It's been a while, but hopefully it was worth the wait. X3 v0.9 takes one huge step towards launch with this massive release full of goodies. New features include the new styler, many new skins and performance improvements. We also have a brand new v0.9 official demo, running on our new flamepix hosting, using several new X3 features including CDN option:
https://demo.photo.gallery/
Updated Docs
https://www.photo.gallery/x3docs/
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Those of you who already have the "secret link", can use the same link to download this latest release. To those who don't yet have the "secret link", send me a PM, and I will provide it.
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New Styler
The brand new 'X3 Styler' is an awesome tool to help you find the right combination of skin, color, layout and fonts for your X3 website. Be sure to check through the 'favorites', which is a few of our own favorite combinations. You can read about the styler in the docs here, or try it out in our new Demo:
https://demo.photo.gallery/galleries/?styler
New Skins
To compliment the new styler, we took time to create a total of 7 new skins, each with sub-skins (primary color). In addition to the new skins, there is a new method to apply a custom complimentary primary color, which extends the possibilities tenfold. Finally, there is a new 'nav' modifier for skins, where you can set the navigation background to be 'clear' or 'filled'. You can preview all skins and combinations in the new styler.
Important! (Skins change)
With the new skins, we have abandoned the dark grey navigation background in the topbar and sidebar, as we couldn't really see any reason to keep it from a design perspective. Instead, the navigation background is either "clear" (same as global background), or "filled" with a slightly darker/lighter shade than the main background. This MAY of course affect your logo if you were using a graphic logo, so you may have to adapt it or try the different skins.
Popup Transition
Popup transition has been temporarily removed, read more.
New Font Selections
We took the time to pre-create an extensive selection of font combinations for you to use in your X3 gallery. We spent a lot of time combing the best fonts available, and making sure they combine well. You can preview the font combinations in the new styler.
Performance
A lot of focus has been placed on optimizing performance in the latest release.
- Minimized requests (less files)
- Removed unnecessary render-blocking requests (still some are necessary: css+font)
- Consolidated javascript files
- Consolidated CSS files
Read more about general performance overview for v0.9 here:
https://forum.photo.gallery/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=8467
CDN service (content delivery network)
As as discussed here, we have placed the main JS script file on a commercial high-speed CDN service (currently Cloudfront), which makes sure your main X3 application JS is delivered as fast as possible to visitors in all geographic locations. PS! We have not moved the CSS files to the CDN service, because that does not allow us to modify CSS in real-time by javascript (which is a new skin feature). We may try to fix this later ... Most importantly, the large JS file is on CDN.
CDN option
A new option in settings to easily add any content delivery service like Cloudfront, KeyCDN or MaxCDN. This is quite a cool option, which basically distributes all your images from "edge" servers distributed globally, for supersonic delivery of image files. I will explain this in depth later, but with the falling prices of CDN services, I think this might be an option some of you might be interested in. Our new demo gallery is already plugged in to MaxCDN!
EDIT: Some information I forgot to add:
Popup transition has been temporarily removed. Read more.
More
- Added new universal Google analytics, tracks ajax page views and more
- Added preloader effect
- Add sort:asc/desc method for gallery (as it works for folders)
- New section custom/head (for custom meta data)
- Custom/header renamed to custom/logo
- Cleaned up main .htaccess server config file and removed some junk
- Fixed popup bug Firefox forum
- Added slideshow #hash setting forum
- Carousel is no longer affected by slideshow navigation forum
- Fixed minor issue carousel vs disqus forum
- Fixed _underscore folder name bug forum
- Fixed bug with empty space when using no-footer forum
- Fixed popup deeplink sharing bug forum and changed from ?pop:name to ?popup=name forum
- Improved recursive dropdown menu (non mega-menu)
- Slideshow fullscreen button moved to LEFT side of screen when in "startpage" mode
- Fixed some mail bugs
- Foogle font load improved: removed X3-native font-settings
- Added more tests to check page
- topbar-contained layout modifier removed, and instead set as default. Negate by adding "wide" instead.
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Updating
For this update, I would recommend making a copy of your current content/_shared.yml and then making sure to upload the new _shared.yml with many new settings. I think it is better to make a backup and populate the new file with settings from the old one, instead of getting errors because your settings file is outdated. You can simply open your backup of _shared.yml in any text editor, and then populate the new settings (from within the panel).
Other than the above, the update is normal procedure: Upload and overwrite ALL files, EXCEPT the /content/ folder, which contains all your pages, content and settings. You may want to make a backup of your panel/config.php file also if you have set a login (which is likely).
Also, if you had edited the custom/header section in the panel, that has now been renamed to custom/logo so you may need to update it. Make sure to upload the new content/custom/header/ and content/custom/logo/ folders.
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Files changed:
Code
modified: .htaccess
modified: README.x3.md
modified: app/cache.inc.php
modified: app/page-data.inc.php
modified: app/stacey.inc.php
modified: check/.htaccess
modified: check/index.php
modified: content/_shared.yml
modified: content/custom/css/custom.css
new file: content/custom/head/head.html
deleted: content/custom/header/header.html
modified: content/custom/javascript/custom.js
new file: content/custom/javascript/page.yml
new file: content/custom/logo/logo.html
modified: content/custom/widget.contact/form.html
modified: default.htaccess
modified: extensions/twig.imagevue.inc.php
new file: public/css/0.9/x3.skin.black.css
new file: public/css/0.9/x3.skin.daylight.css
new file: public/css/0.9/x3.skin.mellow.css
new file: public/css/0.9/x3.skin.organic.css
new file: public/css/0.9/x3.skin.science.css
new file: public/css/0.9/x3.skin.twilight.css
new file: public/css/0.9/x3.skin.white.css
deleted: public/css/imagevue.skin.default.css
deleted: public/css/imagevue.skin.default.cssgz
deleted: public/css/imagevue.skin.orange.css
deleted: public/css/imagevue.skin.orange.cssgz
new file: public/css/styler/styler.css
deleted: public/css/webfonts/CrYjSnGjrRCn0pd9VQsnFOvvDin1pK8aKteLpeZ5c0A.woff
deleted: public/css/webfonts/Zd2E9abXLFGSr9G3YK2MsNxB8OB85xaNTJvVSB9YUjQ.woff
deleted: public/css/webfonts/b9QBgL0iMZfDSpmcXcE8nPZRQUbYfRc-1FWT9T9EE8M.woff
deleted: public/css/webfonts/d-6IYplOFocCacKzxwXSOLO3LdcAZYWl9Si6vvxL-qU.woff
deleted: public/css/webfonts/eMS0tViDqryBl0EG1pqFZXYhjbSpvc47ee6xR_80Hnw.woff
renamed: public/css/icons/imagevue-icons.eot -> public/iconfont/1.0/imagevue-icons.eot
renamed: public/css/icons/imagevue-icons.svg -> public/iconfont/1.0/imagevue-icons.svg
renamed: public/css/icons/imagevue-icons.ttf -> public/iconfont/1.0/imagevue-icons.ttf
renamed: public/css/icons/imagevue-icons.woff -> public/iconfont/1.0/imagevue-icons.woff
new file: public/js/0.9/x3.min.js
deleted: public/js/imagevue.min.js
deleted: public/js/imagevue.min.jsgz
deleted: public/js/modernizr.imagevue.js
deleted: public/js/modernizr.imagevue.jsgz
new file: public/js/styler/styler.js
renamed: public/css/feed/xml-feed.xsl -> public/xsl/xml-feed.xsl
renamed: public/css/sitemap/xml-sitemap.xsl -> public/xsl/xml-sitemap.xsl
modified: templates/diagnostics.html
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