panels 6.x-3.0

Panels 3 has seen radical changes since Panels 2, and is a great deal more powerful, easier to use and we think you will like it a lot.

Please understand that the upgrade from Panels 1 or 2 to Panels 3 is a little bumpy. Not everything upgrades perfectly. Some people have had to uninstall and reinstall to make it work. Some of the back and forth during the betas and rcs caused irreparably messed up data that does not carry forward properly. I apologize for this. BACK UP BEFORE YOU UPGRADE.. If you do not read these release notes, and do not back up, please do not post issues. =)

The best way to use Panels is to pair it with the Page Manager from the Chaos Tools Suite, and use its interface for creating panel pages. This completely replaces the Panels Pages module from Panels 2. If you used an earlier beta version, the Page Manager used to be known as delegator. If you are upgrading from Panels 2, and the CTools module is already in the tree but not enabled, it will be automatically enabled for you. This is the best way to upgrade from Panels 2. Please ensure that you are using CTools 1.0 alongside this, and not a beta version! Earlier versions of CTools will not work with Panels 3.0!

Page Manager introduces the concept of Variants which are different ways that a page can be displayed. For many uses, you will have only one variant. However, if you want a page to look different based upon the data being displayed (for example, you want story nodes displayed differently from article nodes), or permissions of the user (you may want an administrator to see something different from a regular user, or a logged in user to see something different from a logged out user) then you will add additional variants to a page. You will use the selection rules to determine which variant a user sees. Remember that the first variant that passes the selection rules will be used, so be sure to put the most specific rules first and the more general rules later. You can put a variant with no rules at all last and it will serve as a default.

There is a real need for tutorials, screencasts and documentation for this system to be written. It's at this point that I'm really looking to the community to provide help. My own motivation to write this stuff is fairly low, and I know there are writers out there who use this stuff who can help. Please participate! Documentation is a great way to give back to the community in return for software, and requires very little (sometimes no!) coding knowledge at all.

Changes since Panels 3.0-rc1

• #529258 by stella: Attempting to modify CSS properties on mini panel causes ajax failure.
• #537430 by dereine: Fix untranslatable strings in panels dashboard template.
• #530104 by stella: Fix import problem with mini panels.
• #535606: Mini panel deletion deleted all block config of all mini panels.
• #539418 by esmerel: Remove reference to panel page from module description.
• #535722: Fix incorrect"title" tag on categories in add content modal.
• Fix a bug with drag and drop UI that caused panes to break after other panes were added.
• #538900: Fix bug with flexible when having multiple regions of the same name if they have a space.
• #552014: Hide Substitutions fieldset if there are no contexts.
• #552006: Add Content modal now opens to explanatory text instead of the first category.
• #553392 by lee20: Fix node allowed layouts not properly respected on edit layout screen.