Kentico Xperience 13 Refresh 10: Blockbuster or Flop?

Kentico Xperience 13 is a robust and versatile digital experience platform designed to empower businesses in delivering exceptional online experiences. With a focus on ease-of-use and scalability, it offers a comprehensive suite of tools for content management, e-commerce, marketing automation, and customer engagement.

The platform enables seamless integration with various technologies, allowing organizations to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. Key features include advanced personalization, multi-channel content delivery, powerful analytics, and support for headless architecture. Kentico Xperience 13 provides a unified solution for creating, managing, and optimizing digital content, making it an ideal choice for businesses seeking to enhance their online presence and drive growth.

Refresh 10 introduces exciting new features to the Media Library, allowing users to seamlessly upload and preview SVG and WebP images. Users can now conveniently adjust the properties of these images and effortlessly integrate them into their content through the Rich Text widget in the WYSIWYG editor or via a media selector. This enhancement streamlines the process of handling cutting-edge image formats, making it easier than ever to enrich your content with dynamic visuals.

Now what are these terms SVG and WebP and how are they gaining popularity? Let's find out!

SVG is an XML-based vector image format used to display two-dimensional graphics on the web. Unlike traditional raster formats like JPEG and PNG, which use pixels to represent images, SVG uses mathematical equations to define shapes and lines. This allows SVG images to be infinitely scaled without losing quality, making them ideal for responsive design and high-resolution displays. SVG graphics are resolution-independent, smaller in file size, and can be edited with basic text editors or specialized vector graphics software.

WebP is a modern image format developed by Google that provides superior compression and quality compared to traditional formats like JPEG and PNG. It uses both lossy and lossless compression techniques, resulting in smaller file sizes without significant loss of image quality. WebP images load faster, reduce bandwidth consumption, and contribute to improved website performance. Additionally, WebP supports features like transparency and animation, making it a versatile choice for various web applications.

Here are some of the features that you should look for in Kentico Xperience 13 Refresh 10:
•    Media libraries and page attachments now support SVG and WebP formats for image files.
•    You can upload SVG and WebP images in the administration interface and use them in various image selectors on the live site.
•    However, SVG and WebP files are not compatible with the built-in image editor and do not support automatic generation of image thumbnails or resizing through the resizing API.
•     To use SVG and/or WebP files in an existing project, you need to allow and configure their file extensions in the settings:
•    In Settings → Content → Media → Media file allowed extensions
•    In Settings → System → Files → Upload extensions
•    In the allowed extension settings of individual image selector fields, such as the AllowedExtensions property of the Media files or Attachment selectors for page builder components.
•    Also, configure the CMSImageExtensions key in the web.config and/or appsettings.json to support these file types.
•    For WebP files, you must add a MIME type mapping in the web.config file of both the administration project and the live site project if using the MVC 5 development model.
•    Note that SVG images may host scripts or CSS and could pose a security risk, so carefully consider your project's security before allowing SVG file types.
•    If you are using responsive image functionality for page attachments, you may need to adjust your image filters to handle the new SVG and WebP image types, which might require the installation of an external image processing package or API.

Experience the power of Kentico Xperience 13 Media Library, where managing your media files seamlessly integrates with your website content. This centralized hub empowers you to neatly organize all file types, modify their properties, and effortlessly associate them with relevant pages. Gone are the days of scattered media assets as the Media Library serves as a single source of truth, allowing easy reuse across your websites.

Responsive Image Display: Effortlessly showcase images that adapt to different screen sizes and devices, ensuring a seamless user experience.
Centralized File Management: Enjoy the convenience of having all your media files stored in one easily accessible location, streamlining your content management process.
Versatile Media Support: Embrace a wide array of supported media file formats, including JPEG, PNG, GIF, SVG, WebP, MP4, and more, ensuring compatibility with various multimedia needs.
AI Image Recognition: Harness the power of AI-driven image recognition, which automatically adds relevant metadata, saving you time and effort.
Robust Search Capabilities: Quickly locate files with an intuitive search function that scans through file names, titles, and descriptions, facilitating efficient content discovery.
Identifying Unused Files: Stay organized and clutter-free by identifying unused files that can be safely removed, optimizing your media library's efficiency.
Enhanced Security: Implement workflows and access restrictions to ensure utmost security, granting appropriate permissions to authorized users.

Unlock the full potential of your media assets with the Kentico Xperience 13 Media Library, making your content management journey seamless, productive, and secure.

Though it has some interesting features and is a help for developers. But to say if it is yes or no, is not appropriate.

It has just been released and needs to be tried and tested post which will be eligible for being judged. Although the expectations are quite high as, all the versions of Kentico pre-released excelled in terms of what they were expected to.

So, currently the best thing is to wait and watch until it is being utilized properly. What do you think about the new version? Will it meet all the expectations that people are holding for it?