De stabiele versie 8.0.0 van Drupal is uitgebracht. De eerste bèta van Drupal 8 werd eind september 2014 aangekondigd op de DrupalCon in Amsterdam en beloofde een standaard responsive omgeving waardoor Drupal-sites beter geschikt moeten zijn voor mobiele browsers. Daarnaast ging ook de hele themes engine op de schop. Ook is html5 nu breed geïmplementeerd en is de Views-module geïntegreerd.
Het versiesysteem is ook aangepast met de komst van de nieuwe versie. Elke zes maanden moet er een nieuwe versie komen, als in 8.1, 8.2, etc. Aan Drupal 8 is ruim vier jaar gewerkt. De lijst veranderingen is te lang om hier te plaatsen, maar de wijzigingen zijn op verschillende plekken te vinden, zoals de change records, de changelog en de release notes.
Enkele belangrijke wijzigingen:
Significantly improved the front end:
- Made all built-in themes responsive.
- Added support for responsive images.
- Made built-in tables responsive with three levels of column importance.
- Added Twig as the default template engine and converted all .tpl.php templates and theme functions to .html.twig.
- Removed the PHPTemplate engine.
- Several large scale cleanups of the markup produced by Drupal.
- Added Classy as a base theme to maintain CSS classes and wrappers.
- Added Stable as the default base theme to maintain backwards compatibility for core template and CSS changes, because templates and CSS outside Stable can be improved in minor releases (8.1.0, 8.2.0, etc.).
- Redesigned several key elements of the Seven theme.
- Added support for HTML5 elements.
- Included Backbone.js and Underscore.js JavaScript frameworks.
- Updated to jQuery 2.1.4.
- Updated to jQuery UI 1.11.4.
- Removed jquery.bbq.
- Removed the Garland theme from core.
- Removed the Overlay module from core and replaced it with a simple, dynamic "Back to site" link.
- Improved the asset library system to manage CSS and JavaScript files and their dependencies. Allowing for smaller AJAX request payloads.
- jQuery is no longer loaded on all pages, only when another asset needs it.
- No JavaScript is loaded at all for anonymous users by default, for faster page loads.
- Implemented SMACSS-style categorization for CSS files.
- Removed most support for Internet Explorer 8 and below.
- Added Modernizr for making styling changes based on browser support.
- All page template variables converted to blocks (title, breadcrumb, branding, etc).
- Added the Breakpoint module to manage breakpoints of responsive designs.
- Introduced native Schema.org output in pages.
- Made use of semantic HTML 5 tags when possible. This also makes form inputon mobile devices much easier for users.
- Redesigned icons to look good on high resolution (retina) displays too.
Made the site administration experience simpler:
- Redesigned the installer.
- Visually updated and extended the Seven (administration) theme.
- Made the administration toolbar responsive and touch friendly.
- Added search to the module listing and made the page easier to read.
- Added the tour module to provide highly contextual tips for UI elements.
Improved the entity system:
- Added a full CRUD API for entities.
- Improved the field API and entity query API.
- Added support for widgets, formatters, and translation to base entity fields (such as labels).
- Made view modes configurable for reusable display variants.
- Introduced form modes for reusable form variants.
- Added ability to handle a "default" revision that may not be the latest.
- All content entity types (custom blocks, terms, comments, etc.), not just
- nodes, have support for revisions.
- Database schema of content entities is automatically generated based on entity type and field definitions.