MyBB Community Forums

(2018-08-20, 01:41 PM)gimbal Wrote: [ -> ]Can anyone provide a general estimate for when v1.9 will be released? We asked in March, and were told "likely by June", so... just wondering what the current estimate is?

We're fairly close right now, and I'm still hoping for an Alpha release in September and hopefully a full release by the end of the year. The major jobs left are:

• Updates to the theme management area of the ACP and related functions to handle the new Twig files.
  
• Swapping the editor out for TinyMCE.
  
• Cleaning up/finishing the current open Pull Requests - most just need a little more work and testing.
  

Of course, there will need to be a fairly lengthy period of testing between the Alpha and final releases due to how big a change 1.9 is under the hood. The final release date will entirely depend upon that testing and the feedback that we receive from suers, theme designers and plugin developers.

(2018-08-20, 06:06 PM)Euan T Wrote: [ -> ]

(2018-08-20, 01:41 PM)gimbal Wrote: [ -> ]Can anyone provide a general estimate for when v1.9 will be released? We asked in March, and were told "likely by June", so... just wondering what the current estimate is?

We're fairly close right now, and I'm still hoping for an Alpha release in September and hopefully a full release by the end of the year. The major jobs left are:

• Updates to the theme management area of the ACP and related functions to handle the new Twig files.
  
• Swapping the editor out for TinyMCE.
  
• Cleaning up/finishing the current open Pull Requests - most just need a little more work and testing.
  

Of course, there will need to be a fairly lengthy period of testing between the Alpha and final releases due to how big a change 1.9 is under the hood. The final release date will entirely depend upon that testing and the feedback that we receive from suers, theme designers and plugin developers.

There is also still a not insignificant portion of the new theme that is not yet complete.

(2018-08-20, 07:48 PM)Justin Wrote: [ -> ]

(2018-08-20, 06:06 PM)Euan T Wrote: [ -> ]

(2018-08-20, 01:41 PM)gimbal Wrote: [ -> ]Can anyone provide a general estimate for when v1.9 will be released? We asked in March, and were told "likely by June", so... just wondering what the current estimate is?

We're fairly close right now, and I'm still hoping for an Alpha release in September and hopefully a full release by the end of the year. The major jobs left are:

• Updates to the theme management area of the ACP and related functions to handle the new Twig files.
  
• Swapping the editor out for TinyMCE.
  
• Cleaning up/finishing the current open Pull Requests - most just need a little more work and testing.
  

Of course, there will need to be a fairly lengthy period of testing between the Alpha and final releases due to how big a change 1.9 is under the hood. The final release date will entirely depend upon that testing and the feedback that we receive from suers, theme designers and plugin developers.

There is also still a not insignificant portion of the new theme that is not yet complete.

I guess the race is on then

(and yes, I still need to fix some things to help actually get the theme working properly... I'll get to that eventually!)

1.9 is fantastic news.

I am a bit miffed though looking at /inc/views/base that there are still so, so many smaller templates.

In 1.8 it is so absurd you have templates for singular links or buttons. I don't get it.

Is this break down supposed to help the user, or is it a way to ease patching security updates and fixes that affect templates?

If it is meant for the user I can tell you personally having created my own fully responsive theme for mybb it was a real "pita". There are hundreds of templates. So in addition to all the work that goes in creating a theme and fitting it into MyBB, you have to learn how it's all broken down, remember.. HUNDREDS of pieces... and you also have to navigate all that.

When I see something like https://github.com/mybb/mybb/blob/develo...reply.twig .. to me that's just good. That's OK. It's much easier to edit a larger template like that.

Think about a designer, hee creates a completely new, fresh theme (awesome). Typically you have to strart fresh; with a mockup page because working from existing templates is just not doable. So you have your final look.. now you have to learn what all the template bits are, and fit your html in there along with your custom css. In 1.8 it's a nightmare. If I have to fit my HTML into that twig template above, that's more manageable. Sure i have to be careful about identation, and closing the tags and whatnot.. but with a good editor I can manage that.

If you do have the ability with twig to make custom include ("Ability to include templates from withina template, leading to more flexibility for theme developers.") then plase consider not breaking down your original theme unnecessarily. Let the theme developers break it down further as need be.

TLDR My biggest issue with 1.8 is that there are too many templates. It took a really long time to create my own theme, and I never had the courage since then to refresh my forum even though I really want to do it. I'd have to again figure out what the gazillion template bits do, and if I want to make bigger changes to the html structure then I have to "retro fit" those into so many smaller pieces that i just give up.

PS: come to think of it... will it be possible to "undo" those fragments and remove the includes if I want to? Then that partly addresses my issue. Then I'd have something easier to work with for theming. Like, if I don't need a template for a button , or a link , I can just remove them, and put the html back into the loop of the parent template. But I fear this won't work because of the update / patches looking for singular twig files.

(2018-09-01, 01:06 PM)ecirbaf Wrote: [ -> ]I am a bit miffed though looking at /inc/views/base that there are still so, so many smaller templates.

In 1.8 it is so absurd you have templates for singular links or buttons. I don't get it.

Is this break down supposed to help the user, or is it a way to ease patching security updates and fixes that affect templates?

It's simply the consequence of not having conditionals and loops in templates. Most buttons and links are only displayed when certain conditions are met so they need to be placed in their own templates.

I see. Can you do these checks now, or more of them with Twig?

ps: will you still have to go through the admin UI to change the theme or can you somehow edit the .Twig files locally, deploy them, and rebuild the theme cache on the server? That would be awesome. I remember I had to also hack my way in the database export / import to deploy my theme because going through the UI to change all the smaller bits was just not manageable. My database export/import mostly worked but was very risky since it assumed my local and server db have the exact same setup..

(2018-09-01, 01:06 PM)ecirbaf Wrote: [ -> ]1.9 is fantastic news.

I am  a bit miffed though looking at   /inc/views/base  that there are still so, so many smaller templates.

In 1.8 it is so absurd you have templates for singular links or buttons. I don't get it.

Is this break down supposed to help the user, or is it a way to ease patching security updates and fixes that affect templates?

If it is meant for the user I can tell you personally  having created my own fully responsive theme for mybb it was a real "pita". There are hundreds of templates. So in addition to all the work that goes in creating a theme and fitting it into MyBB, you have to learn how it's all broken down, remember.. HUNDREDS of pieces... and you also have to navigate all that.

.....

MyBB's separation of HTML from code is excellent. There are other projects that do a far worse job of keeping code separate from the HTML. Yes it helps the user, because it helps him to create a theme without touching core code, or even knowing much about code.

Since you created your own theme, you will know that you need to get to elements such as links, buttons, inputs etc in order to style them, so again yes all those templates are necessary. If they were not there, they would be in the core code files.

The 1.9. GitHub repo has to be rebased since all of the templates have now been converted, however this can cause quite a few problems so we are working on this.

(2018-09-01, 01:18 PM)Ashley1 Wrote: [ -> ][quote pid='1313148' dateline='1535807182']
MyBB's separation of HTML from code is excellent. There are other projects that do a far worse job of keeping code separate from the HTML. Yes it helps the user, because it helps him to create a theme without touching core code, or even knowing much about code.

[/quote]

I understand that and that's not really my point (it was just an aside of me being annoyed at editing super tiny templates for singular links / buttons, so there is a reason for that, ok, understood).

My point which I think I made clear, my feedback , is that there are too many templates and that's not necessarily a plus. And it would be beneficial that there are less. It's a big timesink to navigate all those templates. So whereever conditionals are not needed or it can be handled by Twig.. I am suggesting that simplifying and keeping more templating together would help creating more original and better themes.

The templates you see in the current repository are based upon a direct conversion from 1.8 - Justin's repository is a much better indication of how things will look in 1.9: https://github.com/justinsoltesz/mybb/tree/develop/1.9

Designers on the team like Eric and Justin actually prefer to have smaller re-usable components in separate templates that can be included, such as the "time" partial which means that components that are used regularly are consistent throughout. The advantage is that these smaller templates are actually included in the parent templates rather than being imported somewhere in the PHP code which makes it hard to track which templates appear where.

Custom themes can of course be written however designers/developers want - if you don't import a template, it won't be loaded at all.

Regarding editing templates: templates can be edited via both the ACP and through the raw Twig files using any text editor of your choosing.