Kunena 6.2.5 & module Kunena Latest 6.0.7 released

The Kunena team has announce the arrival of Kunena 6.2.5 [K 6.2.5] which is now available for download as a native Joomla extension for J! 4.3.x/4.4.x/5.0.x. This version addresses most of the issues that were discovered in K 6.1 / K 6.2 and issues discovered during the last development stages of K 6.2

If you are having problems then, for your own benefit, it would save us all a lot of time if you would kindly post your configuration report when you ask for help from this forum. If you do not post your configuration report we will not ask you for it but you will probably not get your problem solved, either.

K 2.0 support will cease on 31 August 2013 and this section of the forum will be closed and archived after that time and no further questions will be answered about this version.

Question Templates and Features in 2.0

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11 years 8 months ago #1 by cambler
I've installed 2.0.1 on the latest Joomla build, fresh. No upgrade happening here, we're starting from the beginning with all of the latest bits.

It seems to me that the template that ships with 2.0.1 is an interim template and does not implement all of the 2.0 features. Is this correct?

If so, that's somewhat stalling me, as I have changes I want to make to the template for our design, but don't want to do work on an interim template only to have to repeat all the work when the "final" template is released with all features enabled.

Can someone clarify this for me? What's shipping now, what's missing, and is there a timeline? Should I tell my developers to hang loose for a few days? Weeks? Months?

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11 years 8 months ago - 11 years 8 months ago #2 by sozzled

cambler wrote: It seems to me that the template that ships with 2.0.1 is an interim template and does not implement all of the 2.0 features. Is this correct?

Can you please be a little more specific? Which features were you looking for that appear to be missing? Can you provide me with a URL reference that suggests to you that the Blue Eagle template is an "interim template" - we need to correct that information if we made it.

It had been originally to ship two templates with K 2.0: Blue Eagle and Mirage. Owing to difficulties in the implementation of Mirage pending a "bedding down" of the code, it was decided to postpone the delivery of the Mirage template until major problems in K 2.0 had been fixed. Most of those "show-stopper" problems have been fixed but there are still a few more that the development team would like to resolve.

As far discussing Mirage and timings are concenred, see my answer given yesterday, here: Kunena 2.0.0 Released
Last edit: 11 years 8 months ago by sozzled.

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11 years 8 months ago #3 by cambler
I was basing that off of the verbiage that says that this template is an interim patch so that earlier templates could continue to work, but that it would be deprecated in the next major version.

That's how it read to me.

So the current blue eagle template is complete and implements all features? I'd be in good shape to clone it for modifications to my own purposes and I wouldn't be missing anything functionality-wise?

If so, that's good! ;)

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11 years 8 months ago - 11 years 8 months ago #4 by sozzled

cambler wrote: I was basing that off of the verbiage that says that this template is an interim patch so that earlier templates could continue to work, but that it would be deprecated in the next major version

Where did you read that verbiage? If I wrote it then I need to correct it or explain better to you what you have interpreted. I can't really help any more unless I understand the premise upon which you have formed your views.

The K 2.0 Blue Eagle template is fully functional. The Mirage template is not yet fully functional (and it will not be offered until K 2.1). It is possible that the Blue Eagle template will be retired in K 3.0 but that eventuality is several months away. First things first. Fix whatever difficulties we have with K 2.0, then on to K 2.1 and then work towards K 3.0 (as I wrote in Kunena 2.0.0 Released yesterday).
Last edit: 11 years 8 months ago by sozzled.

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11 years 8 months ago #5 by cambler
docs.kunena.org/index.php/Kunena_2.0.0_Read_Me

"Unfortunately our new default template (CSS3, tableless design) wasn't ready to be shipped with Kunena 2.0. When it is released, it will deprecate all the existing templates and the support for those will be dropped in the next major release (likely K 3.0). Therefore, later releases will not install Blue Eagle for new sites by default but they will be installed for Kunena updates. You should be planning to use the new templates now."

This intimated that the 2.0 blue eagle was interim and already had planned obsolescence.

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11 years 8 months ago - 11 years 8 months ago #6 by sozzled
Thank you for that reference.

I'm sure that you would appreciate the difficulty in being concise and matter-of-fact but still provide clarity when writing technical documentation. The key points are these:

(1) K 2.0 provides the means to run older templates (designed for K 1.7); this ability to run older templates is strategically important (from a "marketing perspective") to encourage users of older versions of Kunena to upgrade and adopt the latest functionality. Far too often we have receieved users' objections to upgrade based on the premise "I would upgrade except that I spent 30 minutes customising my K 1.5 template and I don't want to lose all those changes." Well, we're sorry, but sometimes we can't have everything our own way without a small element of pain. Therefore, to make the change to K 2.0 as relatively painless as possible, K 2.0 incorporates a kind of "backwards-compatibility" mode that permits some of the older Kunena templates to work. But, as with all "legacy mode" functionality, this "template backward compatibility" feature is an interim measure to allow people to update and use K 2.0 "native" templates.

(2) The Blue Eagle template is driven by tables and, with today's current browser technology, rendering HTML by tables is tricky and the renderings are inconsistent between one browser and another. Further, there are a lot of people who are still stuck using archaic browsers that do not implement the more modern web design standards. Therefore, in the sense that the Blue Eagle template is based on good old HTML 4 and CSS 1.2 (for the most part), it's time these issues were addressed and that is why the Kunena project is focused on the best use of HTML5 and CSS 3 to breathe new life into the product.

(3) For a small development team that has poured literally a few thousand hours into K 2.0 (and we have received no income from this investment of our time) it's infeasible to support several Kunena template designs free-of-charge. In that sense, and given the foregoing remarks I have made, Blue Eagle is designated for the scrap heap in the mid-term future. However, this is not meant to imply that website developers will not have a choice of options available in the future.

(4) As the information in the release notes correctly states, Blue Eagle will not be installed on new sites by default following some yet-to-be-determined decision. That means that if people have been using the Blue Eagle template in, say, K 2.0 and they are upgrading to a later version - one that does not install Blue Eagle by default, they will still be able to use the K 2.0 Blue Eagle template in the later release.

(5) Conciseness - in technical writing - does give total comprehensiveness. I hope that my very brief explanation above helps you better in your strategic planning.
Last edit: 11 years 8 months ago by sozzled.
The following user(s) said Thank You: cambler

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11 years 8 months ago #7 by cambler
Also, I should point out, the text in the template description from within the template editor in the backend says:

"Warning: Blue Eagle is DEPRECATED and it is lacking some of the new features. Because of this you should consider moving to Kunena 2.0 template."

This is where I got the impression that new features were missing.

Can you clarify what this means?

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11 years 8 months ago #8 by sozzled
Yes, this means that some of the newer features of K 2.0 that utilise HTML5 and CSS 3 are not implemented in the Blue Eagle template. This does not mean that you cannot use K 2.0 as a solution for your web-based discussion forum needs.

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11 years 8 months ago #9 by cambler
That makes sense.

Can you enumerate which features those are? I'm not opposed to hacking out the HTML5 necessary myself to use them if we're talking more than a couple weeks before a 2.0 template that implements them will be available.

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11 years 8 months ago #10 by sozzled

cambler wrote: Can you enumerate which features those are?

Not at this time, I cannot. However, because Kunena is publicly-available, open source you can go to the GitHUb and download the Mirage template (as a work-in-progress, of course) and experiment to your heart's content.

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