This will be a breaking change for some people.
We removed all internal password control logic. If this affects you, you have two options:
1. Use a plugin for authentication and use session based pad access (recommended).
1. Use a plugin for password setting.
The reasoning for removing this feature is to reduce the overall security footprint of Etherpad. It is unnecessary and cumbersome to keep this feature and with the thousands of available authentication methods available in the world our focus should be on supporting those and allowing more granual access based on their implementations (instead of half assed baking our own).
No more javascript to change css properties
Remove a number of useless tables
Try to stop positioning elements with absolute, but use flex-boxes instead
Adds comment to pad template, and move popups and chatbox inside editorcontainerbox (so absolute positioning is straightforward)
Make the design more consistent: always use base color, font-family and font-size. USe relative font size if necessary (.9rem instead of 11px for example)
Remove two columns in the popups, just use one column
Remove css meant to support old browser (like -webkit-box-shadow, -moz-box-shadow). Those css rules are quite common now, and If we want to support very old browser, we should use clean-css or other tools to add them automatically
