First Joomla themelet for Morph now available in beta
If you are used to Joomla templates then it’s time you get your head around themelets! “Candy” is the first ever full themelet to use with the new Morph framework and we truly hope you enjoy using it as much as we did making it.
Important!
This themelet is not intended to be used on a live website just yet – only for testing and playing. Use at your own risk! The Morph framework (which Candy is running on) is still changing as we approach code freeze, so you currently risk losing any changes you make.
Some things you need to know
Even though the Candy themelet is in beta, it is very stable and the main issues are cross browser related.
We are working around the clock to get a stable version ready for you, but as a member of the Joomlajunkie template club you already have access to download and more information so you can start testing and playing.
Why releasing while still in beta?
There are a number of reasons for this, but the main two reasons are as follows.
- The user feedback during beta testing of the Morph framework shows us everyone is very eager to get their hands on a themelet and start playing with it.
- Since “themelets” is a new concept to Joomla users, this round of feedback will help us tie up any loose ends before we go stable.
Main focus: performance optimization
One of the biggest focus areas for Candy was to keep it lightweight to match the methodology behind Morph – a super optimized template that is not lacking in the features department.
Sprite images to improve loading speed
There are a total of 5 very lightweight sprite images being used throughout the entire themelet. These 5 images provide pretty much all of the themelet based images from the page elements to all of the module suffixes and page icons. The total number of requests is for the home page is 13 and you can see how many image variations and subtle gradients there are.
Performance tests
The aim was to get the Candy themelet to be not only fast loading, but a proper implementation of a website example with a decent amount of images being used. Not just a fast template with nothing but a few boring images.
Y-slow score is: 90 on the demo home page with extra modules and JavaScript feature. Out of the box should be less.
Website Optimization Analyzer gives: green on 9 of the 11 checks. The 2 that are red are to be expected due to the duplication of some of the code in this beta phase. My aim is to be green on all check for stable.
If you have used Website Optimization Analyzer before you know how hard it is to get a good score as it is very strict. Try some of the Joomla templates that claim to be the fastest and see what they get… Nearly all commercial Joomla themes I tested get a BAD score using this tool.
What still needs to be done?
- Cross browser fixing across all browsers (mainly the IE range). Tests in other browsers seems good so far.
- Sidefish menu options are buggy (all other menus should work fine)
- A final merge and tidy of all the css.
- Update Candy to work with new automated xml controlled Configurator defaults.
- Create Candy demo sample data installer. This will help you get setup quickly with a Joomla website that looks like our demo by importing the demo database into your websites.
- More comprehensive guides and information.
- Integration with 3rd party extensions – vote for your favorite here
- Clear out dev notes in CSS
- CSS Validation
- Further optimization to reduce a few more requests (if possible)
- Reduce CSS and JS weight
What about a demo?
At the moment, only our members have access to view the Candy demo to use as a reference and guide to get setup and tweak the themelet.
The demo will show you all of the available module styles you can use for your Joomla site (when running on the Morph framework with the Candy themelet).
That’s all folks! Please, let us know your thoughts below in the comments. If you’re keen on downloading and playing with Candy, see this blog post for membership discount codes.
Tags: Candy, Design, Joomla, Morph, themelets
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That’s great. Yes, I know EXACTLY what you mean about website optimizer. It’s very strict…so this is great news!
I have to admit I’m getting pretty excited about this Morph project!
Hi Craig,
Thanks for the feedback, we are all also darn excited about using Morph ourselves (even though we built it). I loved creating Candy with Morph… made things so much easier but there are a lot of options to consider and test etc..
New feature is that themelets have own xml so any options in Morph can be changed from the themelet and it will remember settings even when switching themelets… one of the last pieces of the puzzle coming together.
My mission is to get all green on the optimizer ;) Busy with cross browser now, have been all week and will be the rest, but RC1 is getting nice and close.
Thanks again for stopping by!
Hi Prothemer,
I am very impressed with the Morph project. However we all know it does things differently (for the first time) than Joomla normally does (install configurator, themelets and what not). At least to me, it looks sophisticated and I wonder if it compatibles with some Javascript-strict component like SIMGallery for instance.
Should you guys do Morph lite and gives impression on how it works? I’ll leave those questions to you guys. I think to be on the safe side, I will hold until further feedback regarding it compatibilities with some components, especially the ones that never use Joomla’s mootool library but others like mootools 1.2 etc.
Hi Pembaris :)
Glad to hear you are interested in the work we are doing with Morph!
Regarding compatibility with Mootools, we will always do everything possible to ensure that Morph plays nicely with other Javascript libraries.
That said, we are not able to test every single extension that is out, but we are pretty responsive on the forums and are generally able to fix any issues that crop up pretty quickly.
As for Morph Lite, there aren’t any plans to do this in the immediate future but keep an eye on our blog, as any changes will be announced here first ;)
Hope that helps :)
Cheers,
Chris
Chris´s last blog ..New version of Candy themelet
Hi :)
Thanks for providing feedback! As Chris said, we respond to all feedback given here and on our forum, but we’ve also started a poll where you can vote for the components you would like us to look into for Morph: http://poll.fm/12y08
Cheers,
Tess