Add OMERO 5.3 status

_posts/2016-12-19-omero-5-3.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: OMERO 5.3 Status Update
+categories: future-plans community
+---
+
+2016 has been a busy year for OME. Many of you will have noticed the number of
+[Bio-Formats releases](https://www.openmicroscopy.org/site/news) and the fact
+that [OME Files C++](https://www.openmicroscopy.org/site/products/ome-files-cpp)
+is now available for implementing the
+[OME Data Model](http://www.openmicroscopy.org/site/support/ome-model/) and
+[OME-TIFF](http://www.openmicroscopy.org/site/support/ome-model/ome-tiff/index.html)
+support in C++ software (you can read [our preprint here](http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/11/19/088740)).
+
+That doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy on the OMERO front though, we’ve pushed
+our deadline to make sure we can deliver several new features:
+
+### Data Management
+
+As well as implementing the [new Data Model](http://www.openmicroscopy.org/site/support/ome-model/schemas/june-2016.html),
+we have introduced the Folders feature discussed in a
+[previous post](http://blog.openmicroscopy.org/data-model/future-plans/2016/05/23/folders-upcoming/).
+Folders will allow you to organize your images’ ROIs into a hierarchical
+structure so that, for example, you can sort cells into phenotypes or assign
+ontology terms to them, or use an analysis script to track entities across a
+set of images and then use a folder for each entity to store sightings of it
+in OMERO.insight.
+
+![ROI Folder screenshot](/images/ROI-Folder-Insight.png){:width="100%"}
+
+### UI development
+
+We’ve been working on our metadata capturing and display, drawing lessons from
+our [IDR project](http://idr-demo.openmicroscopy.org). We’ve also revamped the
+display of Screen-Plate-Well data to allow browsing of all fields within a
+well and display of their positions within each well. Zooming of the plate and
+fields are both supported. It is also possible to add and view annotations on
+individual wells (and not just the Images they contain).
+
+![New Well UI screenshot](/images/grid_view.png){:width="100%"}
+
+### Permissions improvements
+
+To aid the workflows of facilities managers, we are introducing a new ‘Light
+Admin’ role to the OMERO permissions system. This will allow a manager to
+import data for any other user (i.e. it will belong to the other user), delete
+other users’ data (for clean up e.g. after someone has left the lab), and
+manage user groups (creating groups and adding existing users to them) without
+having the full rights and responsibilities of a full Administrator. If you
+are interested in all the technical details, there is a
+[design issue on GitHub](https://github.com/openmicroscopy/design/issues/62).
+
+### Image rendering
+
+We’ve introduced support for Lookup Tables and reverse intensity and improved
+the rendering engine to allow full projection thumbnails.
+
+![LUT support screenshot](/images/LUT.png){:width="100%"}
+
+We’ve also added histograms of image pixel intensities in the OMERO.insight
+and OMERO.web clients.
+
+![Histograms screenshot](/images/histograms.png){:width="50%"}
+
+### OMERO.web architecture
+
+A big effort has gone into making OMERO.web deployable as a separate component
+from the server and the various web apps installable from Python Package Index
+(PyPI). This has involved reorganizing all the packages. OMERO.web now has an
+‘Open With’ function for using custom viewers and our next generation web
+image viewer ([OMERO.iviewer](https://github.com/ome/omero-iviewer)) is coming
+on too. There has also been a lot of work behind the scenes to improve the Web
+API.
+
+In line with this, our future client development will be very much focused on
+web clients and OMERO.insight will enter maintenance mode once the updates for
+5.3.0 are complete.
+
+## Developer previews
+
+If you’re a developer with your own OMERO code, you can check out the work so
+far to see if it’ll affect you. There are further details in the
+[milestone version history](https://www.openmicroscopy.org/site/support/omero5.3/users/history.html)
+and as ever, the code is all on GitHub ([our latest development milestone is here](https://github.com/openmicroscopy/openmicroscopy/releases/tag/v5.3.0-m6)).
+
+## Heads up for sysadmins
+
+We’re changing our recommended way to install OMERO.web so you can deploy it
+separately to the main OMERO.server, making it easier to get your your virtual
+environment set up with all the necessary prerequisites. We have also
+deprecated support for Apache and recommend you deploy using Nginx as we are
+likely to drop Apache completely during the 5.3.x development line.
+
+We are moving to Ice 3.6 as the minimum supported version. Other updates to
+version requirements include Python 2.7 but we will continue to support Java
+1.7 for OMERO 5.3.x, as we are aware that upgrading to 1.8 would be
+incompatible with current MATLAB distributions. 
+
+Note that we are in the process of updating the documentation so although a
+preview of the code changes is publicly available, you should not expect all
+the milestone documentation to reflect these changes before the final release.
+
+## Release schedule
+
+As a consequence of all this work, OMERO 5.3.0 is still under development and
+is now not expected until the first quarter of 2017.