Orchard Core updatesAdd an option for inherited text alignment in the Flow PartWhen nesting multiple widgets, you need to align each one by hand if you want to deviate from the default (justify). If the container widget is set to text-align:left, the inner widgets should follow that unless otherwise stated. To solve this, Redzep Redžepi added a 5th alignment option (inherit) that can be selected as the new default for widgets. Widgets with that align setting should inherit the text-align value from their parent widget (or their parents' parents in case of multiple-level nesting).

Orchard Core updatesAdd documentation for the Menu tag helper and Liquid shape renderingIf someone files a good issue, meaning it was described correctly with the necessary details, we can ask Copilot to implement it. In this case, Copilot generated the documentation in the suggested location, and it rendered a screenshot of what the documentation will look like once the change is merged. And finally, it updated the pull request with the final result. So, we have an idea of what the change will look like after we merge the pull request.

Enter LibManMicrosoft Library Manager lets you install and consume 3rd-party client-side libraries with ease. They aren’t kidding, it’s just a JSON file and an extra NuGet package import, and you get the desired files from jsDelivr or UNPKG at build time. You might recognize this is very similar to what our Lombiq Node.js Extensions offer, but there are some key differences:

Orchard Core updatesFluid 2.30.0Fluid 2.30.0 has been released with several fixes and improvements, and this one is the version that's currently used in Orchard Core v.3. Let's see some of the changes here!

Translating LINQ to SQL: caching, nullability and other deep topics from EF's query pipelineThe first presenter of the day was Shay Rojansky. He talked about the EF internal query architecture, caching, and performance, and showed us some tricky cases of LINQ to SQL translation. He highlighted why EF's job is harder than ORMs in other languages. He mentioned that C# captured variables (closures) are your way of asking for SQL parameterization. He showed us how to translate equality, which can be challenging given SQL's 3-valued logic. In SQL, NULL can generally be understood as "unknown". Therefore, NULL = NULL isn't true (like 3 = 3), it's NULL. NULL evaluates to false in WHERE.

Announcement of the Winner of the Jean-Thierry Kéchichian Community AwardAt the end of 2023, our good friend, Jean-Thierry Kéchichian, a truly extraordinary member of our community, unexpectedly passed away. To honor him, keep his memory alive, and foremost, inspire people to do good work for the community, we launched an award named after him for exceptional community members. Before the Keynote, we announced the Winner of the Jean-Thierry Kéchichian Community Award. Every year, the community votes on who has done the most for Orchard Core and thus who we can bestow the Jean-Thierry Kéchichian Community Award. The winner of this award for this year is Mike Alhayek! Congratulations to Mike, and thanks for his code contributions, help with issues, discussions, and everything else!

Shoogr is a clean and modern marketing website built for Hungarian marketing strategist and coach Judit Sugár, whose main audience includes solo founders and small businesses. The site was developed and this blog post was written by Márk Bartha, one of the longest-serving team members at Lombiq, as part of his freelance work.

Orchard Core updatesImprove FlatPositionComparer performanceThis change introduces significant performance and correctness improvements to the FlatPositionComparer class, which is used to compare and sort position strings in Orchard Core. The main modifications optimize string handling by reducing allocations, improving normalization and comparison logic, and adding comprehensive benchmarks to measure their impact.