Short Announcement: QGIS 2.8 Wien released

QGIS 2.8 (the new “Long Term Release”) was released a few days ago. It is a minor release according to the changelog but it will be supported in this setup at least for the next year: Some good news for all those working in a bigger, administrated environment as it is always a problem to update software in these bigger infrastructures.

New features:

• >1000 issues flagged by static analysis tools fixed
• new code commits and pull requests are now automatically tests against our testing framework.
• more responsive browser
• support for contextual WMS legend graphics
• custom prefixes for joins
• creation of memory layers in core
• field calc bar in attribute table
• dxf export improvements
• advanced digitizing tools
• improved snapping
• better simplify tool
• Qt5 support
• Bookmark import/export
• composer gui improvements
• grid improvements
• raster image fill type
• live heatmap renderer
• multiple styles per layer
• rotation of map canvas
• improved date defined symbology UI
• new algorithms in processing:
  • Regular points algorithm
  • Symetrical difference algorithm
  • Vector split algorithm
  • Vector grid algorithm
  • Hypsometric curves calculation algorithm
  • Split lines with lines
• expressions extentable with custom functions
• comments in expressions
• QGIS server improvements: better caching, layer style support, value relations, DescribeLayer, python plugins

Further improvements for QGIS 2.8 according to the Linfiniti changelog:

• Measure dialog improvements
• Custom prefix for joins
• Python console improvements
• Raster image fill type (tiled images in polygons… WHOOHA!)

Unfortunately the current version is only available using the OSGEO4W setup installer and can be updated on Linux systems already. The stand alone installer will be available in a few days. If you already want to get the new version choose the option “For Advanced Users:”. So look ahead friends: