When we first announced support for article-type threads and forums, we noted that this was an initial foray and that revised styling was in the pipeline.
Today, we can show you some of those revisions and the options that come with them.
Revised article styling
Firstly, we have some updates for the main article thread page.
The author section at the bottom of the article has had some attention to visually separate it a little more from the article body, and in order to provide a bit more meat for search engines to bite into, the author's about text is rendered underneath their name too.
As articles can be very long, we also show the author's name in the attribution bar at the top of the article too, along with the number of comments...
Have you seen...?
This forum spotlights some of XenForo's interesting features. Spotlights on features in upcoming releases will be posted here.
Not so long ago we showed you the new progressive web app functionality coming in XF 2.2 and since then we've added a couple of related bits which we are including as of XenForo 2.2 Beta 2.
PWA setup helper
There are a number of requirements you need to meet before a PWA becomes installable by most browsers. Some of these requirements are server config related, others are options, some are language based and some are style based.
While they're not particularly strenuous, we thought it would be worth highlighting all of these requirements in one place to make the process of setting up your PWA even easier.
To check if your forum meets the requirements to be installable as a progressive web app you now just need to head over to Admin >...
Have you been sitting there thinking "I just wish XenForo 2.2 had a little bit more awesome"? Yeah so did we. So here's a few extra features that we're introducing in XenForo 2.2 Beta 2.
GIPHY integration
Everybody loves GIFs, right? Well, maybe not everybody but personally we love them... ok ok... maybe it's just @Chris D that loves them. Every day is a GIF (with a hard G) day for Chris.
So in XF 2.2 Beta 2 we're introducing GIPHY support. It can be enabled from this option in your Admin control panel by populating it with an API key you can obtain from GIPHY.
Once enabled, we add a handy new GIF button to the rich text editor. When you click the button you will get a list of the latest trending GIFs. But you can also...
Understandably, many of you are chomping at the bit to start utilising our new forum and thread types. But in a lot of cases if you don't want or need to convert entire forums to a specific type (which would convert the threads within to the associated type) your existing threads will remain as standard discussions.
There are a few use cases to be considered and we have addressed these in XF 2.2 Beta 2.
Converting a single thread to a specific type
Moderators who have the "Manage any thread" permission will now be able to access the "Change thread type" option in the "More options" menu when viewing a thread.
If a specific type requires additional configuration then that is displayed after clicking "Continue..." and a confirmation...
Today marks the day when the alpha stage of XenForo 2.2 comes to an end and we mark that occasion by unleashing the first public beta. Look out for an announcement on that shortly.
Before that, however, we wanted to highlight a few more things that we've been working on over the last couple of weeks. Some of these you will be aware of as they have been running here for some time and we may have mentioned them elsewhere. Others are slightly more subtle...
Image and video improvements
Lazy loading
Last year Google paved the way for Native lazy loading images. Lazy loading images is a fantastic way to reduce page loading times and data usage as rather than loading all images on a page, it instead loads images as you scroll, just before...
Having upgraded XenForo.com yesterday, we've fielded lots of feedback and implemented a fair few changes.
Here's a handful of things we've done in response to your feedback.
Editor styling
We've removed the gradient entirely from the unfocused editor, and changed the styling when the editor is focused so that the background now gets lighter on focus, in order to give an editing background that is more like the final destination background.
XenForo 2.2 RTE unfocused
XenForo 2.2 RTE focused
We have also rolled out this change to all input fields across the entire system, changing from the approach we've used since XenForo 1.x, where the background would get darker on focus.
XenForo 1.x
XenForo 2.1
XenForo 2.2
Question thread...
We've spent the last few weeks talking about the new features in XenForo 2.2. Now, it's your first chance to try some of them out and help us put them through their paces. Welcome to XenForo 2.2! 👋
As you may notice, we have started converting some of our forums to more specific forum types. We've also enabled all general discussion thread types in the testing forum.
What's still to come
While our previous "have you seen" threads have announced most of what's coming in XenForo 2.2, we haven't touched on our official add-ons. There are improvements coming to each of them (beyond getting support for changes we already announced in 2.2), but we're not quite ready to announce these changes yet. Until we do, what you see running here is...
We're fast approaching the time where we're able to unleash XenForo 2.2 on this very forum but, before we do, we wanted to tell you about a few slightly more miscellaneous features that we've been keeping under our hat.
Advanced options switch
The eagle-eyed amongst you may have already spotted some hints about this in some of our earlier screenshots. 🤫
XenForo has an ever-increasing number of options and then by the time you put add-on options in the mix, the options pages may start to feel somewhat daunting and unwieldy at times, especially for new admins to the platform. After all, there are nearly 200 options in XenForo alone.
We (and add-on developers) are now able to mark options or entire option groups as "advanced".
What...
The previous "have you seen" threads for 2.2 have generally been focused on what the changes mean to admins and end users. While we have made reference to some of the internal technical elements and what add-ons can do with these features, today we want to do a deeper dive into some of these changes from a development perspective.
What we're going to cover today is not an exhaustive list. No doubt you'll find other changes scattered throughout. Today we're just going to focus on some of the more significant or noteworthy changes.
So let's go!
Forums contain threads and threads contain posts. It's been the essential framework of forums on the Internet since the public migrated from usenet to the web.
The structure is well known and well understood - though the origins of some of the terminology are lost in the mists of time. Who ever came up with the notion of your site being a forum, but these separate containers for related threads also being forums? 🤷🏼♂️
But back on topic, and we all know that visiting a forum (the second type) will usually show a list of threads ordered with the most recently updated near the top, and that clicking on any of those threads will show a page with the oldest post first and newer posts underneath and on subsequent pages.
Bending discussion...
Central to the experience of interacting with forum software is the interface through which visitors will create their content. This is usually done through the text editor and attachment manager, so keeping these systems fresh and inspiring is very important to us.
From the outset, XenForo has employed a rich text editor (RTE) to allow visitors to compose their messages in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) interface, so that bold text is shown emboldened, large text is appropriately large etc., rather than working directly with the underlying BB code in order to take the guesswork out of message editing. We've always built a custom implementation on top of what we consider to be the best-in-class tools, and through the life of...
Everyday administrative housekeeping often requires direct interaction with your server's file system.
Installing or upgrading a style, switching out logo graphics and other images on your forum you will invariably require a dust-off for your rusty old FTP client and an exciting adventure into arcane directory structures in order to upload them manually, while desperately not trying to overwrite the server's kernel or otherwise accidentally lunch the normally smooth operation of your forum.
Booooooring!
We have already acknowledged that these archaic methods will no longer do. XenForo 2.1 removed many barriers in order to allow one-click upgrades and add-on installs/upgrades from archive to be performed directly from your admin...
