The Morph toolset: new themelets and more updates

As some of you know our telephone line was down in the Cape Town office last week, which left us unable to get online for a few days. Funny enough, because of this we have lots of good news to share with you so keep on reading.

It’s really amazing how much we were able to get done being offline – possibly something we’ll incorporate during 2010… We used the down time to do loads of really great work on the whole Morph toolset. The result are the updates listed below:

Highlights include: loads of bugs fixed (including the issue with the new editor and funny characters displayed in component, error or offline views), stable release of Explorer (including updated demo and guide), plus the new addition of our dark base themelet, Liquorice.

Here are the updates in more details, so you can see what’s changed for the products you use or are interested in:

Updated the General Quick Installer to v0.04

• Upgraded Mass Content to 1.5.
• Added a new menu and modules for the iPhone optimized version.
• Moved remaining modules published to the left position, to the new outer one.
• Added some example users to keep the article assignment correct.
• Added sample modules for the tab.
• Updated the user menu items to include page titles (register, login, reset password, etc).
• Updated the bottom shelf modules titles.
• Changed the contact image used in the SimpleContact module.

Click here to DOWNLOAD Quick Installer

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Updated Configurator to v1.05

• Updated the tooltips for all the modfx block defaults.
• Added the ability to turn off syntax highlighting for the editor in the preferences.
• Added the ability to set a warning threshold for the Recycle bin (ie, alert when it reaches 5mb).
• Fixed an issue with the themelets not being applied.
• General refinements to the code editor.

Click here to DOWNLOAD Configurator

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Updated Morph template to v1.06

• Updated the section blog html override readmore text to be consistent with the others.
• Moved the modfx.css reference above the tabs and accordion to fix specificity issues.
• Updated the packed and unpacked js to be consistent in terms of ordering as well as fixed missing references and updated both to use arrays instead of multiple if statements.
• Fixed the character encoding and PHP eval() error’s on all custom PHP executable files (component.php, error.php, offline.php).
• Fixed the incorrect reference to $this->article in the section blog view item.
• Refined the sql query for “topfish” to check if the module is published and to check the top positions as well as the user3 position.
• Updated the class that it automatically added to the nav blocks (”primary-nav” class instead of “horz-nav”) to work in both positions.
• Fixed a number of instances of the top description class used in Joomla’s overrides to be consistent.
• Updated the simple rss feed module overrides to fix a validation bug.
• Updated the css for grids in sidebars to fix an issue with IE6, where the margins made the modules jump on hover.
• Moved the font sizer IE6 filter to the general IE stylesheet.
• Tweaked the search component override with some additional hooks for styling.
• Updated the Global Wrap option to be able to set the start and end positions of the div.

Click here to DOWNLOAD the Morph template

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Updated Vanilla themelet to v1.05

• Updated the iphone css to accommodate the new menu, module positions, contact layout, etc.
• Fixed the character encoding and PHP eval() error’s on all custom PHP executable files.
• Updated the custom.css.php to allow for auto inclusion of webkit.css, allowing you to apply cross browser fixes to both Safari and Chrome in one file.
• Added float:left to the pagination-wrap in ie6.
• Changed the text indent to be px instead of em’s to prevent the long horizontal scrollbar in Opera.
• Updated the tabs chrome css to have the margin set on the bottom instead of the tab, to be consistent with the other modules.
• Updated the themelets xml with the new Global Wrap options.
• Set the articles page nav li’s to 50% with the “next” li text right aligned.
• Fixed the hard-coded link to the font-sizer image.
• Set the tabs margin to bottom to be consistent with the other sidebar modules.
• Renamed the safari.css to chrome.css to apply the vendor specific css to both safari and chrome.
• Tweaked the message icons styling to accommodate multiple lines of content.

DEMO | DOWNLOAD

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Updated Explorer themelet to v1.00

• Updated the iphone css to accommodate the new menu, module positions, contact layout, etc (see screenshots).
• Fixed the character encoding and PHP eval() error’s on all custom PHP executable files.
• Updated the custom.css.php to allow for auto inclusion of webkit.css, allowing you to apply cross browser fixes to both Safari and Chrome in one file.
• Added float:left to the pagination-wrap for IE6.
• Changed the text indent to be px instead of em’s to prevent the long horizontal scrollbar in Opera.
• Extensive updates to the optimized iPhone layout.
• Extensive cross browser fixes for all supported browsers.
• Complete overhaul on the top menu, as well as added support for the dropline menu.
• Moved all the browser vendor specific css to their own files.
• Fixed all xhtml and css validation errors.
• Removed the hardcoded image reference for the font sizer icons.
• Tweaked the overall themelet styling.
• Updated the tabs chrome css to have the margin set on the bottom instead of the tab, to be consistent with the other modules.
• Updated the sidebar default widths.
• Changed the themelets wrap from using js to use the new Global Wrap option instead.
• Tweaked the styling for the default tabs and accordion chromes.
• Added alternate IE6 specific images for the SimpleContact module, themelet notices and body background.
• Tweaked the styling for grids in articles.
• Removed the unused html background image.
• Removed the margin set on the banner modules.
• Updated the themelet icons sprite.
• Tweaked the message icons styling to accommodate multiple lines of content.

DEMO | DOWNLOAD

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New themelet Liquorice

• Initial release based on the stable version of Vanilla.

DEMO | DOWNLOAD

Whats next?

Well, we still have a couple of things we’re working on, but here is a summary of the things you can look forward to in the near future:

• Adding the ability to include custom css / js / php via file, as well as the editor.
• Fixing some links in Configurator (customize themelet and a few others).
• Fixing the conditional options through out (most notably on the sidebar block settings).
• Adding a new frontend for Configurator, which will allow us to extend the customization options, provide even better performance and later frontend configuring.
• New system plugin to allow developers to check which js files are being used, as well as the ability to install Morph specific install files (like themelets) via Joomla’s default installer.
• New frontend caching engine.
• Some updates to the documentation site to further improve performance.
• Upgrading the themelet demos to the latest versions of Morph.

We are really excited about the new updates, as the current benchmarks we have done have shown a great increase in performance, putting it on par (if not faster) with some of the fastest Joomla templates out there ;)

You can also expect the stable release of LeBlanc soon, as Andrew is just putting it through the paces to make sure there are no issues with all the new updates to the framework.

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Tags: configurator, Explorer, framework, Joomla, Liquorice, Morph, Quick Installer, vanilla