Macrotone April 2016 Newsletter
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| Newsletter April 2016 | ||
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Joomla 3.5The most important recent announcement has got to be the Joomla 3.5 release (and the later 3.5.1 release) first touted late last year and which has been through many beta (5) and release candidates (4) since then. One understands the need for these multiple beta and almost multiple candidate releases but they tend to implement delays in modifying components to work with the new release especially when certain 'features' change from one release to another.
For those of you that are not familiar with the improvements in Joomla 3.5 here is the list of enhancements:
We always test our components with the latest available Joomla release and are not aware of any problems but obviously some things are out of our control, so problems may surface later of which we are unaware. Our recommendation would be for our users to update their Joomla site to Joomla! 3.5 in order to avoid any unfavourable outcome. Whether one also changes to PHP 7 at the same time may be more complex since a number of components and hosting suppliers do not yet support it. We ourselves have held off on the PHP change but anticipate changing soon.
Timesheet component released.We duly released, as we foretold in our last newsletter, our 'new' timesheet component, more upon which is provided below. The current version is 1.0.2.
We have also announced updates to our Joomla Audit component (Jaudit) 1.2.0 and our IP Mapping component 1.4.0.
Future enhancements.We are also working on a new component and testing out new code structures and mechanisms such as using a component library and also making more direct usage of the inbuilt 'categories component. We find that trying out these techniques upon a 'new' component is easier to test, and if necessary change, rather than implement in one of our existing components. If they do work out well then the benefits get fed back into our existing components in future releases.
Office RelocationWe will shortly be relocating our offices so we anticipate that there will be a some future delays over the next few months in the future planned release schedule, until such time as we are settled.in our new location. We will endeavour to respond to forum posts as soon as possible but there may be an unavoidable delay in some situations.
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Issue Tracker News Forthcoming Release 1.7.0.Work upon this release continues but was being delayed until the final release of Joomla 3.5, and is now being impacted by our office relocation activities. This release which includes support for 'true' multilingual is obviously impacted by the multilingual changes included in Joomla 3.5 and we wish to be sure that it is 'rock solid' before we announce it officially. In the meantime the list of changes is still growing, some of which are indicated in the on line changelog.
IP Mapping News Release 1.4.0 available.Release 1.4.0 uses the same database character set utf8mb4 and collation utf8mb4_unicode_ci as used in Joomla 3.5. There are also a few minor changes and generalisations to match our other components. These include the removal of the 'documentation' view in the back end of the site which are rarely used. Instead we now provide a link on the 'support' view to our online documentation..
Password Control News Version 0.1.7 System Plugin released.This release corrects a small problem encountered when PHP 7 is used upon a site, supported by Joomla 3.5. A deprecated constructor method message is seen and this release corrects that problem..
JAudit News Release 1.2.0 available.This release, changes the database table character set to utf8mb4 and the collation to utf8mb4_unicode_ci to match that of Joomla 3.5. It also updates all copyrights to 2016. As with the IP Mapping release mentioned earlier if also updates the component to have a similar 'look and feel' as our other components.
Timesheet News Timesheet component released.Our 'new' timesheet component was released as foretold in our last newsletter in late February and appeared in the JED in early March. At release we had hoped that it would run upon Joomla 3.5 as we had tested against the latest Beta release. As luck would have it this was not to be as immediately after we released it, the very next J3.5 Beta changed the database character collation set. This is one of the hazards of trying to work with Joomla beta releases, as changed can and do occur, making it very difficult to know quite what to expect in the final release. With a more stable release candidate version of Joomla 3.5 now released an update 1.0.2 provides the required stability we required for the new release.
The component effectively presents a tabular grid to the user for them to complete with their 'hours worked'. All entries are performed in the browser and only saved when the user submits the form. Each users timesheet is only available to view by the user them selves and any configured 'timesheet approvers' for that specific user. Each timesheet may be printed and there are configuration options for modifying the output prints to allow the adding of company logs or other information deemed necessary by the site.
It is necessary to be running the latest 1.0.2 timesheet release to avoid a problem when updating Joomla 3.4 to 3.5. This is documented and the reason why 1.0.2 was released.
This release was designed for PHP 7 and is Joomla! 3.5 compatible. We have even added UTF8MB4 (multibyte character support). If you are using Joomla! 3.5 on a server which supports UTF8MB4 you can use multibyte characters, such as Emoji, for all free text entries in the component e.g. titles of IP ranges, email templates, block messages etc.
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MiscellaneousTranslations
For current details of availability of translations, please check our web site. A list of all our translators can be seen here.
We would like to repeat that all our translators provide their services free of charge, and to thank them on behalf of all our users who make use of their work.
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ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER This newsletter is published by Macrotone Consulting Ltd, which provides IT services to its clients and creates business tools: Copyright 2016 Macrotone Consulting Ltd. All rights reserved. Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners.
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Our translations have continues to evolve and there are already updates for our recent releases available. Thanks are due to our translators who respond so quickly when we release new versions.
