases. Sitecore expects to fully remove the proxy item facility in the next major CMS release (CMS 7.0).
• The Page Editor no longer supports content dots.
  • The definitions for the sc:dot XSL control still exist in the web.config for backwards compatibility, but the sc:dot control no longer produce markup.(332791)
  • The classes and properties releated to content dots have been deprecated and the web.config settings and commands related to content dots have been removed from the clean web.config.(332791, 334476)
• The uiLoadHtml and uiSaveHtml pipelines have been deprecated. Use the newly introduced loadRictTextContent and saveRichTextContent pipelines instead.

Improvements

• Analytics
  • A new "Analytics.Reports.Timeout" setting has been introduced for configuring the default SQL timeout when generating OMS reports. The value of this setting will be used when the CommandTimeout tags in the report files are set to "0". All the standard report files have been updated to use the new setting instead of using a hardcoded timeout. (328501)
• Rich Text Editor
  • The default configuration of the Rich Text Editor toolbar can be configured using the newly introduced "HtmlEditor.DefaultProfile" web.config setting. (312009)
  • The editor window can now be maximized to give more space for editing content.
  • The Rich Text Editor now remembers the last open tab (Design/HTML).
  • Two new pipelines have been introduced to make it easier to transform the HTML when it is loaded and saved by the Rich Text control. The pipelines are named loadRichTextContent and saveRichTextContent and are superseding the uiLoadHtml and uiSaveHtml pipelines.
  • Support for editing content in languages that use right-to-left reading order. The Rich Text Editor will automatically be opened in right-to-left mode when the .NET culture for the current content language specifies that it is right-to-left. (329393)
• Content Editor validation rules
  • A number of new Content Editor validation rules have been added, such as checking the minimum length of field values, checking for duplicate sort-order values, or checking ­if items have been serialized. (331747)
  • It is now possible to suppress validation rules on a per item basis to hide specific validation messages. (331750)
• Rules and conditions
  • A number of new rule conditions have been added to make it easier to make flexible conditions, for example checking item information, access permissions, workflow states, or information about the current user. (331748)
  • Rule conditions and action items can now be organized in folders in the content tree. (331751)
  • The Rules Editor now highlights macros, making it easier to find the correct condition. (331752)
  • It is now possible to define rule-based Content Editor warnings by creating rules below the "/sitecore/system/Settings/Rules/Content Editor Warnings" node. (331754)
• Rendering parameters standard values
  • Sitecore will now apply standard values to a rendering if the rendering has an associated renderings parameters template. This makes it easier to apply the same set of parameters across multiple renderings. (317688)
• Security Editor
  • Security administrators can now protect and unprotect items directly from the ribbon in the Security Editor if they are members of either the "Sitecore Client Configuring" role or the "Sitecore Client Developing" role. (304796)
• Threshold warnings
  • The threshold warnings that are output by the StopMeasurements processor in the HttpRequestEnd pipeline are now disabled by default.
  • The warnings can be enabled by changing the value of the newly introduced <ShowThresholdWarnings> parameter from "false" to "true". (330676)
• Client languages
  • German is now included as a default client language in addition to English, Danish and Japanese. (335084)
• Icon selector
  • The Icon selector popup window has been redesigned. It now presents editors with a list of recently selected icons, while still allowing the editor to browse the full set of icons in the different categories. [Added Oct 25, 2010]
  • The time it takes to open the Icon selector popup has been reduced significantly by using image maps to display the icons in each category. The image maps are generated the first time a user opens the Icon selector and are cached in the /temp folder (this one-time operation typically take 1-2 minutes). [Added Oct 25, 2010]

Important changes

• Rich Text Editor
  • The ConvertToDesignTimeHtml pipeline is no longer used when editing rich text in the Content Editor, only when editing layouts and renderings in the Developer Center. (324058)
  • The Sitecore.Pipelines.Save.ConvertToXHtml processor is no longer used and has been deprecated. (322217)
• The Firebug Lite JavaScript library is no longer included into the Sitecore client pages. A stub is provided instead to avoid API incompatibility with e.g. modules. (334433)
• Link database
  • The LinkDatabase classes have been extended to add support for the Item Cloning functionality. This could impact your code if you have overridden the LinkDatabase provider.
• The following 3rd party DLLs have been updated to a newer version. You might have to update and recompile your code if you are referencing these DLLs from your code:
  • The Telerik.Web.UI.dll has been updated from 2008.2.826.20 to 2010.2.826.35. (333773)

Issues resolved

• Setup.exe installation program
  • The setup.exe would not always show the correct list of Oracle instance names. The logic for parsing the tnsnames.ora file has been improved. (334736)
• Content Editor
  • When Sitecore displays a tree in a dropdown (such as droptree fields or when selecting a layout), the dropdown window will no longer be closed if the user clicks the white background in the dropdown. This will prevent situations where a user wants to expand the tree, but misses the expand button, causing the dropdown to be closed. (332635)
  • When an editor used the Tab key to move between fields in the Content Editor and a Rich Text field got focus, subsequent tabbing would be ignored and the editor would have to use the mouse to move the focus to another field. (319503)
  • The icon selector popup window that is opened when clicking "Open Icon" above an icon fields only showed physical files. The popup window will now display the standard icon selector window. (321235)
• Page Editor
  • Editors are no longer allowed to change the design if the item is protected. (333418)
  • The insert button in the ribbon will now be disabled if the editor does not have permissions to create content below the current context item. (333170)
  • The "Edit" button in the navigation bar below the ribbon is no longer available to members of the "Sitecore Minimal Page Editor" or "Sitecore Limited Page Editor" roles. (333457)
  • The default permissions for the "Can Design" item in the core database has been changed, so the members of the "Sitecore Limited Page Editor" role no longer have access to design the page, even if they are also members of the "Sitecore Client Designing" role (333179)
  • If a user navigated to an item in the navigation bar without pressing "Go" and then used any of the buttons in the ribbon, the action would be executed on the item selected in the navigation bar instead of the current context item. Now such actions will always be executed on the context item to avoid confusion. (332519)
  • If an image is set to use a specific width and/or height (for example by specifying a width or height on a <sc:image> xsl control), the relevant input fields will be disabled in the "Image Properties" dialog. (332873)
  • When changing content language using the Ribbon button, the Page Editor will now embed the language in the URL if the LinkProvider is configured with language embedding. (318200)
  • The fields of hidden items can now be edited in the Page Editor, as long as the user can navigate to it or knows the URL. The navigation bar below the ribbon continues to hide items that have this flag set. (333518)
  • Setting DisableWebEditing="true" on a FieldRenderer web control did not disable editing of the field in the Page Editor. (315492) [Added Oct 25, 2010]
• Rich Text Editor
  • Bullet lists
    • Nested bullet lists would be converted into single-level bulleted lists when loaded by the Rich Text Editor. (306834)
    • The HTML would not validate after using the Indent button in a bulleted list to created nested bullet points. (322286)
    • If a bullet point contained a nested bullet list followed by some text, the text would end up outside the <LI> tag when saving, causing the HTML not to validate. (322765)
  • The Rich Text Editor would throw an error when saving after inserting iframes into the Rich Text field. (309048)
  • Pasting from Word did not properly clean up Word formatting and would sometimes provide invalid HTML. (317770, 300113, 324069)
  • After saving HTML that contained encoded HTML entities such as "ø", the ampersand would often end up being encoded ("ø"). This was caused by the ConverToRuntimeHtml pipeline which is no longer run. (323128)
  • In Firefox, the drop-down with CSS styles would not list the available CSS classes if the CSS file contained @import statements. (320469)
  • Certain types of changes made in the Design view (such as removing a hyperlink) could be lost when switching to the HTML view. (324778)
  • When switching between the Design and HTML views, non-ascii characters such as "á" would sometimes end up in the HTML view as the literal character instead of an encoded HTML entity. (315178)
  • When switching back and forth between the Design and HTML views, whitespaces between HTML tags and text was sometimes lost. (324069)
  • When setting the font size using the dropdown in the toolbar, the font size was specified in points (pt) rather than pixels (px). (320139)
  • When replacing the current image using "Image Properties" dialog, the full path to the new image would be inserted into the image src instead of using the short ID of the media item. (328345)
  • The "Fix HTML" dialog would sometimes change target="_blank" attributes into shape="rect". (317348)
  • Using the toolbar button to insert an anchor tag would sometimes result in two identical anchor tags being inserted in the HTML. (318373)
  • The "Toggle Border" toolbar button did not highlight the borders of tables with empty cells. (323890)
  • The Sitecore.Shell.Applications.ContentEditor.RichText.UpdateHtml() method has been made virtual and protected instead of private to make the method available to customers that wish to override the class. (317536)
  • Localization: The "Paragraph Styles" and "Custom Links" drop-down lists will now display the item name if the item in the core database does not have a translation in the current client language. (329240)
• Localization
  • The "Value" field on the /sitecore/templates/System/Html Editor Profiles/Html Editor Class Translation template has been changed from versioned to shared. This fixes a problem with localization of the Rich Text Editor. (333234)
• Cosmetic issues
  • The "Change Password" dialog would display unnecessary scrollbars in IE8. (332075)
• Miscellaneous
  • If you changed the dataFolder setting using an include file, the Sitecore log files would continue to be written to the default location, typically /data/logs. (313694)
  • Sitecore will now output a warning in the log file if filterItems is set to "true" for a site but the filteredItemsCacheSize is zero to make it easier to identify this type of misconfiguration which can cause significantly decreased performance of the site. (312326)
  • The default value of the "Caching.DefaultFilteredItemsCacheSize" has been changed from zero (disabled) to 2MB to make it easier to enable the filtered items cache for one or more sites. (312327)
  • The Update Package Installation Wizard is now using the same logic as the Import Language Wizard when installing dictionary items, updating dictionary based on the dictionary key rather than the item ID. (333861)
  • The "Clean Up Databases" wizard did not remove orphan items from the database if there were cyclic dependencies between the orphans. (331294)
  • Some obsolete ASPX files with no associated code-behind have been removed since they prevented customers from precompiling their Sitecore websites. (321649)
  • The Log.Debug() method was outputting messages using Log4Net's "Info" notification level instead of the "Debug" notification level, making it difficult that filter debug messages. (331370)
  • The Update Package Installation Wizard will now perform changes to system templates before changes to other templates to make sure that packages with such changes are installed correctly. (334747)
  • The Update Package Installation Wizard would sometimes not change the value of "Display Name" fields and other unversioned fields correctly. [Added January 17, 2011]
  • The Update Package Installation Wizard would sometimes add new language versions to items during analysis of an update packages. [Added January 17, 2011]

1.4.  Release History for Sitecore CMS 6.3

Some of the issues described on this page contain internal reference numbers. You can use these reference numbers when communicating with Sitecore about a particular issue or feature.

As part of our commitment to continually improving our software and listening to our customer’s feedback, Sitecore regularly releases new versions of our CMS product. Each release undergoes careful quality assurance procedures to minimize the number of issues.

January 20, 2011

Released Sitecore CMS 6.3.1 rev.110112 (6.3.1 Service Pack-1, originally released as 6.3.1 Initial Release).

Note: This is a product Service Pack. Sitecore encourages customers to install service packs for any feature release that the customer has installed.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.
 Sitecore 6.3.1 is a regular maintenance update. The version number has been changed from 6.3.0 to 6.3.1 because of the database schema changes in the EventQueue table.

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download this release.

Change log.

Improvements

• Setup.exe installation program
  • [Backported from 6.4] The setup.exe supports installing up to 20 instances of the CMS. The pool of instances is shared between CMS 6.2, 6.3 and 6.4 rev. 101012. Starting with 6.4 Update-1 and now also 6.3.1, separate pools will be used for 6.3.1 and 6.4 instances, thereby allowing you to install up to 20 instances of 6.3.1 regardless of any 6.2, 6.3.0 or 6.4 instances on the same machine. (335705)

Important changes

• Media API
  • The default value of the MediaResponse.Cacheability setting has been changed from "public" to "private" to prevent various issues such as media items not being updated on the site after publishing a new version of the item or Analytics not recording document download events for cached media. See the associated known issue on SDN for a full explanation. (337515)
• /sitecore/admin pages
  • The /sitecore/admin/cache.html and /sitecore/admin/stats.html pages now require the user to be logged in and to be an Administrator or a member of the Sitecore Client Developing role to prevent unauthorized access to the pages on servers where the IIS has not been configured to limit access to the /sitecore/admin folder. (337985)
• Scaling and multi-instance setups
  • To make SQL Server replication work correctly, it's important that SQL Server replication is configured to replicate data in the EventQueue table after data from other tables. The instructions in the SQL Server Replication Guide have been updated accordingly.
  • [Backported from 6.4.1] The algorithm for retrieving remote events from the EventQueue tables have been changed to make it work correctly with replicated databases. A new Stamp column has been added to the EventQueue tables. The Sequence column is now obsolete and has been removed. (335415)
  • [Backported from 6.4.1] When Sitecore instances start, they will now raise remote events that were written to the event queue during ASP.NET worker process restarts or during times when the instance was down for other reasons. This is required to make sure that publishing jobs are started correctly, and that instances can monitor the progress of publish operations. (336668)
    • The "EventQueue.PersistStampMaxAge" setting specifies the maximum age of remote events to replay at application startup. Remote events that are older than this age will not be raised. The default value is 10 minutes.
    • The "EventQueue.PersistStampInterval" setting specifies the minimum interval between saving the event queue's last processed event stamp to avoid putting too much load on the database when storing the stamp. The default value is 10 seconds.
    • Some of the events that are replayed at application startup might already have been raised before the server was shut down, depending on when the stamp was persisted to the database. Custom remote event handlers should be constructed in a way so that they don't fail when this occurs.

Issues resolved

• Analytics
  • Sitecore would sometimes fail to insert Analytics data and write the following exception the log file: "Violation of PRIMARY KEY constraint 'PK_Session_1'. Cannot insert duplicate key in object 'dbo.Session'". This would happen if the ASP.NET session ID had changed during the request, for example due to calling Session.Abandon() in custom code. (331745)
  • When a user opened the Latest Human Session report or other reports showing the latest sessions, the report would be rendered correctly, but one or more SqlExceptions would be written to the log file reporting that a SessionIdObject was not supplied to a parameterized query. (334573)
• Potential security vulnerabilities
  • A couple of .html pages related to the Sitecore login page have been modified so they no longer allow redirects to external, possibly malicious, websites. (337984)
  • Three JavaScript injection vulnerabilities have been fixed in the Sitecore client. The customers and partners that have reported these problems have been informed.
    Sitecore Corp. wants to give credit to ProCheckUp, Richard Brain, for the discovery of these vulnerabilities (both the external redirects and the JavaScript injection vulnerabilities) and for their cooperation.
• Scaling and multi-instance setups
  • If an error occurred when deserializing remote event data, Sitecore would abort processing the remaining remote events in the event queue. This could happen if the remote event data contained a large amount of non-ANSI characters. (338130)
• Setup.exe installation program
  • When trying to install Sitecore on an operating system running with a non-English language pack (except from Danish and Japanese), the setup.exe would fail with a "Path to Transform file not found..." message. (333863) [Added February 10, 2011]
  • [Backported from 6.4] The Japanese setup.exe now displays the license agreement in Japanese. (336643)
  • [Backported from 6.4] Two cosmetic issues have been fixed in the Japanese setup.exe. (333334, 333337)
• Scaling and multi-instance setups
  • [Backported from 6.4.1] After restoring deleted items that have subitems, Sitecore did not always update the data cache and the path cache. (336869)
  • [Backported from 6.4.1] Remote events would not be replayed on an instance if the events were queued between the time the ASP.NET process started on the instance and the first time it polled the event queue for new events. (336232)
  • [Backported from 6.4.1] Changes to instance-specific properties caused remote events to be raised on the other instances in the group. Sitecore will no longer add a remote event to the event queue if the property name starts with "EQStamp_" or "IndexingProvider_LastUpdate". (338101)
• Publishing
  • [Backported from 6.4.1] Publishing jobs would not be executed if the publish operation was initiated after a restart of the Sitecore Publishing instance or while it was down. The publish dialog would display "Initializing..." and never show any progress. (336232, 336668)
• This release incorporates a number of changes made for 6.2 Update-5 which have already been merged into 6.4 but which had not yet been merged into 6.3.x:
  • A new "ProfileItemDatabase" setting has been introduced which allows developers to specify that Sitecore should read user profile definitions from a database other than the Core database. When using a different database, user profile items must still be stored below the following path: /sitecore/system/Settings/Security/Profiles. (329860)
  • The quick search function treated all criteria as optional search terms, even when editors prefixed a search term with "+" to specify a required search term. (334960)
  • The quick search function at the bottom right corner of the Sitecore desktop will no longer be disabled if the search index for the "master" database has been disabled. Instead, it will be disabled if the "system" search index does not exist. (328875)
  • The Sitecore.Data.Managers.IndexingManager class was marked internal, preventing developers from calling the methods in the class from custom code. (308470)
  • The DatabaseCrawler class only added shared fields to the documents in the index when rebuilding the index, not when reindexing individual items or versions. (333435)
  • The DatabaseCrawler class only added template information to the documents in the index when rebuilding the index, not when reindexing individual items or versions. (333967)
  • After creating an item, the search index would contain two duplicate documents with the same version number instead of a single document. (334864)
  • After updating an item, deleting an item version, or deleting an entire item, obsolete data would still appear in the Lucene search index and could be returned by subsequent search queries. (334300, 334863)
  • The DatabaseCrawler used different formats to store GUIDs for different fields in the search index. This made it more difficult to compose certain types of search queries and even prevented searching in some of the system fields. (328863)
  • Calling SearchManager.GetIndex() with the name of an undefined index will now return null instead of throwing a KeyNotFoundException exception. (331540)
  • The DatabaseCrawler did not call the Optimize method on the system index after rebuilding it. (322556)
• Miscellaneous
  • The Sitecore.Common.Serializer.Deserialize(string, Type) method would fail with an exception if the data contained more than 648 non-ANSI characters. This was caused by a defect in the Microsoft JSON reader. As a workaround for this defect, the Deserialize method has been changed to use a buffer instead of a stream when passing data to the JSON reader. (338130)
  • [Backported from 6.4] The Update Package Installation Wizard would sometimes not change the value of "Display Name" fields and other unversioned fields correctly. [Added January 17, 2011]
  • [Backported from 6.4] The Update Package Installation Wizard would sometimes add new language versions to items during analysis of an update packages. [Added January 17, 2011]

November 4, 2010

Released Sitecore CMS 6.3.0 rev.101029 (Update-3).

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download this release.

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

Important changes

• API changes
  • The _dataApi field in the Sitecore.Data.Archiving.SqlArchive class have been deprecated. The Api property should be used instead. (333441)
• Remove events
  • The "item:deleted:remote" event was raised with incorrect arguments. It will now be raised with a single ItemDeletedRemoteEventArgs argument to be consistent with other remote events. (333579)

Issues resolved

• Analytics
  • New definition data (such as page event definitions, campaign definitions, profile definitions) would not be saved correctly to the Analytics database in setups with several Content Management instances. The remote instances would end up overwriting the correct data with empty field values and/or the "$name" token. (333426)
  • The Sitecore.Analytics.Data.Items.ItemEventHandler would handle "item:copied:remote" and "item:deleted:remote" events incorrectly, causing an exception to be written to the log file on such events. (333619)
• Setup.exe installation program
  • When trying to install Sitecore on a machine with a Danish operating system, the installation would fail with a "Path to Transform file not found..." message. (333863)
  • [Backported from 6.4] The setup.exe would not always show the correct list of Oracle instance names. The logic for parsing the tnsnames.ora file has been improved. (334736)
  • The Japanese setup.exe is now using the more common Japanese font "Meiryo" for the core part of the UI. (335520)
• Scaling and multi-instance setups
  • When deleting or archiving one or more items, Sitecore would clear all caches which could reduce the performance of the system. (333441)
  • After restoring deleted items, Sitecore did not always update the data cache and the path cache. (333441)
    Note: This issue was only partially fixed. When restoring an item that has subitems, the cache is sometimes not cleared correctly. [Added November 22, 2010]
  • The "publish:end:remote" event was not being added to the event queue after a publishing job had completed. The HTML cache would therefore not be cleared after publishing on remote instances. (332898)
  • The web.config file did not contain a definition for the "publish:end:remote" event in the <events> section. (332898)
  • When a user created a new item or uploaded media to the system, the relevant parts of the path cache would not be cleared correctly on remote instances, causing the new item not to show up on remote instances until the path cache was manually cleared. (333275)
  • Subscribing to the "item:copied:remote" event did not work correctly. When a user copied an item, Sitecore would write an "Empty strings are not allowed" exception to the log file and the custom event handler(s) would not be invoked. (333619)
  • The field type cache was not cleared on remote instances after a template field has been deleted. (333579)
  • Dictionary entries were not removed from the dictionary cache on remote instances when the corresponding dictionary item was deleted from the database. (333579)
  • "Item Deleted" rules (defined below "/sitecore/System/Settings/Rules/Item Deleted") were not run on remote instances. (333579)
• Page Designer
  • The Page Designer did not work correctly in IE8 when using non-Compatibility View.  The entire page would be reloaded after changing rendering properties or trying to move renderings up or down, causing the changes to be lost. (325709)
• Content Editor
  • The Content Editor would report validation warnings for empty image fields, stating that the field contained broken links. (333927)
• Miscellaneous
  • After installing the updates from Microsoft that address the ASP.NET security issue described in Microsoft Security Advisory 2416728, Sitecore would throw an unhandled “HttpException: Unable to validate data” errors when previously authenticated web client attempted to access the application. Under such conditions, Sitecore will now instruct the web client to discard any authentication cookies that the server cannot decrypt, process the request with the anonymous user context, and write a warning to the log file. (334587)

October 11, 2010

Released Sitecore CMS 6.3.0 rev.100928 (Update-2).

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download this version.

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

Improvements

• The setup.exe program now supports installing Sitecore on Windows 7 Home Premium editions. (333363)

Issues resolved

• The issues that were resolved by 6.2 Update-4 have now been merged to 6.3:
  • A number of issues have been resolved in the CMS and in the OMS.
  • The update contains improvements to the Word Document field and improves WebDAV performance.
  • A new "getMediaCreatorOptions" pipelines has been introduced.
  • The Src and MediaPath properties in the ImageField class have been marked as obsolete, but will still be kept up-to-date by Sitecore so existing code should continue to work. But it is recommended to change custom code to use MediaManager.GetMediaUrl() in order to generate and output consistent URLs.
  • See the release notes for 6.2 Update-4 for the full details about the new features, improvements and resolved issues.
• Analytics
  • A concurrency issue in the AnalyticsLogger class could occasionally cause the web application to crash due to an unhandled IndexOutOfRangeException when the AnalyticsLogger.Notify(…) method was called from two or more sessions. (330148).
  • For certain reports, such as the "Common Mistakes" report, the Report Designer would save changes to the report in a wrong format. This would cause the report viewer to throw a NullReferenceException when later trying to view the report. (332513)
  • When saving a report, the Report Designer will now change the report Guid to make sure that the report is recompiled and that the updated report will be rendered by the report viewer. (332759)
  • The Report Designer did not save reports that contain <script> tags correctly. When trying to view such reports after modifying them, an exception would be displayed with the following message: "error CS10040: Preprocessor directives must appear as the first non-whitespace character on a line". (332799)
  • The "Latest Human Session" and "Latest Robot Session" reports would have broken data sources inside the report after saving them, due to an error in the Report Designer which strips line breaks instead of converting them to whitespace. (332799)
• Media
  • When trying to render an empty image field, for example by using <sc:image> or a FieldRenderer control, the ImageRenderer class would sometimes throw a NullReferenceException. (333543)
• Oracle
  • The sitecore.dmp file for 6.3 Update-1 contained duplicate schema definitions for sccore and scanalytics. The Oracle database schemas would be installed correctly, but the user would see a large number of "unique constraint violated" errors during installation of the database schemas. (333995)
• Setup.exe
  • The installation program will now use an antialiased font for all parts of the installation process, also when using the Japanese setup.exe. (332886)
• Localization
  • In the Japanese version of the master database, the Text field of the Home item was blank. (333308)
  • When using the Japanese client language, the text on ribbon buttons would sometimes not be updated after performing an action such "Hide item". (333325)
  • In the Control Panel, some of the options were wrapped incorrectly when the user's browser used certain Japanese fonts. (333122)
  • A number of phrases could not be translated in various areas of the product.
• Miscellaneous
  • During high server load, an InvalidOperationException would occasionally be thrown in the DomainAccessGuard class. (328878, 332254)
  • During high server load, an InvalidOperationException (wrapped in a TargetInvocationException) would occasionally be thrown in the DataViewFactory class. (328879, 332254) 

September 06, 2010

Released Sitecore CMS 6.3.0 rev.100830 (Update-1).

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download this release.

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

New Features:

• Sitecore now provides a separate setup.exe and zip distribution for Japanese that contains the following differences compared to the regular distributions.
  • The master database contains a Japanese language definition. (331533)
  • The distributions are configured to use Japanese as the default client and content language. (331534)

Improvements

• When a user saves an item in the Content Editor and the item has been modified since the user opened it, the system will show a message that the item has been modified and ask whether the user wants to overwrite the changes. This corresponds to how the Page Editor works. (332394)

Important changes

• Setup.exe installation program
  • The system requirements for running the installation program have been changed from .NET 3.5 to .NET 3.5 SP1 to make localization of the setup.exe work correctly. (332380)
• Web.config changes
  • The default value of the maxRequestLength attribute on the httpRuntime element has been changed from "16384" to "512000" to be consistent with the default value of the Media.MaxSizeInDatabase setting. (331449)
  • A <security><requestFiltering><requestLimits maxAllowedContentLength="524288000" /> element has been added to the <system.webServer> section to allow upload of large files when using IIS7 Integrated pipeline mode. The default value of 500MB corresponds to the default value of the Media.MaxSizeInDatabase setting. (331449)

Issues resolved

• Setup.exe installation program
  • A number of missing and incorrect strings in the Japanese version of the setup.exe have been corrected.
  • A number of cosmetic issues have been fixed in the Japanese version of the setup.exe.
• Localization
  • The Japanese client translation has been updated to fix a number of missing and incorrect strings.
  • The Sitecore start menu would fail with a JavaScript error if the menu contained any empty or untranslated menu items. (332969)
  • Dates in Analytics reports were not formatted according to the current culture. (331487)
  • Developer Center: The sample text in newly created layout, sublayout and XSLT files can now be localized. (317255)
  • The "Key" field on the /sitecore/templates/System/Html Editor Profiles/Html Editor Class Translation template has been changed from versioned to shared. This fixes a problem with localization of the Rich Text Editor. (323704)
  • Manually editing dictionary items using Internet Explorer would corrupt the dictionary item if the dictionary key contained newlines. After such a change, the dictionary phrase would no longer be used in the relevant parts of the UI and if a new translation file was imported, the system would create a new dictionary item for this key/phrase instead of overwriting the existing one. (332379)
  • A number of phrases could not be translated in various areas of the product.
• Miscellaneous
  • When an editor clicks "Unlock" in the My Items dialog, the dialog will now unlock all versions that are locked by the editor, no matter which language the version is locked in. Previously, the dialog only tried to unlock versions in the current language. (331756)
  • A typo has been fixed in the Package Designer Metadata dialog. (332448)
  • An obsolete file related to the Package Designer application has been removed. (333174)

July 19, 2010

Released Sitecore CMS 6.3.0 rev.100716 (Initial Release)
Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download this release.

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

New Features:

• Scaling and multi-instance setups:
  • Important: Please read the Sitecore Scaling Guide in its entirety before you configure a group of CMS and/or content delivery instances or before you configure Web Deploy.
  • Support for sharing the Master database between multiple load-balanced CM instances.
  • Possibility to set up two or more Sitecore installations to operate in a group, functioning as a single content authoring or content delivery environment.
  • Possibility to designate a specific instance to be a Publishing Server. This ensures that publish jobs are not run in parallel and makes it possible to have a dedicated Publishing Server.
  • New facility for deploying file-based media to content delivery servers during publishing, based on Microsoft Web Deploy.
  • Ability to forward security events from the CMS instance(s) to the Content Delivery instances, including the ability to filter which events that should be forwarded. This is useful for clearing the cache on the CD servers when they share the same security database as the CMS instance(s).
• Timed expiration of security caches:
  • A new Caching.SecurityCacheExpiration setting has been introduced in the web.config file to periodically clear the security cache. This can be useful in multi-instance setups. (324144)
• Possibility to disable file based media entirely:
  • A new Media.DisableFileMedia setting has been introduced in the web.config file to allow customers to disable file based media. (327602)
  • When setting this setting to "true", Sitecore will always store media in the database and will not allow users to upload media to Sitecore that are larger than the Media.MaxSizeInDatabase value. Also, the UI will hide options to select that media should be stored as files. Any existing file based media items will continue to work. Notice that this setting takes precedence over the Media.UploadAsFiles setting.

Improvements:

• Setup.exe installation program:
  • The installation program supports localization. (328808)
  • The installation program was translated to Japanese. (330920, 330479)
  • The installation program was translated to Danish. (330920)
  • The installation program is now signed with a Sitecore certificate. (320292)
  • IIS7: the application pool can now be created in Integrated Mode, user’s choice (329934)
  • The installation wizard UI has been enhanced in several areas. (318647, 318668, 318669, 322734, 323562, 323564)
• Publishing:
  • The performance of publish operations have been improved, especially for Smart Publish and Full Publish. (328476)
• Development:
  • Some complex ASP.NET controls may fail to work properly when their Controls collection is accessed on the early steps of the page cycle and the following controls has therefore been added to the <typesThatShouldNotBeExpanded> section of the web.config file (in addition to Repeater and DataList which were already present):
    • System.Web.UI.WebControls.GridView
    • System.Web.UI.WebControls.ListView
    • System.Web.UI.WebControls.FormView
    • Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ReportViewer
    • Telerik.Web.UI.RadGrid
  • A new API method called Template.InheritsFrom() has been introduced to make it easier to check if a template inherits from a specific base template. The method takes one parameter which can either be a template name or a template ID. (321610)
• Update packages:
  • Sitecore update packages now support a format where files are stored as "real" files in the zip-file rather than being stored as encoded text. (300529)
    • This allows developers to copy files from an update package into their solution without installing the package.
    • Also, it allows developers to remove files from update packages before installing the update package.
    • Manually adding files to a package is not supported since Sitecore requires special metadata to be present in the update package for files.

Important changes:

• SQLite:
  • The SQLite database provider is no longer supported, and all related DLLs and configuration files have been removed. (322769, 322936)
• Client languages:
  • The clean distribution of Sitecore CMS now contains the following client languages: (326523)
    • English
    • Danish
    • Japanese
  • The Danish and Japanese client translations have been updated to fix a number of missing and incorrect strings compared to the 6.2 translations.
  • Additional client languages can be downloaded from the 6.3 Client Translations  page on SDN, as well as future updates to the Danish and Japanese translations.
• Client RSS Feeds:
  • When you subscribe to one of the Sitecore Client Feeds for a workflow or workflow state, the feed will now only display feed entries for the items currently in that workflow/workflow state. Previously, workflow feeds would contain entries for all workflow actions that had been executed on items in the workflow/workflow state, giving a complete history of workflow actions. (322212)
  • A new ClientFeeds.Enabled setting has been introduced which allows customers to disable all item and workflow feeds. (322210)
• Analytics:
  • The file /sitecore/shell/Applications/Analytics/visitor.css.html has been renamed and moved to /layouts/System/VisitorIdentification.html. The previous location of the file caused the sc:VisitorIdentification control to fail on Content Delivery servers where the /sitecore folder had been removed. (319573)
  • The Sitecore.Analytics.TransactionHandle class was defined in both the Sitecore.Client.dll and Sitecore.Analytics.dll, resulting in a compiler error if a project referenced both DLLs. The class has been removed from the Sitecore.Client.dll. (320939)
• Media API:
  • The default value of the Media.MaxSizeInDatabase setting has been increased from 15MB to 500MB to allow most media files to be stored in the database by default. (323169)
• ConfigWatcher:
  • The ConfigWatcher HttpModule which listens for changes to files in the App_Config directory has been changed so that it will now restart the ASP.NET worker process whenever a configuration file is changed (except from the domains.config file which is dynamically reloaded when changed). This ensures that all configuration changes are applied correctly, including changes to pipeline processors and event subscriptions done using include files. (323450)
• Lucene:
  • When EnableEventQueues is set to "true", the value of Indexing.ServerSpecificProperties will be forced to "true" to avoid misconfiguration of multi-instance solutions. (331056)
  • When Indexing.ServerSpecificProperties is set to "true", the IndexingManager will now use the new InstanceName setting instead of the machine name when generating the property key that is used for storing information in the Properties table about when the search index was last updated. (330289)
• PublishManager.Publish():
  • When the EnableEventQueues setting is true, PublishManager.Publish() will return a handle to a distributed publishing task instead of a job handle, and existing code that expects a job handle may fail. You can use PublishingManager.GetStatus() with both types of handles get the status and result of the publishing operation. (325033)
• Performance counters:
  • The default value for Counters.InstanceName has been changed from "Default" to "". (329812)
  • When Counters.InstanceName is set to an empty string in the web.config file, the setting will now resolve to the value of the new InstanceName setting. This will help to ensure that different Sitecore instances on the same server will use unique instance names for their performance counters. (329812)
• A number of 3rd party DLLs have been updated to a newer version. You might have to update and recompile your code if you are referencing these DLLs from your code:
  • The ComponentArt.Web.UI.dll has been updated from 2007.1.1617 to 2010.1.2637. (323480)
  • The Newtonsoft.Json.dll has been updated from 1.3.0 to 3.5.0. (327916)
  • The Stimulsoft DLLs that are used for Analytics reporting have been updated from version 2009.1.400 to 2009.3.600. (321179)

Issues resolved:

• Setup.exe installation program:
  • The installation process now consumes significantly less memory. (319423)
  • Another installation should not start if one is in progress (320776)
  • Oracle: The "Database only" mode would present the user with steps to set up the website. (328906, 329953)
  • Oracle: When uninstalling "Database only" instances, an error message would be displayed. (329117)
  • A number of minor improvements and bug fixes. (328808)
• Editing content:
  • The "Delete Subitems" button in the ribbon will now be disabled when the currently selected item does not have any children. (322768)
  • When inserting a Sitecore link in the Rich Text editor at the end of the text and without having any text selected, the link would sometimes be inserted with "_" as the name. (327043)
• Content Editor:
  • When a user tries to save an item or execute an action on an item which has been deleted by a different user, the Content Editor will now display a message informing the user that the item could not be found. Previously, the action would have been executed on the Home item. (323558, 323561)
  • When using Internet Explorer 8 in non-compatibility mode, rich text fields would display a vertical scrollbar in the Content Editor even when the content did not extend beyond the bottom of the rich text control. (315137)
• Events:
  • Since Sitecore 6.1, the second parameter for the item:renamed event would incorrectly contain the new name for the item instead of the old name. (318458)
  • Since Sitecore 6.1, the second parameter for the item:sortorderchanged event would incorrectly contain the new sort order instead of the old sort order. (324421)
• Publishing:
  • The PublishingAgent task only published the content tree root node when set to perform a smart or full publish instead of publishing the entire database. (321354)
  • Publish operations would sometimes perform unnecessary republishing of items and fields. (328476)
  • Publish operations cleared the data caches too frequently, including the item and template caches. (328476)
• Security applications:
  • If a user directly or indirectly denied read access for himself to an item in the Security Editor, a message would be displayed stating that "An instance of Sitecore.Data.Items.Item was null". Now, a message will be displayed informing the user that the item may have been deleted by a different user or that he might not have permissions to access the item. (325034).
  • When a user created multiple domains in the Domain Manager in quick succession, Sitecore would sometimes fail with an IOException stating that the process could not access the domains.config file because it was being used by another process. (326727)
  • When editing user profile information in the User Manager, a NullReferenceException would sometimes be displayed when saving if no profile item ID was defined for the user or the domain. (330996)
  • Reverting users from serialization in the User Manager would sometimes leave old properties or role assignments intact. (330006, 330007, 330211)
• Media requests:
  • If an error occurred during the execution of the getMediaStream pipeline, for example due to high server load causing the server to throw an Out Of Memory exception during image scaling, the resulting media stream would still be cached. This would typically mean that the full-size image would be cached and returned for subsequent requests, even if a scaled version of the image had been requested. (320851)
• Lucene search:
  • The _template field in the Sitecore.Search engine was storing GUIDs in a format which breaks CombinedQuery in Lucene, causing searches to fail. The field is now storing GUIDs as short IDs. The search syntax in the quick search is now "_template:76036F5ECBCE46D1AF0A4143F9B557AA" (327705)
  • Several methods in the DatabaseCrawler class have been made virtual to make it easier to override the functionality of the class. The methods are: AddItem, IndexVersion, DeleteItem and DeleteVersion. (330270)
  • Several fields in the DatabaseCrawler class have been made protected instead of private to make it easier to override the functionality of the class. The fields are: _hasIncludes, _hasExcludes, _templateFilter. (327706)
• RSS Feeds:
  • The performance when rendering workflow feeds and content item feeds has been improved. (326691)
  • When clicking a workflow action such as "Submit" in a workflow feed, the action would be executed, but the action page would sometimes trigger one or more JavaScript errors due to a missing reference to the jQuery library. (324273, 329021)
  • RSS feeds could fail with a NullReferenceException if one or more items were referencing an invalid workflow state, for example a deleted workflow state. (322270)
• Package Designer:
  • The Package Designer no longer use double packaging (i.e. generating a zip-file which contains the package.zip file) when that would make the resulting zip-file significantly larger than the "package.zip" file that is stored inside. (316707)
  • When adding items statically or dynamically, the Select Item control in the wizards would not align the information in the Description column correctly until one or more items were expanded. The Description column has been removed from the control. (330057)
• Development:
  • The "Field Editor Button" template has been added to the default insert options for the "Edit Frame Button Folder" template, making it easier for developers to create an Edit Frame and make it open a Field Editor window. (317041)
  • When a user created a new template by right-clicking a template folder and selecting "New template" in the context menu, the new template was created below the currently selected item in the content tree rather than the template folder that the user right-clicked. (321124)
  • When running in Debug mode, the rendering information windows would occasionally display an "Unknown rendering" error message when the user moved the cursor over the green arrows. (325342)
  • When using content dots in the Debugger (by setting WebEdit.Classic to "true"), a JavaScript error would occur when moving the cursor over the green arrows that shows rendering information. (326531)
• Additional system information in the log files:
  • Sitecore will now log the OS version when Sitecore is started to help in troubleshooting. (315517)
  • Sitecore will now log the Windows identity used by the process, including information about process impersonation. (329210)
  • The ShowVersion processor in the <initialize> pipeline will now output the version number of each assembly to help in troubleshooting. (313942)
  • The ShowVersion processor will now by default also show information about the Nexus DLL. (330860)
• Fast Query:
  • Using Fast Query in the Source for template fields would fail with a Sitecore.Data.Query.ParseException. Field sources using the "fast:" prefix will now be parsed and executed correctly. (322845)
  • The Sitecore.Data.Database.SelectSingleItem() method would fail with an exception when using a Fast Query expression. Such queries are now parsed and executed correctly. (322844)
  • Fast Query could return incorrect results if you were using a special attribute (such as @@templatename) as the first condition and a field name attribute as the second condition. (323302)
• Localization:
  • The "Click" field on the /sitecore/system/template/System/Ribbon/Chunk template has been changed from versioned to shared. This fixes a problem with several of the client languages where the Click command had been translated, which would cause the corresponding dialog not to open when clicking the name of the group in the ribbon. (323139)
  • The Section names in the Content Editor are now displayed in the client language, not the content language. (331210)
  • The "Do you want to save changes" dialog in the Content Editor displayed non-English characters incorrectly. (331072)
  • A number of phrases could not be translated in the following areas:
    • The Publish Wizard. (309463)
    • The "Insert" panel in the Content Editor ribbon. (315393)
    • Content Editor field validations. (325674)
    • The Properties dialog that can be opened by clicking the Sitecore logo in the Content Editor. (330985)
    • The WebDAV Drag & Drop window. (330990)
    • The "Nothing found" message that is displayed above the search box in the Sitecore Desktop task bar when no results are found. (331004)
    • The grouping notification in the grid control that is used by several applications, such as the User Manager, the Role Manager, the Locked Items dialog, and the Recycle Bin. (322992)
    • The Access Viewer. (330983)
    • The Control Panel, including some strings in the About dialog. (3209464, 323698)
    • The Analytics Status application. (331002)
    • The Rule Set Editor. (331001)
    • The Installation Wizard. (330993, 331005, 330991, 330991)
    • The Package Designer. (315403, 330984, 330997, 331005)
    • The Developer Center. (330970, 330972, 330976)
• Update Package Installation Wizard:
  • The Update Package Installation Wizard always displayed the package version as 1.0 instead of displaying the version information from the update package. (325797)
  • It has been made easier to select item IDs and item paths in the Analysis Result view. The relevant information will now be selected when clicking an ID or path. (325051)
  • The Update Package Installation Wizard now supports outputting information from post steps. The recommended way to do this is to implement the IUpdatePostStep interface and use the ILog object to output messages. (307858)
  • The Update Package Installation Wizard now supports installing update packages in a new format where files are stored as "real" files in the zip-file rather than being stored as encoded text. (300529)
  • The Update Package Installation Wizard no longer fails when a user tries to install an update package that has been manually unzipped and rezipped: (327262)
    • This allows developers to remove data from an update package or to change item data.
    • Manually adding files to a package is not supported since Sitecore requires special metadata to be present in the update package for files.
  • When installing a package that deletes an item and also removes links to this item from other items, you would get a warning incorrectly stating that the item would not be deleted due to links to other items. (305714)
  • If an update package changed a template field from versioned to shared and also tried to update the field value, the field would sometimes end up with an incorrectly value. (325769)
  • If an update package changed a template field from shared to versioned, you would sometimes not get any warnings or you would get incorrect warnings about the value of the field being different than expected. (318700)
  • If an update package changed a media item template from unversioned to versioned and the media was stored in the database, the media stream would be lost. (302098)
• Miscellaneous:
  • After changing one or more files in the App_Config folder, a number of database events would no longer be processed correctly. This could lead to a number of problems, such as items no longer being added to the PublishQueue or History table and standard values no longer being updated. (323450)
  • Changes to the Sitecore configuration done using include files were not always applied immediately, for example when adding or modifying processors to the initialize pipeline. Now the ASP.NET worker process is automatically restarted when configuration files are changed, ensuring that all configuration changes are applied. (323450)
  • Sitecore would not execute scheduled tasks with the default configuration of the system. This would cause scheduled Email Reminders not to be sent out and items scheduled for automatic archiving would fail to be archived. (318221, 316840)
  • When using IIS7 Integrated pipeline mode, the Sitecore.IntegratedSessionFix.Module would make ASP.NET load the session state for every request, including unmanaged requests for static images and files:
    • The IntegratedSessionFix module is no longer used and should be removed from the web.config file to avoid the overhead of loading session state for unmanaged requests. (326553)
    • To ensure that session state is still loaded for media requests when the media item has OMS tracking information, a new Sitecore.Resources.Media.MediaRequestSessionModule has been added to the web.config. (328238)
  • When using the IIS7 URL Rewrite Module or using performing redirects in custom HttpModules in IIS7 Integrated pipeline mode, a NullReferenceException would occur in the Sitecore.Nexus assembly. (326522)
  • When trying to log in, users could occasionally encounter an error message saying "Guid should contain 32 digits with 4 dashes". This could for example happen when a user that doesn’t use the "Remember me" feature opens a link in a RSS workflow feed. (321258, 321999)
  • Some of the Sitecore DLLs had missing or inconsistent assembly metadata, including information such as company name, copyright, and assembly version number. (320858, 320859, 320857, 320598, 321039)
  • The Interop.Shell32.dll was not used by Sitecore and is no longer distributed with the clean installation. (322811)
  • The /sitecore/admin/cache.html page was showing an incorrect delta for the AccessResultCache. The delta would always be equal to the current size of the cache. (317615)
  • A number of SQL statements related to Fast Query and maintaining the Descendants table were changed in the SQL data provider to make the system perform better when using SQL Server replication. (329922)
  • The Sitecore.Todo class has been marked as obsolete. (323278)
• The clean installation:
  • The clean SQL Server databases contained several fragmented indexes. (321296)
  • A number of items in the core and master databases were locked by sitecore\Admin. (321108)
  • The icons in the description fields on the Sample Rendering item and the "content" Placeholder Setting item would display as broken images. (321238)
  • The SitecoreClientTranslation tool (previously located in the /sitecore/shell/Applications/Globalization/SitecoreClientTranslation folder) is an internal tool and is no longer distributed with Sitecore. (325129)

1.5.  Release History for Sitecore CMS 6.2

Some of the issues described on this page contain internal reference numbers. You can use these reference numbers when communicating with Sitecore about a particular issue or feature.

As part of our commitment to continually improving our software and listening to our customer’s feedback, Sitecore regularly releases new versions of our CMS product. Each release undergoes careful quality assurance procedures to minimize the number of issues.

November 11, 2010

Released Sitecore CMS 6.2.0 rev.101105 (6.2.0 Service Pack-1, originally released as 6.2.0 Update-5).

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

Note: This is a product Service Pack. Sitecore encourages customers to install service packs for any feature release that the customer has installed.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

New features

• A new "ProfileItemDatabase" setting has been introduced which allows developers to specify that Sitecore should read user profile definitions from a different database than the core database. When using a different database, user profile items must still be stored below the following path: /sitecore/system/Settings/Security/Profiles. (329860)

Issues resolved

• Quick search
  • The quick search function treated all criteria as optional search terms, even when editors prefixed a search term with "+" to specify a required search term. (334960)
  • The quick search function in the bottom right corner of the Sitecore desktop will no longer be disabled if the search index for the "master" database has been disabled. Instead, it will be disabled if the "system" search index does not exist. (328875)
• Lucene search
  • The Sitecore.Data.Manager.IndexingManager was marked internal, preventing developers from calling the methods in the class from custom code. (308470)
  • The DatabaseCrawler class only added shared fields to the documents in the index when rebuilding the index, not when reindexing individual items/versions. (333435)
  • The DatabaseCrawler class only added template information to the documents in the index when rebuilding the index, not when reindexing individual items/versions. (333967)
  • After creating an item, the search index would contain two duplicate documents with the same version number instead of a single document. (334864)
  • After updating an item, deleting an item version, or deleting an entire item, the old data would still be present in the Lucene search index and could be returned by subsequent search queries. (334300, 334863)
  • The DatabaseCrawler used different formats to store Guids for different fields in the search index. This made it more difficult to compose certain types of search queries and even prevented searching in some of the system fields. (328863)
  • Calling SearchManager.GetIndex() with the name of an undefined index will now return null instead of throwing a KeyNotFoundException exception. (331540)
  • The DatabaseCrawler did not call the Optimize method on the system index after rebuilding it. (322556)
• Security
  • A potential JavaScript injection vulnerability has been fixed. (333591)
• A number of issues that were resolved in 6.3 Update-2 and 6.3 Update-3 have been merged to 6.2:
  • When trying to render an empty image field, for example by using <sc:image> or a FieldRenderer control, the ImageRenderer class would sometimes throw a NullReferenceException. (333543)
  • The Content Editor would report validation warnings for empty image fields, stating that the field contained broken links. (333927)
  • After installing the updates from Microsoft that address the ASP.NET security issue described in Microsoft Security Advisory 2416728, Sitecore would throw an unhandled “HttpException: Unable to validate data” errors when previously authenticated web client attempted to access the application. Under such conditions, Sitecore will now instruct the web client to discard any authentication cookies that the server cannot decrypt, process the request with the anonymous user context, and write a warning to the log file. (334587)
  • A concurrency issue in the AnalyticsLogger class could occasionally cause the web application to crash due to an unhandled IndexOutOfRangeException when the AnalyticsLogger.Notify(…) method was called from two or more sessions. (330148).  

September 07, 2010

Released Sitecore CMS 6.2.0 rev.100831 (Update-4).

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this version.

Note:  This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

New features

• Media API
  • A new "getMediaCreatorOptions" pipeline has been introduced. This allows developers to specify different MediaCreatorOptions for each request based on the customer's business logic, for example uploading media as versioned media when certain conditions are met. The pipeline is called whenever media is added to the Media Library, no matter if it is done using Upload, Word Fields or a WebDAV view. (324469, 325547)

Improvements

• Word Document field
  • Improved image quality: The Word Document field will now save PNG images instead of GIF images when converting objects such as charts, WordArt and embedded objects to images. (327322, 327505)
  • In the Page Editor, you can now click anywhere inside the Edit Frame rendered by a Word Document field to open the field for editing. (327456, 327505)
• WebDAV
  • The performance of has been improved by using a shorter URL format for opening WebDAV folders, using the unique ID of the folder instead of the full media library path. This causes WebDAV clients to send fewer requests to the server when opening WebDAV folders or working with files via WebDAV. If your applications depend on the old URL format, you can switch back to it by setting the "WebDAV.UseShortURL" setting to "false". (329311, 329352)
  • The ITHit.WebDAV.Server assembly has been updated from version 2.0.2.41 to 2.1.1.108. The new version contains performance improvements and new features. (329317, 329352)
• Lucene (these improvements were already included in 6.3):
  • The _template field in the Sitecore.Search engine was storing GUIDs in a format which breaks CombinedQuery in Lucene, causing searches to fail. The field is now storing GUIDs as short IDs. The search syntax in the quick search is now "_template:76036F5ECBCE46D1AF0A4143F9B557AA" (327705)
  • Several methods in the DatabaseCrawler class have been made virtual to make it easier to override the functionality of the class. The methods are: AddItem, IndexVersion, DeleteItem and DeleteVersion. (330270)
  • Several fields in the DatabaseCrawler class have been made protected instead of private to make it easier to override the functionality of the class. The fields are: _hasIncludes, _hasExcludes, _templateFilter. (327706)

Important changes

• Media
  • The Src and MediaPath properties of the ImageField class have been marked as obsolete and are no longer used by Sitecore when rendering media URLs. The properties will still be kept up-to-date by Sitecore so existing code should continue to work. But it is recommended to change custom code to use MediaManager.GetMediaUrl() in order to generate and output consistent media URLs. (328921, 329086)
• Security API
  • The AccessResultCacheKey.Entity property is no longer used by Sitecore and has been marked as obsolete. (328876, 329086)

• XMLControl debug files
  • By default, Sitecore will no longer write *.cs files with the code for compiled XmlControls to /sitecore/shell/applications/debug and /sitecore/shell/controls/debug during normal operation of the system. A new "XmlControls.OutputDebugFiles" setting has been introduced which can be set to "true" by developers who need the *.cs files for debugging XmlControls. (328554)

Issues resolved

• Analytics
  • When creating a new item based on some of the templates related to Analytics, the "Name" or "Header" field would not be filled out automatically, despite the fact that the __Standard Values item contained the $name token in the relevant field. This was caused by missing references from the template items to the __Standard Values items. This has been fixed for the following templates: (329764)
    • Campaign Event
    • Multivariate Test Variable
    • Page Event
    • Predefined Filter
    • Profile Key
    • Visitor Identification
    • Conditional Rendering Rule
    • Rule
• Performance
  • Excessive locking in the AccessResultCache could cause the website performance to drop when serving many concurrent requests. The excessive locks have been removed. (330197)
• Rich Text Editor
  • The upload button in the Insert Sitecore Media dialog box will now be disabled if the user does not have create permissions to the selected media folder, also when the user selects the Media Library root item. (317873)
• Media
  • The image URLs output by Sitecore was using the Src and MediaPath properties of image fields and did not respect various settings, such as the Media.RequestExtension setting. (328921, 329086)
• Security API
  • The AccessResultCache was storing references to objects instead of only storing the unique ID of the objects as cache keys. This caused the cache to take up more memory than necessary and without reporting the extra memory usage when inspecting cache sizes. Also, the cache would sometimes end up referencing objects that would otherwise have been disposed, thereby keeping them in memory longer than necessary. (328876, 329086)
• Word Document fields
  • When the user closed the Page Editor after changing a Word Document field but without saving the changes, the unsaved text would be displayed in the Word editor the next time a Word Document field was edited. (326431, 327505)
  • After converting a Rich Text field to a Word Document field, some characters would be displayed incorrectly, for example curly quotes and triple-dot punctuation marks. (327455, 327505)
• File Drop Area fields
  • When a user uploaded images or files to a File Drop Area field and Media.UploadAsVersionableByDefault was set to "true", the media items would always be created with a version in the default content language instead of the currently selected content language. (325574)
• WebDAV
  • When a user edited a file in Microsoft Office 2010 via WebDAV, an "Upload Failed – This file is locked for editing by another user" error message would be displayed in the Office application when trying to save the changes. (331135)
  • When a user tried to edit a file using the WebDAV protocol on a site running in Live Mode, an EditingNotAllowedException would occur, thus preventing the user from saving his changes. (327418, 327505)
  • When opening a WebDAV view on a computer running Windows XP, the user would be prompted to enter his username and password, even when the WebDAV.AssociateUsernameWithLink was set to "true". This happened because the operating system was not identified correctly in this case. (327420, 327505)
  • The Created and Updated time displayed for media files in the WebDAV view and other WebDAV clients would be offset by one or more hours. (329309, 329352)
  • When a user uploaded images or files via WebDAV and Media.UploadAsVersionableByDefault was set to "true", the media items would always be created with a version in the default content language instead of the currently selected content language. (325552, 325574)
  • When a user opened a WebDAV view for a versioned image or file in the Media Library, the WebDAV view would always open in the default content language instead of the currently selected content language. (325551, 325574)
  • When using WebDAV to edit and save a versioned media file which is stored on disk, the Path field on the media item would still point to the previous file, causing Sitecore to serve the previous version of the file. (329306, 329305, 329352)
  • After deleting a file from the Media Library, a new file with the same name could not be uploaded to the same location using WebDAV. This was due to the WebDAV locks not being released when a user deleted one or media files. (328518, 329352)
  • When a user uploaded files using the WebDAV protocol, Sitecore would return a 412 Precondition Failed HTTP status code instead of a 200 OK status code on the UNLOCK command. This did not affect the upload functionality but could be observed when monitoring requests using tools like Fiddler. (329294, 329352)
• Development
  • Members of the Sitecore Client Developing role did not have sufficient permissions to modify items in the core database. The role has now been granted language:read and language:write permissions to all languages in the core database, and has been granted write/rename/delete/create permissions for the /sitecore node and its descendants. (329938)
  • The Package Designer would fail with an ArgumentNullException when trying to generate a package which included one or more items which contained Word Document fields. (324847)
• Miscellaneous
  • When using IE8, the "All Applications" menu in the Sitecore start menu would be positioned incorrectly. The menu would extend beyond the border of the browser window, making some of the application shortcuts inaccessible. (311845)
  • When using IE8, the database selector popup which can be opened from the Sitecore task bar would be positioned incorrectly. The menu would extend beyond the border of the browser window, truncating the text of the menu options. (315112)
  • When clicking an item in the content tree, the hourglass icon was no longer displayed next to the item name while the item was being loaded from the server. (328570)
  • When using the IIS7 URL Rewrite Module or using performing redirects in custom HttpModules in IIS7 Integrated pipeline mode, a NullReferenceException would occur in the Sitecore.Nexus assembly. This fix was already included in 6.3. (326522)

 

July 07, 2010

Released Sitecore CMS 6.2.0 rev.100701 (Also known as 6.2.0 Update-3).

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

Note:  This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

New Features:

• It is now possible to use a custom ribbon when loading the Content Editor application. This makes it easier to reuse the application for other purposes.
  • Custom ribbons should be located in the core database, just like the standard Content Editor ribbon. (326732)
  • Custom ribbons are loaded by specifying a "ri" query string parameter with the item ID of the custom ribbon.
  • A quick way to reuse the Content Editor application is to make a copy of /sitecore/shell/Applications/Media/MediaShop/default.html and add the following line (replacing the sample ID with the item ID of the custom ribbon). The second line hides the navigation bar in the bottom of the window so that the user cannot switch to the Content Editor or Workbox:
    url.Add("ri", "{13AD7186-49E8-4605-9286-2059AF2E9A79}");
    url.Add("pager", "0");

Issues resolved:

• Page Editor
  • When creating multiple items in the Page Editor, all items would be created under the same parent. For example when creating an item called "Company" under Home and then trying to create an item called "About" under Company, the item "About" would be created as a child of Home. (322094)
  • The Field Editor escaped single quotes incorrectly. When entering a single quote character in a field in a Field Editor window, the value would be saved back into the field as "-scSQuote,-" instead of the correct character.(320930)
• Security API
  • The system did not check for cyclic role assignments, which could cause the ASP.NET worker process to crash. The system will no longer crash if there are cyclic role assignments. (309080)
  • The system issued duplicate requests to the RolesInRoles provider while resolving access rights to Sitecore items. This may have resulted in unnecessary load on the database containing Sitecore security data. (322685)
• Media requests
  • When the Web client disconnects in process of streaming media data (e.g. the client was disconnected by closing the browser window), Sitecore will no longer write a "Response.Flush attempt failed" error message to the log file. (323138)
• Layouts and renderings
  • Some of the standard Sitecore web controls did not pass parameters (such as Parameters="default-text=No text") to the FieldRenderer. This was a problem in the following controls (328250):
  • sc:Text
  • sc:Link
  • sc:Image
  • sc:Date
• Proxy items
  • When publishVirtualItems was set to "true", the sort order for the virtual items in the web database would be reset during publishing, thus leading to wrong sort order of the items on the web site. (320946)
• Localization
  • A number of phrases could not be translated in the following areas:
    • The Edit User dialog (323013, 323007, 323035)
    • The validation results report. (325016)
    • Field validator messages. (325071)
    • The "Edit" button on the Workflow group of the Content Editor ribbon. (315391)
    • Some strings in the grid control that is used in several applications, such as the User Manager, the Role Manager, the Locked Items dialog, and the Recycle Bin. (330021, 322992, 322993)
  • It is now possible to localize the placeholder names that are displayed in the left pane of the Page Designer by creating a Placeholder Settings item and setting a display name for it.(327801)
• Miscellaneous
  • JavaScript errors would sometimes occur when using the Package Designer, the Device Editor, or the Create Template wizard. (329361, 329950, 329481)
  • When receiving an invalid authentication cookie (which may occur when switching between Sitecore instances in the IIS or when running a load balanced setup where each web application uses different machine keys), Sitecore would sometimes throw a "CryptographicException: Padding is invalid and cannot be removed" error and return a "500 Server Error" response to all requests hitting the web server. The CryptographicException will still be written to the log file to inform about improper configuration, while all requests passing invalid cookies are processed under the context of Anonymous user. (320777)
  • The web.config file contained an obsolete reference to a "sc:feedItem" XSL control. This would cause an error message to be written to the log file whenever Sitecore started. (322896)
  • The /xsl/system/RssRenderer.xslt file was not used by Sitecore and has therefore been deleted. (322896)
  • The Update Package Installation Wizard was failing to install packages with versioned media items correctly. After installation, the media items would be present, but the actual media would be missing for all language versions. (327643)

May 26, 2010

Released Sitecore CMS 6.2.0 rev.100507 (Also known as 6.2.0 Update-2).
Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this version.

Note:  This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

New Features:

• Analytics:
  • The system is now configured to automatically discard requests that come from robots, based on the user agent strings (the list of user agent strings has been collected from http://iplists.com). Additional user agent strings and/or IP addresses can be configured by modifying the "/App_Config/Include/Sitecore.Analytics.ExcludeRobots.config" file. Custom logic for excluding robots can be implemented by adding additional processors to the new <excludeRobots> pipeline in the Sitecore.Analytics.config file.

Important changes

• The list of recently edited items in the Content Editor is no longer persisted between sessions. This improves the performance of the client when using security providers such as the Active Directory or CRM provider.

Issues resolved

• Analytics
  • The OMS global session cookie which is used to keep track of returning visitors was using an absolute expiration date instead of sliding expiration.
  • When trying to use "SQLServer" session state mode, you would get an exception with the following message: "Unable to serialize the session state".
    Note: This issue was only partially fixed. As a consequence of this, Sitecore OMS currently only supports the ASP.NET InProc session-state mode (see the Sitecore OMS session-state mode known issue for details). [Updated August 03, 2011].
  • Conditional renderings that were using profile keys in the conditions were not behaving as expect if the profile keys had been updated during the current request.
  • When using the scheduler to automatically sending reports as e-mails, the "Classify" and "Subscribe"/"Unsubscribe" links in the report e-mails did not work correctly.
  • When opening any Analytics report, the navigation controls would sometimes indicate that several pages were available, even if the full report was rendered to the client as one document.
  • The data in the Latest Sessions report did not change after applying a "where" filter, such as "where specific pages was visited".
  • Applying any of the following filters to a report would cause the report to fail with an error message:
    • "where the visitor used browser"
    • "where visitor is from specific city"
    • "where longitude/latitude of the visitor compares to specific value"
    • "where user is from specific region" filter
    • "where visitor is from specific area code"
    • "where the visitor uses specific ISP"
    • "where the visitor came fro referring site"
  • If the Analytics.EMailFromAddress did not contain a valid email address, the system would fail with an error when trying to subscribe to reports. Now, a message will be displayed to the user and an error message will be written to the log file.
• Potential security vulnerabilities
  • If an XSLT error occurred on the site, the error control would reveal stack trace and server paths to any user. The error control will now use the value of the standard .NET customErrors web.config setting:
    • On: Never display XSLT exceptions
    • Off: Always display XSLT exceptions
    • RemoteOnly: Don't display XSLT exceptions for remote requests, only for local request or if the user is a member of the Sitecore Client Developing role
  • The /sitecore/admin/unlock_admin.html page is now disabled by default. The page can be enabled by changing the value of a variable in the aspx file, thereby ensuring that only people who have access to modify files on the server can enable the page.
  • The Sitecore login page now uses encryption when storing and retrieving the most recently used user name from the "sitecore_username" cookie.
  • A new "Login.RememberLastLoggedInUserName" setting has been added to the web.config file, since some customers consider it a security vulnerability that we store the user name of the previous logged in user in the "sitecore_username" cookie. If you set this to false, the system will not create a "sitecore_username" cookie during login and the user name field on the login page and change password page will always be blank.
  • A number of Sitecore's XAML controls contained potential cross-site scripting vulnerabilities.
  • The following aspx pages below /sitecore/shell did not require the user to log in: "Validator.html" and "SitecoreClientTranslation.html".
  • A couple of pages in the /sitecore/admin folder did not require login (ShowConfig.html, SizeStatus.html, Restore.html).
  • Unprivileged authors could get access to a number of applications and dialogs in Sitecore if they knew the URL of the applications. 
  • A number of additional, non-critical security vulnerabilities have been fixed. The customers and partners that have reported these problems have been informed. 
• Editing content
  • The toolbar below inline fields in the Page Editor would sometimes have one or more buttons missing from the toolbar when two nested controls both were adding commands to the toolbar.
  • When using the spell checker button on the Review tab, any changes to the content of rich text fields would be discarded when the item was saved. 
  • The "Remove version" button on the Versions tab in the Content Editor will now be disabled if the user does not have delete permissions to the item.
• Rich Text Editor
  • The upload button in the Insert Sitecore Media dialog box will now be disabled if the user does not have create permissions to the selected media folder.
    Note: This issue was only partially fixed. The upload button is not disabled for the Media Library root item, even if the user does not have write permissions. This was fixed in 6.2 Update-4. [Updated September 07, 2010].
  • HTML entities such as "®" entered into the "Edit HTML" view of the rich text editor would incorrectly be converted to "®" if the user saved before switching back "Design". 
  • When a rich text field contained a html entity such as "®", the validation reports would report that the field contains invalid XHTML, although the entity is valid.
• Word Document field
  • Previously edited text from a different item would sometimes be loaded into Word instead of the field value of the current item when editing a Word Document field. 
  • After changing the field type from "Word Document" to "Rich Text", the affected field values would be rendered incorrectly on the website until each item had been edited and saved. The field values are now output correctly as rich text in this situation. 
• Media API
  • A new setting called "Media.MediaLinkPrefix" has been added to the web.config file (together with a related <mediaPrefixes> section below the <mediaLibrary> section. This makes it possible to make Sitecore use different media prefixes than "~/media". 
    • Using a different media prefix such as "-/media" can improve performance when handling media requests. The performance increase might not be significant in all server setups, since it is related to the internal way that IIS and Windows checks security for paths to physical files.
  • When the LinkProvider's languageEmbedding property was set to "always" or "asNeeded", the media API would throw exceptions internally when URLs started with "/~", for example "/~/media". The exceptions would not show up in the Sitecore log file, but could be traced by using tools such as WinDbg.
  • It was not possible to use IIS7 Output Caching for Sitecore media requests due to the media streams being flushed during streaming. Enabling it is however not recommended since doing so may cause negative side effects, as described in the known issues section (see ASP.NET caching for media and  ASP.NET Output Caching). [Updated May 18, 2011].
  • Requesting a media item using a non-existing database name in the "db" query string parameter will now redirect to the Not Found page instead of showing an error message.
• Development
  • When specifying key-value pairs in "Additional Parameters" for a rendering or a sublayout in the Control Properties window, the parameter values would be encoded instead of being saved as-is, thus preventing developers from specifying HTML tags or text containing HTML special characters in parameter values.
• Security API and security applications
  • The performance of the Security Editor and Access Viewer has been improved in IE8.
  • The load time for the User and Role Manager has been improved by avoiding a redundant call to the security provider when loading the grid.
  • Domain names were treated as case sensitive when logging in to Sitecore.
  • The login page will no longer transfer the webroot path to Sitecore as a query string parameter when loading the SDN page with browser information.
  • When creating a new user, a misleading error message would be displayed in the dialog box if no email address was provided.
  • After creating a new user, the User Manager would sometimes display an incorrect total number of users in the footer. This problem was reintroduced in 6.2.0 rev. 091012 and has now been fixed in a different way.
  • Searching in the User Manager would sometimes display an error message when using the Active Directory provider or custom security providers.
  • The number of calls to the security providers has been reduced by no longer persisting the list of recently edited items in the Content Editor between sessions. This improves the performance of the client when using security providers such as the Active Directory or CRM provider.
  • The performance of the User Manager has been improved for non-Administrator users. The API is now using paging when retrieving the list of users that non-Administrators have access to work with.
  • Trying to create or edit users from domains that are handled by the Active Directory provider or custom security providers would sometimes cause the User Editor to fail with an error message.
  • The SwitchingProfileProvider was distributing calls to GetPropertyValues and SetPropertyValues to all security providers, which would sometimes result in wrong properties being returned or set. The provider will now only distribute calls to the provider that handles the user's domain.
  • Custom user properties were always being serialized and saved into the SerializedData property, resulting in unnecessary calls to the security provider when none of the custom properties had been modified.
  • The API was sending unnecessary requests to membership providers when searching for users. The API will now check if the membership provider handles a specific domain before asking the membership provider for users in that domain.
• Miscellaneous
  • The Settings class contains a "DataProviderTimeout" property which can be changed by adding a "DataProviderTimeout" setting to the web.config file (it is not present by default). Adding this setting would, however, cause the ASP.NET worker process to crash due to infinite recursion. 
  • Some of the background jobs that update links in Sitecore would be run with Thread.CurrentPrinicipal set to "sitecore\Anonymous" instead of the user that initiated the background job. This could result in the "Update by" field being set to the anonymous user instead of the user who for example moved or renamed an item. 

January 20, 2010

Released Sitecore CMS 6.2.0 rev.100104 (Also known as 6.2.0 Update-1).

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

Note:  This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

New Features:

• A new <filterItem> pipeline has been added.
  • This pipeline can be used to override how item filtering works when running in Live Mode.
    Notice that the pipeline is only meant for site-level and/or language-level filtering and cannot be used for situations where you for example want to return different results based on the current user (due to the way the results are being cached in the FilteredItemsCache)

Improvements:

• The performance of the Content Editor has been improved. This is most notable for editors who have low bandwidth.
• The Health Monitor now outputs the instance name for each counter in the Sitecore log file to make it easier to correlate the log files with the output from Performance Monitor.
• The Health Monitor now supports monitoring the Sitecore-specific performance counters in addition to the Windows and CLR performance counters.
  • When adding Sitecore performance counters to the HealthMonitor, you must specify instanceType="Sitecore". For example:
    
    <counter category="Sitecore.Caching" name="CacheMisses" instanceType="Sitecore"/>
• When reverting serialized users, the password will no longer be reset to the default password for exisiting user account. The user account will simply be updated with the serialized information instead of being deleted first.

Important changes:

• API changes
  • The PublicFeed.GetRssDevice() method was not used and has been removed.
• The Health Monitor now requires you to specify an instanceType when defining which performance counters that should be monitored in order to differentiate between different types of performance counters.
  • The possible values for the instanceType parameter are "Windows", "CLR", "Sitecore". Examples:
    
    <counter category="Process" name="Private Bytes" instanceType="Windows" />
    <counter category=".net CLR Memory" name="# Bytes in all Heaps" instanceType="CLR" />
    <counter category="Sitecore.Caching" name="CacheMisses" instanceType="Sitecore"/>

Issues Resolved:

• Analytics
  • The session report would show a blank histogram for profiles that were using the "Average" type.
  • A number of reports have been updated to escape HTML in URLs. This has been changed in order to avoid potential cross-site scripting vulnerabilities.
  • After duplicating a campaign, an exception would sometimes occur the first time the user saved any changes to the duplicated campaign events.
  • The Analytics Reports were compiled every time they were rendered, which would slowly use up more and more memory since compiled reports are newer released from memory. Now, reports are only recompiled after they have been changed.
  • Timestamps in the PageEvent table were saved in UTC instead of using the server's time zone.
  • The SubmitTestVariables.SubmitTestVariable() method called the InsertMultiVarianceTestVariableCampaignEvent with the parameters in the wrong order.
  • Campaign events and Multivariate test variables were not registered in the Analytics database – even if the definitions existed in the Sitecore database. Now, Sitecore will copy the definitions to the Analytics database in such cases and correctly register the events.
• Editing content
  • Line feeds were lost from Multi-Line Text fields if the item were saved when showing raw values in the Content Editor.
• IE8
  • IE8 (with the latest Microsoft updates installed) would sometimes crash when accessing various types of fields when the item was protected or if the user did not have write access to the field. This applied to security fields, iframe fields, and rich text fields.
  • When using IE8, you would sometimes experience slow performance and high CPU load when using the Security Editor and Access Viewer.
• RSS Feeds
  • The RSS Feed Design dialog would present the user with an error message if the item had presentation details assigned and a __Standard Values item already existed for the associated template.
  • If you specify a source on a feed definition item which is not a path or an item ID, the PublicFeed.GetSourceItems() method will try use Sitecore query instead. In such cases, a warning message is now output to the log file. To avoid the warning, you should prefix such sources with the "query:" prefix.
• Security API and related applications
  • The Select Account dialog box now uses server-side paging, making the dialog faster to open even when the system contains large amounts of users or when using the AD or CRM security providers.
  • An InvalidCastException exception would sometimes occur when the system tried to access the IsAdministrator property for the current user. [Updated May 17, 2011].
• Development
  • XSLT renderings would work with the latest version of the current item, even when Sitecore.Context.Item had been set to a previous version.
  • Programmatically changing the Context.Device in the HttpRequestPipeline did not work as expected. The assigned Context.Device would be ignored when Sitecore later resolved the layout.
  • The following methods in the WorkboxForm class has been made "protected virtual" to make the class easier to override: DisplayWorkflow(), DisplayStates() and DisplayState().
  • The RenderField pipeline did not process rendering parameters such as “default-text” and “show-title-when-blank” correctly, causing such parameters to be ignored when specifying them in the Parameters attribute of a FieldRenderer web control. [Added May 11, 2010]
• Installation
  • The setup.exe registered the Sitecore performance counter categories incorrectly.
• Oracle support
  • When using the setup.exe to install on Oracle, the installation would fail if the Oracle client selected in Sitecore did not correspond to the one in the path.
  • The setup.exe would always use "Data Source=XE" in the ConnectionStringsOracle.config file, even when a different Oracle instance name was specified as part of the installation.
  • The setup.exe no longer fails if SQLPlus is not present on the target system.
• Miscellaneous
  • The Favorites and Links buttons in the ribbon did not work.
  • The Health Monitor would sometimes throw an exception when trying to update the system's performance counters after one or more running sites on the server had been restarted or stopped.
  • The MemoryMonitorHook would sometimes report an InvalidOperationException and fail to load on content delivery servers without a 'core' database.
  • The dialog box workflow comment dialog box will now display a warning to the user if the maximum comment length of 2.000 characters is exceeded.
  • The login page no longer transfers an "iisname" query string parameter to the iframe that displays "Browser Notes" from SDN.
  • A potential cross-site scripting vulnerability has been fixed on the notfound.html page.
    Sitecore Corp. wants to give credit to SEC Consult for the discovery of this vulnerability and for their cooperation.
• Changes to the web.config and other configuration files
  • A new <filterItem> pipeline has been added.
  • An instance type is now specified for each performance counter that the Health Monitor watches.

October 21, 2009

Released Sitecore CMS 6.2.0 rev.091012 (Initial release).

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

Note:  This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

New Features:

• Sitecore client RSS feeds for items in workflows
  • Content item feeds allow editors to subscribe to any changes that are made to an item in Sitecore, as long as the item is subject to a workflow.
  • Workflow feeds allow editors and managers to subscribe any changes that are made to items in a specific workflow or workflow state.
  • For more information, see the "Content Author's Cookbook", the "Client Configuration Reference" and the "Content API Cookbook".
• Built-in support for syndicating items using the RSS format.
  • This feature is described in the "Content Author's Cookbook", "Presentation Component Cookbook", and the "Content API Cookbook".
• WebDAV support in the media library
  • When WebDAV is configured, editors can take advantage of Drag and Drop media management in the media library, as well as editing files directly on the server. (Internet Explorer only)
  • Editors will typically need to change their browser's configuration to be able to use the WebDAV feature, as described in the "Configuring Internet Explorer Reference" which contains mandatory client configuration instructions.
  • It is strongly recommended to read the documentation, before deciding whether to use WebDAV or not. WebDAV support has some limitations, such as IE8 not supporting WebDAV for localhost and WebDAV requiring the application to use <authentication mode="None"> in the web.config file.
  • WebDAV requires the IIS to be configured according to the IIS version and operating system, as described in the WebDAV documentation.
  • For more information, see the "WebDAV Configuration" and the "Content Author's Cookbook" documents
• A new File Drop Area field type has been introduced
  • File Drop Area fields can be used to attachment media and files to the current item using Drag and Drop (requires WebDAV to be configured).
  • Sitecore will release a shared source component for rendering File Drop Areas on the website.
• A new Word Field has been introduced
  • Word Fields allow editors to edit content using Microsoft Word. The typical use case is to use Word Fields as an alternative for rich text fields when editing content on intranet solutions.
  • You must have Microsoft Word 2007 installed on your computer to edit Word Fields in Sitecore.
  • Word Fields are only supported on Internet Explorer 7 and later and requires installation of an ActiveX the first time a Word Field is edited. Please refer to the "Internet Explorer Configuration Reference" which contains mandatory client configuration instructions.
  • Notice that the HTML is generated by Word and will not be valid XHTML. Cleaning the HTML can be done by adding custom processors to the <word.parseDocx> pipeline.
  • Limitations: Some advanced features in Word are not supported or the resulting output might differ from the Word document, such as using columns, text boxes, cross references, page background colors, etc.
  • For more information, see the "Content Author's Cookbook".
• Analytics
  • A new sampling feature makes it possible to configure the system to only collect data for a percentage of visitors. This can be useful on sites with huge amounts of visitors. The feature is configured with the new "Analytics.Sampling.Percentage" setting in the Sitecore.Analytics.config file.
• Improved IIS7 support
  • Sitecore can now run in IIS7 application pools that are using the "Integrated" pipeline mode without applying any workarounds. At the same time, most of the known issues related to "Integrated" pipeline mode have been resolved (except from one related to using custom login pages).
• Sitecore's theme icons are now stored in zip-files.
  • To reduce the number of files in a Sitecore installation, Sitecore's theme icons are now stored in zip-files (one zip-file for each top-level folder). Only the icons in use will be extracted and cached in the /temp folder.
  • The result of this change is faster installation and less time spent on file operations when copying or moving Sitecore installations. However, starting the Sitecore client and applications for the first time will take slightly more time while the icons used by Sitecore are extracted and cached to disk.
  • If you have hard-coded references to icons in your code or CSS, you must update these references to use the new ~/icon prefix (for example "/~/icon/Applications/16x16/businessmen.png") or extract these icon files to disk.
• Sitecore is now distributed with a number of icons that are having a Windows 7-look instead of an XP-look.
  • The icons are located in the zip-files that use a "V2" suffix (such as "ApplicationsV2.zip"). Icons that are similar to the existing icons use the same file names as the existing icons (such as "businessmen.png").

Improvements:

• Installation
  • A new "Simple" installation mode is available for making an installation with the typical settings, using Microsoft SQL Server as the database provider.
  • A number of issues in the setup.exe installation program have been resolved.
• Analytics
  • Clicking subscribe/unsubscribe in reports no longer work as a toggle. Instead, If you click subscribe multiple times for the same company in the same report, you will now get the option of unsubscribing or staying subscribed.
• The configuration of the SQL Server databases in the clean distribution has been changed to follow best practices
  • The default compatibility level is now set to SQL Server 2005 instead of 2000.
  • Some of the databases contained consistency errors related to table usage.
  • Auto Close and Auto Shrink are now set to "False" for all databases by default. Notice however that SQL Server Express editions have their default value for Auto Close set to "True" and will set this value for newly attached databases which requires you to manually set it back to "False".
  • ALLOW_PAGE_LOCK is now set to ON for all indexes in all databases, making it possible to rebuild indexes using maintenance plans.
  • The databases no longer contain two users called 'sdn' and 'sitecore'.
• Development
  • The Template Builder no longer resets the sort order of fields and fields sections. It only assigns a new sort order to fields and field sections that have been moved, all other fields and field sections maintain their original sort order.
  • The ChildList class now implements IEnumerable<Item>, making it possible to iterate over ChildLists using LINQ.
  • The IDTable class has a new GetKeys(string prefix) method which allows you to retrieve all IDTable entries associated with a prefix. This is useful for cleaning up obsolete or unused entries.

Important Changes:

• Installation
  • For now, the setup.exe does not support configuring the system to use SQLite. If you want to use SQLite, you must perform a manual installation using the zip-archive or install using SQL Server and then reconfigure the solution to use SQLite.
• Renamed files
  • The /App_Config/Security/Domains.config.xml file has been renamed to Domains.config to prevent the files from being accessed in clear text.
  • The /App_Config/Security/GlobalRoles.config.xml file has been renamed to GlobalRoles.config to prevent the files from being accessed in clear text. 
• The /indexes folder has been moved
  • The /indexes folder is now by default located below the /data folder instead of the webroot. This is recommended to avoid potential security issues, but also solves a problem where IIS7 might restart during package installation or index rebuilding.
• Breaking API changes
  • The data layer of the Analytics API has been changed to use providers to access the database. This has introduced a number of breaking API changes, including removing the built-in support for LINQ.
  • Also, a number of smaller breaking changes have been introduced into the Analytics API to make it more consistent, such as renaming AnalyticsManager.GetSession(aspNetSessionId) to AnalyticsManager.GetSessionByAspNetSessionId(aspNetSessionId).
  • The Sitecore.Kernel.dll contained a Sitecore.Linq namespace and a Sitecore.SitecoreDataContext class which have now been removed. The LINQ support was experimental and could not be used in CMS 6, since it referred to non-existing schemas and tables.
  • The Authentication.TicketTimeout setting has been deprecated. Use Authentication.ClientPersistentLoginDuration instead.
• Important changes to the default web.config settings
  • By default, Sitecore is now configured to use <authentication mode="None"> in the web.config file. This is required for WebDAV to work correctly. The WebDAV functionality will not work if using the "Forms" authentication mode.
  • The default ItemNameValidation has been changed to enforce item names that are valid when using WebDAV.
• Analytics: Campaign reports
  • The campaign reports have been changed so that campaigns and related goals are only counted/listed when triggered on the first page request in a session. Subsequent visits in the same session to pages that have associated campaigns will not be counted as a campaign visit.
• User Manager
  • The performance of the User Manager has been improved again after 6.1 Update-1 had removed a previous optimization.  This fix will, however, re-introduce the problem that the User Manager in certain situations, for example after creating a new user, will display an incorrect total number of users in the footer.

Issues resolved: 

• Analytics
  • Most of the templates related to Analytics now use a $name token so that the "Name" or "Header" field automatically will be filled out when creating a new item.
  • Most of the reports would have broken data sources inside the report after saving them, due to an error in the Report Designer which strips line breaks instead of converting them to whitespace.
  • The various reports that have a "Classify" link or which filter by classification was only taking classification by Business into account, not classification by IP Address, DNS, User Agent or This Visitor.
  • The campaign-related reports would sometimes give an incorrect count of campaigns and subsequently triggered goals. Now, campaigns are only counted/listed when triggered on the first page request in a session. 
  • The subscription task background job would sometimes fail after one or more users had subscribed to any sessions.
  • Events, goals and profile key values were not inserted into the Analytics database if the database had been reset – even if the definitions existed in the Sitecore database. Now, Sitecore will copy the definitions to the Analytics database in such cases and correctly register the events.
  • In the Marketing Center, the insert options for "/Marketing Center/Personalization/Predefined Conditions" now contain the "Conditional Rendering Rule" template instead of the "Rule" template.
• Editing content
  • All Sitecore client users had access to change the insert options for items and templates by clicking the name of the "Insert" chunk in the ribbon. This link is now only available for users who has access to the Assign Insert Options dialog from the "Configure" tab.
  • The Sitecore Client Authoring role was allowed to insert from template. Now, only Administrators and members of the Sitecore Client Maintaining role will have access to this option.
  • After deleting an image in the media library and choosing to update all references to point to a different image, any references to the deleted image inside rich text fields would not be replaced with the new image.
• Page Editor
  • You no longer need to save the page after inserting an image into an image field before you can open the Image Properties dialog.
  • Trying to open the Image Properties dialog when working in a non-English content language would sometimes display an error message stating that the item could not be found, even when the field referenced a valid image. 
  • The Image Properties dialog displayed the Default Alternate Text in English, even when using a different content language.
  • When inserting images into the rich text fields, the ALT text from the Media Library was taken from the client language, not the content language.
• Preview
  • When opening Preview from the Presentation tab in the ribbon, the preview window would sometimes not reflect the most recent changes to the item.
  • Trying to switch the preview device could result in an error message being displayed at the top of the page instead of the ribbon.
  • After logging out of the Preview client and from the login page manually typing an item URL such as http://localhost, you would sometimes be redirected back to the login page again.
• Publishing
  • When executing Publish Single Item on an item that had not yet been published, the item's subitems would be published as well.
• Media Library and media requests
  • Handling media requests using the 404 handler did not work as expected due to the target media item not being resolved correctly.
  • Sitecore was sending unnecessary requests to the database in relation to media items and blobs, leading to unnecessary database roundtrips and a small performance overhead even on a fully cached site. Calls to SqlServerDataProvider.BlobStreamExists() are now cached.
• Localization
  • Some of the Content Editor warnings could not be translated.
  • A couple of typos have been fixed.
• Security API and related applications
  • Roles assigned to a virtual user were persisted between sessions. This has been fixed, but roles will still be persisted for the same session, even when creating a new virtual user.
  • Roles assigned to a virtual user could not be removed again.
• Development
  • The "Links" panel in the ribbon did not show referenced and referred items for templates.
  • Changing the field type of a template field would not take effect until Sitecore was restarted.
  • A JavaScript error would occur in the Debugger when trying to show or hide the ribbon. 
  • When using Integrated pipeline mode with IIS7, the Debugger would sometimes not start. Instead, the website was opened and an error message written to the log file. Now Debug works correctly.
• Miscellaneous
  • After deleting an item, the item information was not removed from the Lucene search index.
  • The usage count for templates was not decremented when deleting items based on the template.
  • The insert options for "/sitecore/system/Settings/Rules/Item Deleted/Rules" and "/sitecore/system/Settings/Rules/Version Removed/Rules" now contain the "Rule" template instead of the "Insert Options Rule" template.
• Changes to the web.config and other configuration files
  • A number of pipelines have been added in relation to the new features in this release.
  • A number of pipeline processors have been added to existing pipelines to resolve issues and to support new features.
  • A new customHandler has been added for serving RSS feeds.
  • A number of httpModules and httpHandlers have been added to support WebDAV and RSS feeds.
  • An httpAuthentication section has been added for use with the WebDAV feature.
  • Several new web.config settings have been added.
  • A number of new commands have been added to the Commands.config file.
  • Two new field types have been added: Word Document and File Drop Area.
  • For the full list of configuration file changes, please refer to the "web.config changes" page on SDN.
• The clean installation
  • The Sample Item template now use a $name token, so that the Title automatically will be filled out when creating a new item based on the template.
  • The default "Sample Rendering.xslt" file contained a for-each loop outputting the names of the subitems. This for-each loop has been removed.
  • The "/sitecore/shell/Security templates.xml" file is obsolete and has been removed from the clean installation.
  • The /sitecore/admin folder contained a number of files for internal Sitecore usage. These files are no longer present in the clean installation: CompareSubtrees.html, DumpIndex.html, Reflect.html, SizeTester.html, UnitTestLogin.html, UnitTestCacheClear.html.

1.6.  Release History for Sitecore CMS 6.1

Some of the issues described on this page contain internal reference numbers. You can use these reference numbers when communicating with Sitecore about a particular issue or feature.

As part of our commitment to continually improving our software and listening to our customer’s feedback, Sitecore regularly releases new versions of our CMS product. Each release undergoes careful quality assurance procedures to minimize the number of issues.

November 10, 2009

Released Sitecore CMS 6.1.0 rev.091029 (Also known as 6.1.0 Update-3).

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

New Features:

• Analytics:
  • It is now possible to retrieve the global session record for a specific user from the Analytics database using the newly introduced AnalyticsManager.GetGlobalSessionIdByCookieValue(string cookieValue) method which returns a GlobalSession object.
  • It is now possible to update the global session record in the Analytics database using the newly introduced AnalytcisManager.UpdateGlobalSession(GlobalSession globalSession) method which returns the number of database records affected.

September 4, 2009

Released Sitecore CMS 6.1.0 rev.090821 (also known as 6.1.0 Update-2).

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

New Features:

• Analytics
  • Added support for specifying a custom sort order for Page Events when registering them using the API. If you intend to use custom sorting, you should generally provide a custom sort order for all relevant events (on a page request basis) to make them show up in the correct order. 

Improvements:

• The performance of the DatabaseCrawler which updates the search index in the background has been improved. This is most notable for solutions with many languages and/or many versions in each language.  

Issues resolved: 

• Analytics
  • Some of the reports, such as the "Latest Human Sessions" report would open as a blank report in the Report Designer.
  • Profiles and profile keys were not registered properly until the .NET worker process was restarted.
  • The Analytics reports would display error messages when using the "Random" multivariate test strategy.
  • The Campaign summary report would sometimes show a horizontal scrollbar, but scrolling to the right would not bring the toolbar buttons into view.
  • The names for the Marketing Center and Sitecore Analytics applications were wrong in several client languages, except Danish and English. 
• Editing content
  • Users that were logged in to the stand-alone Content Editor interface and who were inactive for long periods of time would sometimes not be able to log off from the Content Editor interface or use the Publish Site/Publish Item buttons.
• Page Editor and Preview
  • After renaming an item in the Page Editor, you would sometimes get a “The requested document was not found” error message.
  • After logging out of the Page Editor, you would sometimes get a “The requested document was not found” error message.
  • Sometimes changes to text fields would not be saved in the Page Editor when the user had started to edit the field by making a text selection and then starting to type.
  • Switching from Preview to the Page Editor could result in various problems, including inline editing not being available, green content dots disappearing and the Design pane throwing an exception. The problems were related to the user context being reset to extranet\Anonymous.
  • A JavaScript exception could occur in the Page Editor when nesting editable fields inside a link in XSTL, for example when using a construct like <sc:link field="Link"><sc:text field="Title"/></sc:link>.
• Security API
  • AccessResultCache was not cleared automatically after changing the ownership of an item.
  • IsUserInRoleCache was not cleared automatically after removing a role from a user.
• Media requests
  • An exception might appear in the Sitecore log files for media requests when the Web client disconnected in process of streaming media data or during high server load.
    Notice: This issue was not completely resolved, and is still reproduced under certain circumstances. See the known issue for more information. [Added March 12, 2010]
  • Media requests would sometimes fail due to the browser sending an invalid "If-Modified-Since" header.
• Search
  • An error could occur when using the Quick Search and the search string contained escape characters.
  • Using Index.Search(searchString, database) to perform Lucene queries no longer worked as intended because the Search method incorrectly closed the searcher. Notice that using Index.Search is not recommended in solutions that might experience heavy load. Instead, it is recommended to instantiate your own IndexSearcher and to close it when done).
• Update Installation Wizard
  • The Update Installation Wizard no longer requires .NET 3.5 SP1 to be installed.
  • Analyzing an update package would sometimes show different messages than when installing the package.
  • In certain circumstances, not all files and subfolders would be backed up when an update package contains instructions for removing a folder.
  • When installing packages that change a field from "versioned" to "shared" into a solution where the field is already "shared" could cause the contents of the field to be removed.
• Localization
  • The "Rules" field will now display the defined rules in English as a fallback if the rule names have not been translated to the current client language.
  • The "Create a New User" and delete confirmation dialogs contained phrases that could not be translated.
• Miscellaneous
  • An error would sometimes occur on the login page if Sitecore was running in an application pool that is configured to use IIS7 Integrated pipeline mode.
  • The Factory.GetDatabase(string) method returned null when an invalid database name was supplied, despite the method having a [NotNull] signature.
  • Custom code inserted into sublayouts using <% %> would no longer work after saving the sublayout in the Developer Center.
  • Duplicate instances of Sitecore caches would sometimes be created after changing files in the /App_Config folder. This would in certain circumstances lead to out of date field values being returned from the API.
  • During high server load, the Content Editor may sometimes receive the error message "Multiple controls with the same ID were found".
    Notice: This issue was not completely resolved and may still occur in some circumstances. See the known issue for more information. [Added May 25, 2010].
  • Out of memory issues could occur during heavy load due to Sitecore’s file watchers creating redundant threads each time a new HttpModule was being initialized.
  • Sitecore's file watchers did not increment the ThreadingCounters.BackgroundThreadsStarted performance counter.

August 6, 2009

Released Sitecore CMS 6.1.0 rev.090722 (also known as 6.1.0 Update-1).

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

Improvements:

• Analytics
  • The session report has been modified so that if a page event text is available, the event name will no longer be appended in the output, giving more control over the text displayed in reports.
  • It is be possible to use the <sc:VisitorIdentification runat="server" /> web control without having to manually register it in each layout file.
  • Newly created layouts will now contain a <sc:VisitorIdentification runat="server" /> web control by default.
  • Profile values associated with a goal will now be used to update the user's profile when the goal is triggered.
  • Two new method overloads are available in the AnalyticsPageExtension namespace for registering events for form fields changes and form submissions.

Issues resolved:

• Editing content
  • The DatePicker would sometimes throw an exception when the user's regional settings were set to "en-US".
  • When editing an internal link, the Insert Link dialog box would open with the Home item selected instead of the item currently being linked to.
  • After executing a workflow action on an item, the security permissions for that item would sometimes be resolved incorrectly.
• Page Editor and Preview
  • Publishing restrictions would not be taken into account when using the Preview client in a multisite solution.
  • When creating items using the Page Editor, a version would be created in the client language instead of the current content language.
  • The Page Editor did not save modifications to a field if the new field value in the content language was equal to the current field value in the client language.
  • When deleting an item with subitems in the Page Editor, a "Do you want to refresh the page" dialog would be displayed multiple times.
  • Switching to Preview or Debug from the Page Editor would sometimes lead to a "Requested document not found" error in the iframe containing the Page Editor ribbon.
  • When editing Multi-Line Text fields in the Page Editor, embedded newlines would be removed when saving the page.
• Analytics
  • Newly added goals would not be tracked until the ASP.NET process had been restarted.
  • The session report did not sort events by timestamp.
  • When multiple events were triggered for the same request, they would sometimes be registered with the same timestamps.
  • The names for the Marketing Center and Sitecore Analytics applications were wrong in the Danish language.
  • A sample connection string has been removed from the "AuthoringFeedback.mrt" report file.
  • When clicking "Save" on a report, some of the file format names were truncated.
• User Manager
  • The Edit User dialog could not be closed if the User template contained one or more read-only properties, even if nothing was changed in the dialog.
  • Read-only properties in the Edit User dialog were not disabled for editing.
  • After creating a new user, the User Manager would sometimes display an incorrect total number of users in the footer.
  • Restoring serialized users would not restore all the roles assignments.
• Development
  • When creating a new template, a version would be created in the client language instead of the currently selected content language.
  • When using the Developer Center to insert web control on a layout or sublayout, duplicate "xmlns:sk" (or similar) attributes would sometimes be added for the control.
• Media
  • An error would occur when uploading a file if the filename contained dashes and had the same length as a GUID.
  • An error would occur if requesting a media item if the filename contained dashes and had the same length as a GUID.
• Miscellaneous
  • Virtual users would not retain their properties and roles between requests.
  • The system would sometimes try to parse normal dates as iso dates, leading to error messages such as " Error in 'IsoDateToDateTime'. Input: 4/7/2008" in the log file.
  • When filterItems was set to "false" for a site definition, code executed in that site context would sometimes return items from the master database instead of the database associated with the site.
  • The HealthMonitor would sometimes throw an exception when trying to update the system's performance counters after one or more running sites on the server had been restarted or stopped.
    Notice: This issue was not completely resolved, and is still reproduced under certain circumstances [Added October 7, 2009].
  • The Update Installation Wizard no longer hides the "Existing packages" field when the file upload field is non-empty.

June 30, 2009

Released Sitecore CMS 6.1.0 rev.090630 (also known as the initial 6.1.0 release).

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 downloads page for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

New features:

• Online Marketing Suite support
  • Sitecore 6.1 adds support for the Sitecore Online Marketing Suite. Notice that some of the application icons like "Marketing Center" and "Sitecore Analytics" will be visible for Administrators, even when Analytics is not installed or enabled.
• Page Editor
  • The Page Editor now supports inline editing when using Firefox 3.
  • A new Field Editor application is available as a part of the Page Editor, allowing developers to make one or more fields editable in a pop-up window using the familiar Content Editor interface.
  • A new Edit Frame control is available for use in the Page Editor. Edit Frames allow developers to create actions related to a region of the page and can also (when used with the Field Editor) be used to make complex field types such as Multilists and Droplist editable in the Page Editor.
• Development and extensibility
  • A new Rules engine has been introduced. By default, the engine is used by Sitecore for conditional renderings, conditional insert options and some conditional item event handlers.
  • It is now possible to create templates that are used when editing parameters for renderings and sublayouts. All the standard Content Editor controls can be used.
  • It is now possible for the developer to specify on a rendering or sublayout that the "Control Properties" window should be opened after a user adds the control using the Page Designer or Presentation Details.
  • A new <getQueryState> pipeline allows developers to programmatically disable or hide any button or panel in the Content Editor ribbons without having to override the individual commands.
  • A new <getPlaceholderRenderings> pipeline allows developers to filter the renderings to be shown in the "Associated Renderings" dialog. Also, it is possible to change the application used for selecting renderings.
  • The <sc:date> xsl control and the associated DateRenderer class now supports a "culture" parameter to render dates using a specific culture, such as "en-US".
• Serialization
  • It is now possible to serialize and revert users, roles and domains.
  • The serialization API now raises events when creating or deleting files and folders on disk. The events are named "serialization:filecreated" and "serialization:filedeleted".
• Miscellaneous
  • A new Update Installation Wizard is included in Sitecore 6.1 for installing future product updates.
  • The Sitecore login page now has a "Remember me" checkbox.

Improvements:

• The Sitecore login screen has been redesigned to make it easier to use.
• The visual style of the /sitecore/admin/serialization.html and /sitecore/admin/login.html page has been updated.
• Performance of security providers has been improved by caching profile properties and the results of User.IsUserInRole() calls.
• The client has been updated with Danish translations.
• If the MailServer web.config setting is blank, Sitecore will now use the standard ASP.NET settings (typically specified using the <mailSettings> element in the web.config file).   

Issues resolved:

• Security API and related applications
  • Restricting access to the Desktop application was only enforced on the login page, not when the user typed /sitecore after being logged in.
  • Users in locally managed domains can no longer configure or delete global roles.
  • Users in locally managed domains can no longer see users from other locally managed domains.
  • Field permissions could not be denied by denying inheritance for one or more roles.
  • The Security Editor would sometimes show an error message when applying security to virtual items or their source.
  • The SwitchingMembershipProvider would sometimes wrap a user twice, making it more challenging to write custom membership providers.
• Page Editor
  • Improved flow for creating new content. An "Insert" button is now available in the Page Editor toolbar for all users, both when browsing the site and when editing pages.
  • The Page Editor no longer locks items that are being edited by members of the "sitecore\Sitecore Minimal Page Editor" role. If one or more items are locked when the user attempts to save, a warning message will be displayed.
  • The Calendar pop-up used will now display time in AM/PM format (depending on the editor's regional settings in Sitecore).
  • The Page Editor would sometimes save the default text "[No text in field]" into the field value when editing items with empty fields.
  • The default text "[No text in field]" will be displayed in the page language, not the client language.
  • The <sc:link> xsl control will now display "[No text in field]" if the link field is empty. This is only supported when using the <sc:link … /> syntax, not when embedding text or tags inside a <sc:link></sc:link> tag.
  • The Description field on sublayouts and renderings is now versioned, making it possible to translate the text that is displayed when adding renderings and sublayouts.
  • Command Templates were not executed when using the Insert dialog in the Page Editor.
  • It is no longer required to add a definition for a custom field type to /App_Config/FieldTypes.config for the associated WebEditButtons to be displayed in the Page Editor.
  • The QueryState method is now called for edit frame buttons, making it possible to hide such buttons programmatically.
  • Clicking the text of date field when in edit mode would sometimes result in a JavaScript error on the page.
• Page Designer
  • The Page Designer would display some buttons and controls in the site language, not the client language.
  • If a placeholder contained a single presentation control, it was not always possible to remove the control.
  • If a rendering was associated with a placeholder using the "Placeholder" field on the rendering definition item, it would not show up in "Associated Controls" for that placeholder in the Page Designer.
• Media Library and media links
  • The hostname was not included in media links, even when alwaysIncludeServerUrl was set to "true" on the linkProvider definition in the web.config file.
  • The "Media.UploadAsVersionableByDefault" web.config setting was not always enforced when uploading files to the media library.
  • Image fields which pointed to an invalid media path were not always reported as broken links.
  • The Media Manager no longer show hidden folders and hidden media items.
  • When downloading or detaching the file associated with a media item, the media associated with the latest version would always be downloaded or detached.
  • Cancelling media uploads by calling args.AbortPipeline() in the uiUpload pipeline was not working.
  • Setting the "Media.MaxSizeInDatabase" web.config setting to a non-integer value resulted did not work. Such values are now parsed correctly, but the fractional part will be ignored.
• Preview
  • Publishing restrictions would sometimes be ignored when using Preview in a multisite solution.
• Publishing
  • In certain circumstances, the descendants of items in workflows would not be published when using incremental publish.
• Oracle Data Provider
  • Calling Item.Duplicate() could result in an error message when using the Oracle Data Provider.
• Extensibility
  • Several methods in the WebEditRibbonForm class have been made protected virtual to make it easier to override the class.
  • It is now possible to inherit from and override the following classes in the Sitecore.Xml.Xsl namespace: DateRenderer, ImageRenderer, InternalLinkRenderer, LinkRenderer, LinkUrl, MediaUrlParameters.
• Dependencies on the "website" site
  • After deleting an item in the Page Editor, a "Page not found" error would be displayed if no "website" site existed.
  • The Preview and Page Editor buttons would not be available in the Page Editor if no "website" site existed.
  • The treecrumb in the Page Editor would not work correctly if no "website" site existed.
  • Trying to preview an item from the Content Editor would result in a "Document not found" error if no "website" site existed.
• Miscellaneous
  • Log files would sometimes be reused after the ASP.NET process had been restarted, making it difficult to examine log files. Now a new log file with a timestamp will always be created when an old log file exists.
  • A "License not found" error would occasionally be displayed to the first requests after the ASP.NET process had been restarted.
  • Updating the Lucene index would sometimes fail during high server load, with an error message about the index files being used by a different process.
  • Package installation would sometimes fail on the first attempt without logging any errors in the log file.
  • The performance counters used by Sitecore would display aggregated values for all running Sitecore instances, making it difficult to correctly monitor values like memory usage.
    Notice: This issue was not completely resolved, and is still reproduced under certain circumstances [Added October 7, 2009].
  • The debugger did not work for extranet users, even if they were member of the appropriate Sitecore Client roles.
  • The <sc:image> xsl control would sometimes output parameters in the image URL (href) that were not explicitly specified on the <sc:image> tag.
  • Developer Center: When using the "Code" view, CTRL+S didn't save the changes.
  • Missing templates would not always be reported in the log file.
  • When creating items from the "Insert" drop-down menu (not the panel itself), an empty Context.Items collection would be passed to the Execute method of the command.
  • Commands associated with Command Templates would sometimes be executed twice when inserting items based on such a branch.
  • The WebUtil.ParseUrlParameters method has been corrected to parse URL encoded strings like "First&Second=1" into two entries "First" and "Second=1" instead of a single entry.
  • The Page Editor and Developer Center were referring to an non-existent JavaScript file, causing "File does not exist" application error messages to be reported in the log file when running Sitecore using Visual Studio's built-in web server.
  • IE6:Exporting a language and downloading it could result in an invalid language file being downloaded.
  • In the core database, navigating to /sitecore/template/System and other template folders would result in an error message being displayed.
  • The Package Designer no longer saves a "debug.txt" file in the /temp folder when the application is opened.
• Changes to the web.config file
  • Event handlers and pipeline processors related to the Rules engine and Field Editor have been added.
  • Pipeline processors related to item locking and clearing caches have been added.
  • The clean web.config now contains a description of the following attributes, which can be used for <site> definitions:
    • loginPage
    • defaultDevice
    • enableAnalytics
  • An enableAnalytics="false" attribute have been added to the following site definitions:
    • "shell", "login", "testing", "admin", "modules_shell", "scheduler", "system", "publisher"
  • A new "Authentication.ClientPersistentLoginDuration" setting has been added ("Remember me" feature).
  • A new "Caching.IsUserInRoleCacheSize" setting has been added (security caching).
  • A new "Caching.UserProfileCacheSize" setting has been added (security caching).
  • A new "WebEdit.DefaultButtonPath" setting has been added (Edit Frame feature).
  • A new "Preview.DefaultSite" setting has been added (used by the Preview  application).
  • The default value for the "MailServer" web.config setting is now an empty string. 

1.7.  Release History for Sitecore CMS 6.0

Some of the issues described on this page contain internal reference numbers. You can use these reference numbers when communicating with Sitecore about a particular issue or feature.

As part of our commitment to continually improving our software and listening to our customer’s feedback, Sitecore regularly releases new versions of our CMS product. Each release undergoes careful quality assurance procedures to minimize the number of issues.

May 22, 2009

Released Sitecore CMS 6.0.2 rev.090507 (also known as 6.0.2 Update-1).

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 Updates section for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

Issues resolved:

• In some circumstances, site visitors who were not members of the "sitecore\Sitecore Client Users" role were able to view unpublished content.
• In some circumstances, security would be ignored for the first request after an ASP.NET restart, meaning that a site visitor without appropriate access rights could be able to view secured pages.

IE8 Cosmetic Issues:

• The username and password fields were not properly positioned on the Sitecore Login page.
• The Desktop, Workbox and Preview options on the Advanced Login page were not properly aligned with the other User Interface buttons.
• Unnecessary scrollbars were present in Rich Text Editor fields when IE8’s Compatibility Mode was enabled.

April 28, 2009

Released Sitecore CMS 6.0.2 rev.090416.

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 Updates section for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

New features:

• Support for Oracle Databases added. To install Sitecore with Oracle, follow instructions in the Sitecore CMS Installation Guide, Chapter 5: Oracle Database Storage Setup.

Improvements:

• The clean installation now comes with a number of sample "include files". The examples are located in the /App_Config/Include folder.

Issues resolved:

• The profile provider would sometimes return null instead of string.Empty for empty profile properties. This could lead to a error in various applications, for example when opening the "Regional and Language Options" in the Control Panel or when creating or opening renderings in the Developer Center.

March 24, 2009

Released Sitecore CMS 6.0.1 rev.090317 (also known as "6.0.1 Update-1").

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 Updates section for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

New features:

1. A new 'defaultProfileItemId' attribute has been added for <domain> definitions in the domains.config.xml. DefaultProfileItemId is typically used when using external security providers where the users in the domain do not automatically have a Profile associated with them.
2. A new MaxItemNameLength web.config setting was introduced, making it possible to change the maximum length of item names. The default value is 100 characters.

Issues resolved:

1. Fixed: When using dynamic image scaling, the right and bottom edge of the image would sometimes appear cropped.
2. Fixed: Improved performance in the User Manager when switching between pages.
3. Fixed: Links created by using the DropTree fields type were not added to the link database. As a result, such links were not shown in the "Links" pane on the "Navigate" tab in the Content Editor.
4. Fixed: Virtual items from external databases could not be opened in the Content Editor if the template they were based on did not exist in target database. An unhandled exception would appear.
5. Fixed: When setting publishVirtualItems to 'true', the virtual items would be published without any versions.
6. Fixed: When setting publishVirtualItems to 'true', the virtual media items would be published with an empty value in the Media (Blob) field.
7. Fixed: An exception might appear in the Sitecore log files when the Web client disconnected in process of streaming the media data (e.g. the client was disconnected by closing the browser window).
   Notice: This issue was not completely resolved, and is still reproduced under certain circumstances. See the known issue for more information. [Added March 12, 2010]
8. Fixed: When the IIS application pool was configured to run using a non-standard user account Identity, a System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException might occur, preventing Sitecore from working.
9. Fixed: Creating items with Danish symbols "æøå" or other unicode characters in the item name was not possible, even if the unicode characters had been added to the ItemNameValidation setting.
10. Fixed: Publish worked incorrectly when proxiesEnabled = false, publishVirtualItems = false for master database and proxiesEnabled = true for web database. The virtual items would be removed from the web database during publishing, thereby deleting them from the source database.
11. Fixed: The SwitchingProfileProvider no longer throws an error when editing users where different user profile properties are stored by several different profile providers.
12. Fixed: Profile properties from custom profile provider could end up being saved as core profile provider properties, not as custom profile provider properties.
13. Fixed: Sitecore Packager could silently fail when experiencing an error during installation, only reporting the error in the log file, not in the Installation Wizard.

February 13, 2009

Released Sitecore CMS 6.0.1 rev.090212 (also known as "Service Release-1").

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 Updates section for instructions describing how to download and install this release.

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

New features:

1. It is now possible to organize layouts, sublayouts and renderings into folders, using the new Layout Folder, Rendering Folder and Sublayout Folder branches.
2. Danish translations are added into Sitecore 6.0.0.

Improvements:

1. Packager performance is improved when installing packages.
2. Increased performance when executing Assert statements in the core DLLs.
3. New XSLT renderings no longer define a $home variable which can result in a slight performance increase. Instead, comments are included in the file with examples of different syntax for defining a $home variable.
4. SQL Server databases: An index has been added to the Blobs table for the 'master' database to increase performance of retrieving media.

Issues resolved:

1. Page Editor
   • Lock/Unlock functionality in the Page Editor: The Page Editor now takes the AutomaticLockOnSave setting from the web.config file into account when saving. Automatic unlocking in the Page Editor is controlled by setting security on the /sitecore/system/Settings/Security/Policies/Page Editor/Keep Lock After Save item in the core database.
   • By default, the Page Editor will no longer keep items locked when an Administrator user saves an item. To keep items locked after saving for Admin users, set the KeepLockAfterSaveForAdminUsers setting in the web.config to "true".
   • Switching from Preview to the Page Editor could result in various problems, including inline editing not being available, green content dots disappearing and the Design pane throwing an exception. The problems were related to the user context being reset to extranet\Anonymous.
   • If the user navigated away from a page where he did some changes in an image field in inline editing mode, he would not be asked to save the changes and the changes would be discarded.
   • When starting the Page Editor from the login page, it would be opened for the default site even when the host name of another site was specified in URL.
   • The Page Editor and Preview client would start on the Home item from the current site definition instead of the StartItem. This could in some cases lead to a "document not found" page when a user tried to start the Page Editor or Preview from the login page.
   • The treecrumb in the Page Editor showed hidden items.
   • The Page Editor did not work correctly with extensionless URLs when a 404 error handler such as "/sitecore/404.html" was configured in the IIS Manager.
   • Changes to renderings in the Design pane would not always be saved if a layout only had renderings assigned to a single device.
2. Security API and related applications
   • Editing users in the User Manager no longer remove roles from the user and assign them again.
   • Nobody could login to Sitecore after user with ^ or | in his password tried to login. Application restart was necessary.
   • Calling sc:UserInfo(string) in an XSLT rendering would return no information or throw an exception for certain user property fields.
   • The password could not be changed for users converted from Sitecore CMS V5.3.
   • An "intranet\Anonymous" user was present even though there was no "intranet" domain defined.
   • The "Full name" column in the User Manager did not show the full name when using the Active Directory security provider.
   • The legend in the Access Viewer has been changed to say "Not specified" instead "Inherited".
   • In the clean installation, the Client Language and Regional ISO Code is now set to "Default" for the "sitecore\Admin" user.
3. SQLite
   • The SQLite security provider did not allow users from other security providers to be added as members of the default roles.
   • Nested roles were not shown on the "Member Of" tab in the User Manager.
   • Archive and Recycle Bin application would fail.
   • Uploading media items did not work correctly if the ASP.NET account did not have access to the c:\temp folder.
4. Developer Center
   • When closing a layout with unsaved changes in the Developer Center, an exception could occur if answering "Yes" in the confirmation window about saving changes.
   • The Grid Designer would not always save changes when used from the Content Editor.
   • The Grid Designer now shows a warning if the Path field of the layout is empty instead of throwing an exception.
   • An error could occur when in the Grid Designer when splitting a table vertically.
   • An error could occur when saving a layout after switching between Design and Grid view.
   • When starting the Page Editor inside the Developer Center, the window tab no longer says "WebEdit".
5. Item Serialization
   • After template with __Standard Values filled with some field values was serialized and removed the Update tree command in the Content Editor might throw an exception.
   • The Serialize Item command in the Content Editor did not work for Media (Blob) field of media items. As a result of this, this field could not be deserialized.
   • Serializing a tree with many levels or very long item names might throw an exception.
6. Cosmetic Issues
   • The validator bars in the Content Editor were not visible if "Prefetch collapsed sections" was disabled in Application Options and "Standard Fields" was turned off. Also, borders would be missing around fields in with this configuration.
   • Minor UI fixes for the Package Designer. The "New" menu was not closed after creating a new package and some of the date pickers displayed two combobox arrows.
   • Minor UI fixes for Firefox.
   • Various minor UI fixes, such as missing or unnecessary scrollbars.
7. Changes to the web.config file
   • The default value for the MemoryMonitorHook Threshold setting in the web.config file has been increased to 800MB.
   • The default settings for the MemoryMonitorHook in the web.config file has been changed to avoid decreasing performance on servers where Sitecore reaches the MemoryMonitor.Threshold limit.
   • The LayoutNotFoundUrl setting in the web.config file had an incorrect value.
   • The DictionaryFolder key in the web.config file had an incorrect value.
   • An obsolete fastCache section has been removed from the web.config file.
8. XSLT Renderings and Sublayouts
   • sc:image control sometimes threw an error if the image field was empty.
   • asp:login control did not work when placed on a sublayout.
   • Controls which do post back would not work correctly when placed on a sublayout with cache settings applied.
   • Paths starting with "~" in ASCX were output literally instead of being transformed relative to the webroot.
   • Using XSLT variables as parameters for Sitecore's XSL Controls did not work.
   • XSL Rendering Caching section was available only when Standard Fields was enabled.
9. Link Database
   • TreelistEx fields were not included into link database.
   • The "Sample Item" template could not be deleted due to dead links in the link database.
   • Dead links are now removed when running the "Clean up databases" application.
10. Publishing
    • Publishing items with empty fields would incorrectly use the standard value for the published item if the "Reset blank" checkbox was checked for the field definition.
    • For items containing multiple versions, changes to unversioned and shared fields would not always be published.
    • If an item contained any broken links it could not be published.
11. Miscellaneous
    • The Database.GetItem() and ItemManager.GetItem() functions may occasionally return null when the site is under heavy load. This can cause problems when searching for existing Sitecore items. [Added July 21, 2009]
    • Using query in field sources did not work.
    • The item cache could return wrong results for sites where filterItems="true".
    • Item count in the Media Library included hidden items.
    • Hidden items were displayed in the right-hand pane of the Media Browser.
    • Setting a background color for the Sitecore Desktop did not work.
    • Changes to the current user's icon in the control panel would not be reflected in User Manager.
    • Decimal values entered into number fields were reported as being invalid when using a culture that does not use "." as decimal symbol.
    • When copying an item without any English versions to another location, an English version would be added.
    • The login page would sometimes show a misleading message on failed logins.
    • The wrong folder would be opened in the File Explorer after clicking the Up button and then double clicking any folder to open it.
    • The Installation Wizard would sometimes skip items when the items to install already existed in the solution.
    • Right clicking the ribbon in the Content Editor no longer show tabs that are restricted using security.
    • The Device Editor did not show folders created from the Node template.
    • An obsolete "Image has validation path" validation rule has been removed from the 'master' database.
    • The Media.StreamPartiallyCachedFiles setting in the web.config file did not work.
    • Specifying an invalid type for "Subitem sorting" would not always log an error in the log file.
    • The log file contained warnings about the 'Logging.AuditsLogged' performance counter not existing on the server.
    • The log file would sometimes contain unnecessary BrokenLinkValidator errors related to TemplateSection.GetField().
    • SqlException "transaction was deadlocked" would sometimes occur when copying or changing a large amount of items.

January 30, 2009

Released Sitecore CMS 6.0.0 Update rev.090120 (also known as “Update-9”).

Please visit the appropriate Sitecore CMS 6 Updates section for instructions describing how to download and install this update.

Note: This is a product Update. Sitecore recommends upgrading to this release when the fixes included in this release meets specific needs of your organization. If this release does not include specific fixes that your organization requires, you may benefit by waiting until Sitecore releases a Service Pack for this series before upgrading. This is especially true in production environments.

To learn more about Sitecore’s versioning system, see the Sitecore Versioning Policy page.

Change log.

Issues resolved: 

1. Fixed: Web sites which leverage AJAX features could receive JavaScript errors.

December 29, 2008

Released Sitecore CMS 6.0.0 Update rev.081222 (also known as “Update-8”).

This version is no longer available.

Change log.

Issues resolved: 

1. Fixed: XSL renderings occasionally failed under high load with many concurrent users and reported “A rendering error occurred: Xsl file could not be processed” in the Sitecore log file.

2. Fixed: Media items could not be stored in a content infrastructure that was more than three folders deep, because item IDs were used as folder names for media storage on disk, which resulted in file paths that exceeded the maximum allowed by Windows.

3. Fixed: When switching from Preview to Page Editor, inline editing would no longer be available (and Green Dots would disappear if showing content dots). This is still an issue if Sitecore is running on Vista and the editors use IE7 & IE8.

December 09, 2008

Released Sitecore CMS 6.0.0 Update rev.081203 (also known as “Update-7”).   

This version is no longer available.

Change log.

Issues resolved: 

1. Fixed: Installation wizard didn’t install files marked to skip if exists.

2. Fixed: XSL renderings might fail occasionally under high server load.

3. Fixed: Creator-Owner role might be ignored when resolving access rights.

October 29, 2008

Released Sitecore CMS 6.0.0 Update rev.081022 (also known as “Update-6”).   

This version is no longer available.

Change log.

Issues resolved: 

1. Fixed: Uploading files did not work if the Flash 10 player was installed.

October 17, 2008

Released Sitecore CMS 6.0.0 Update rev.081009 (also known as “Update-5”).   

This version is no longer available.

Change log.

Issues resolved: 

1. Fixed: Cross site links were not working as expected. Such links now include the hostname of the target site and are generated relative to the start item of the target site. This functionality can be disabled by setting Rendering.SiteResolving to “false” in the web.config file.

2. Fixed: a selected Publishing Target of an item was not taken into account when performing Publish operations.

3. Fixed: The performance of item creation has been significantly improved.

New features:

1. The FastQueryDescendantsDisabled setting has been added to the web.config file. It may be set to true to disable the ability to use fast query to select items through Ancestors/Descendants axes. This will give a small performance increase of item creation/moving/deletion.

October 9, 2008

Released Sitecore CMS 6.0.0 Update rev.081002 (also known as “Update-4”). 

This version is no longer available.

Change log.

Issues resolved: 

1. Fixed: When running Sitecore in virtual environment, the .NET worker process might stop working due to a problem in Microsoft’s .NET implementation.

2. Fixed: Sitecore required Flash for upload to work. The old upload dialog box will be used if Flash is not installed.

3. Fixed: Sitecore would display an error message when an Administrator tried to save changes to an item that was locked by another user.

4. Fixed: Despite setting <setting name="AutomaticLockOnSave" value="true" /> in web.config, items were not locked on edit if Standard Fields were displayed.

5. Fixed: Despite setting <setting name="AutomaticLockOnSave" value="false" /> in web.config, items were locked after editing if Standard Fields were not displayed.

September 18, 2008

Released Sitecore CMS 6.0.0 Update rev.080912 (also known as “Update-3”).

This version is no longer available.

Change log.

Issues resolved: 

1. Fixed: The Sitecore Client Authoring role had been assigned all access rights for the /sitecore/content item, which gave all content authors more access rights than intended.

2. Fixed: A runtime error could occur when a user attempted to select a workflow command to move an item from one state to another.

3. Fixed: Despite restricting access to an item in a specific workflow state, the “Edit” button was still enabled and allowed users to edit the item.

4. Fixed: The AccessResultCache was not always cleared after an item was moved to another workflow state, which could result in inappropriate access rights assigned to the item.

5. Fixed: The Page Editor Edit mode attempted to open the contentStartItem of the Shell Web site, rather than the startItem of associated Web site, which caused editing issues in multi-site installations.

6. Fixed: The ComponentArt grid control used in the User Manager initialized itself multiple times, causing slower than necessary startup performance in sites with many thousands of users.

August 29, 2008

Released Sitecore CMS 6.0.0 Update rev. 080820 (also known as “Update-2”). 

This version is no longer available.

Change log.

Issues resolved: 

1. Fixed: stability issues occurred with .NET 3.5 SP1 installed.

2. Fixed: items in a workflow were not automatically versioned when users edited them in the Page Editor mode.

3. Fixed: the media cache grew even when the link to a media library entry had the same query string parameters as the previous one.

4. Fixed: in some cases, deadlocks could occur during the recycling/restoring of items.

5. Fixed: Sitecore CMS could hang if the ‘Subitems Sorting’ definition in the Type field referred to a non-existent class or .dll file.

6. The performance of the ItemSerializer was increased.

7. Fixed: The SQL generated for fast query could not be customized when implementing new data providers.

July 14, 2008

Released Sitecore CMS 6.0.0 Update rev. 080701 (also known as “Update-1”). 

This version is no longer available.

Change log.

Issues resolved:

• Fixed: if the back-end was accessed using the http://[hostname]/sitecore/shell URL, running the Sitecore desktop applications could result in errors. 

June 30, 2008

Sitecore CMS 6.0.0 rev.080627 is released.

This version is no longer available.