QGIS 3.4 Madeira released

A few days ago QGIS version 3.4, codenamed "Madeira", was released. The provincial government of Madeira hosted the developer meeting in February 2018.

We recommend all organizations that have not yet had the opportunity to test the release candidate versions (Nightly builds) to test their projects with the new version 3.4. If you need increased stability, we recommend waiting for a future bug-fix version (see roadmap), but be sure to test it now and report any problems that may occur.

In February 2019 version 3.4 will officially replace the last LT version (long term support version) 2.18 and from then on will provide bug fixes for at least one year. See also the roadmap.

In the first 3 releases of the 3.x series countless new features were added and many parts of QGIS were completely rewritten. The specific new features of version 3.4 can be found in the Visual Changelog. If you change directly from version 2.18 to 3.4, we recommend to consult the changelogs of versions 3.2 and 3.0.

Some highlights of version 3.4 are:

• More expression functions (Expressions)
• Code completion support in expression editor
• New QML widgets for forms: Diagrams and interactive content
• Forms: Drill-down (cascading) selection lists. For filtered selections in a combo box, based on values from other combo boxes.
• Numerous improvements for mesh layers (especially for climate representations and simulation results).
• Mesh layer: identify values, incl. time series
• Mesh layer: numerous improvements in symbolisation
• Fine granular export and import of layer/styling properties
• Editing: finally the digitized direction of lines can be changed
• Editing: Precision (number of decimal places) can be selected (e.g. 0.001 for mm). All coordinates will be rounded towards this implicitly defined grid.
• Editing: improved geometry and topology validation and correction options during editing
• Support for multilingual projects
• Processing: results can be executed directly on the selected objects without the need for "intermediate" files
• Processing: Models can now also be stored directly in the project
• Processing: 2D features can be processed with terrain models to 2.5D objects.
• Project: SVG files can be embedded in the project
• Raster processing: first algorithms (e.g. hillshading) can be accelerated with OpenCL
• 3D: improved navigation
• 3D: Support of camera movements with interpolation/animation
• 3D: Output of 3D scenes, also in higher resolutions, in print layouts
• 3D: 3D lines can be drawn for the first time
• 3D: for the first time attribute values of objects can be queried (without highlighting)
• Python: API for vector data providers about Python

We would like to thank all developers and other contributors, sponsors and donors, and especially Giovanni Manghi and the provincial government of Madeira for organizing the developer meeting in February 2018, as well as the numerous user groups around the globe, who mostly support the bug fixes in QGIS financially and through testing!