UPGRADE COMPLETE!
T3G fam,
We've run strong in our current state for almost a year now. But earlier in 2019, the platform we are running on (XenForo) received some big updates from its developers. I held off on upgrading T3G to this new version until they ironed out most of the bugs. Now it's finally time to undergo this upgrade, and that will mean the site will go down in the process. I am aiming for it to take no more than two hours, and I'm planning to do it this evening.
When the site comes back online, there might still be some weird bugs. If you see any, please let me know in this thread so I can fix them ASAP.
Now I am going to try to share some of the new features that are in this upgrade that I believe you guys will enjoy the most.
T3G fam,
We've run strong in our current state for almost a year now. But earlier in 2019, the platform we are running on (XenForo) received some big updates from its developers. I held off on upgrading T3G to this new version until they ironed out most of the bugs. Now it's finally time to undergo this upgrade, and that will mean the site will go down in the process. I am aiming for it to take no more than two hours, and I'm planning to do it this evening.
When the site comes back online, there might still be some weird bugs. If you see any, please let me know in this thread so I can fix them ASAP.
Now I am going to try to share some of the new features that are in this upgrade that I believe you guys will enjoy the most.
Video uploads
Do you remember a time when people didn't have their phones out recording videos of random stuff? No... neither do I... Anyway, what do people do with those videos when they want to upload them? Well, they probably don't upload them to your forum, sadly. Well, not yet, anyway.
Ironically, I'm not going to make a video demonstrating this feature because it will be mostly a process you're familiar with. You simply click "Attach files", select your video and insert it into your post.
And the end result:
There are no fancy HTML5 video players, there's no complex dependencies, and there's no performance taxing transcoding process. Everything above is totally native to the browser and OS that you're using.
Content bookmarks
XF has always made it super easy to find new content you've not yet read, and re-engage you with content you've already interacted with, but who here has ever read a post (or some other content) and wanted to come back to it later, or wanted to save a specific post so you can refer back to it in the future?
?
Of course there are lots of ways to solve this kind of problem. You could use the forum search, but that still relies on you having to remember you wanted to come back to it at some point, and you still need to remember specific keywords to find it. You could use browser bookmarks, but on different devices and different browsers that can be cumbersome. You could keep open all of the tabs you want to come back to at some point, but again different devices and browsers (and having to shut down Chrome for the 5th time that day because memory) makes it difficult.
I could also just try to remember but... wait, what was I saying again? Oh, right... bookmarks.
Supported content types now have a bookmark icon.
Clicking the bookmark icon will instantly bookmark that content. Which is great, but occasionally you might want to add some additional context to help you locate that bookmark again in the future.
The message text will be displayed when viewing your bookmarks (otherwise a snippet of the content is displayed instead) and labels are a way to categorise your bookmarks (similar to tags).
Of course adding a note or labels is totally optional, in which case you would just click out of the tooltip to close it.
So how is content you've bookmarked accessed?
Slightly redesigned account navigation!
Your bookmarks are available no matter where you are on the forum. Simply click the bookmark icon to see a list of your bookmarks:
From here you can go straight to the content, or click the icon for more options:
"Copy to clipboard" copies the link of the content to the clipboard, which is useful if you want to share a link to the content for any reason.
In terms of filtering, you can click the label on any of the bookmarks to go to a list of all bookmarks with that label, or you can search directly. Clicking on the filter input will show you all of your existing labels, and just clicking one will apply that label filter immediately. You can also start typing to er... filter the filter list.
Of course you can also access your full list of bookmarks from your account page:
Initially we're supporting the following content types:
]
- Threads
- Posts
- Nodes (only page nodes exposed)
- Media items (requires XFMG 2.1)
- Albums (requires XFMG 2.1)
- Resources (requires XFRM 2.1)
- Resource updates (requires XFRM 2.1)
Better support for iPhone X/Xr/Xs displays
Anyone who currently has an iPhone with a "notch" or "display cut out" such as the iPhone X series will be familiar with something like this:
iOS automatically has a behaviour to ensure that no content is ever hidden by the notch. It essentially constrains the viewport so that the content fits within the "safe inset areas".
In XF 2.1 however, we've improved this slightly so that we can make use of the full width of the viewport whilst still ensuring that content is not hidden behind the notch. It looks like this!
Per post share controls
In XF 1 we used to have an overlay that could be accessed by clicking on the post position number that gave you various share controls.
We're bringing back something similar in XF 2.1 but hopefully in a more useful and accessible way.
As well as being able to share directly to various social media outlets, you can also copy a link to the content directly to the clipboard.
New emoji/smilie picker
Emojis are everywhere and each year the already vast selection of them increases more and more, but smilies still have their place, right?
An emoji can't replace this classic.
But, at the same time, it's important that we make both smilies and emojis as accessible as possible. So why not keep them together?
We've replaced our existing smilie tray with an all new combined smilie/emoji pop up. Not only does it contain smilies categorised as it did before, but it also includes all of the emojis categorised too. Even better, it's fully searchable!
Finally, we also have a category named "Recently used" which lists the emojis you used most recently.
Enhanced editor integration and BB code option syntax
Just because we're implementing a bit of a "new-kid-on-the-block" text formatting approach, doesn't mean we're entirely done with BB code. As mentioned above, it still has its place, not least because of a much more flexible syntax.
Admittedly, BB code can constrain us in terms of which functionality we can support. One headache we're solving with XF 2.1 relates to the options we provide to BB code tags in order to make the available functionality more flexible. Which enables us to do things like this:
What ultimately makes this possible is a much more flexible BB code options syntax. The resulting BB code for the above post looks like this:
Code:
[/URL]
This is what I might have used the other day if we had been running XF 2.1 already
Although we're only supporting this kind of advanced option syntax on the IMG and ATTACH BB codes right now, it is a general concept that other developers could add to their own BB codes going forward.
Tables!
There is often an assumption that when we use a rich text editor such as Froala that we can automatically support all of its features. That would certainly make life easier, but unfortunately rich text editors produce HTML and we therefore have to convert any HTML to BB code on save and back again for rendering.
Therefore there are significant barriers in introducing some features, but we feel that there's enough support for tables that we should bring them to you in XF 2.1 ?
You can of course write the BB code manually, which most likely uses a familiar syntax if you're familiar with HTML tables. Here's a snippet of the above:
Code:
But, of course, it's probably easier just to use the newly built-in "Insert table" button!
Version Release date Last release 1.0 March 8, 2011 1.0.4 - July 12, 2011
Push it real good...
Push notifications!
If the above browser/device requirements are frustrating then please direct your complaints to @WebKit on Twitter!
So, yes, first and foremost, you will need PHP 7.1 to enable this functionality. This enabled us to implement the functionality in a way that is compatible with as many browsers as possible, including Microsoft Edge on Android and Windows.
In addition to this, your site must be running over HTTPS with a valid SSL certificate, and you must have support for the GMP extension.
Unfortunately for reasons beyond our control (read: it's Apple's fault) the list of supported devices/browsers notably exclude Safari on macOS and any iOS-based browser. This functionality is made possible by making use of a number of APIs including the Push API and Notification API which most browsers support already.
On supported devices, the process looks something like this:
You can also see that, just like alerts, we have provided a mechanism for you to be able to opt out of receiving certain push notifications. You may want to get forum alerts for everything, but only be notified by your browser for the things you find important.
The content of a push notification will be a slightly stripped down version of the default alert template. A brief note for developers; although there is code which will automatically convert HTML to a text-only version of the notification, the preferred method would be to create specific push template for each content type and action, and these will look similar to this:
HTML:
{{ phrase('x_quoted_your_post_in_thread_y', {
'name': $user.username ?: $alert.username,
'title': prefix('thread', $content.Thread, 'plain') . $content.Thread.title
}) }}
<push:url>{{ link('canonicalosts', $content) }}</push:url>
As you would expect with push notifications, you do not necessarily need to be viewing the forum when the notification is received, nor does the browser even need to be active, as demonstrated here:
Naturally, clicking on the notification will take you straight to the content.
Alert read marking
Going straight to the content from wherever you are on your device is certainly convenient, but given that push notifications essentially represent forum alerts, it would be somewhat inconvenient to have to mark those as read too.
Therefore when you now visit content which you have previously been alerted to, the corresponding alert(s) will now be automatically marked as read.
"But I have an Apple device, will you support push notifications another way...?"
Unfortunately, this is unlikely. Although Apple devices represent a significant number of mobile users, the current approach other browser vendors are taking is standardised (meaning Apple devices could be nearly automatically supported in the future), free and seamlessly integrated with your browser. Any other approach, be that a separate app, or a third party service would, frankly, be a sub-par (and potentially expensive!) experience.
The overall solution is simple, but it is down to Apple/WebKit to take on board and implement. According to the WebKit Feature Status page, if there are any features missing you can reach out to @webkit on Twitter or contact the webkit-help mailing list. Consider doing that today to help them understand why push notifications are important for your forum ?
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