We publish here the chat log from our last "Ask The Joomla Team" Session.

Next Session will be happen on 12th May 2010 4 UTC with Ron Severdia and Ian MacLennan.

How Can You Join Ask the Joomla Team

You can meet us in the #joomla-ask-the-team chat room on irc.freenode.net

One very easy way to join is to visit this link: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#joomla-ask-the-team

Chat log

• coder4life

  hello everyone

• Little^John

  o/

• rvsjoen

  evening peoples

• coder4life

  Hello everyone

• AndrewEddie

  welcome to another round of Grill the Gurus :)

• CoolAcid

  Hi hi.. ;)

• Little^John

  haha

• AndrewEddie

  Louis Landry and Andrew Eddie at your service

• rvsjoen

  you serve marshmallows ?

• coder4life

  think we need a campfire first though, I could set my computer on fire, but that does not do me any good

• louislandry

  OK, so who wants to go first?

• CoolAcid

  I do..

  leaves ;)

• coder4life

  Today is the feature freeze, are we official transitioning into total bug squashing mode

• CoolAcid

  Sorry - I'll behave now..

• louislandry

  :) well played CoolAcid

  OK, to answer that question... yes and no

  :)

• coder4life

  thought so

• louislandry

  From my blog post:

  At this milestone the feature patch tracker will be temporarily closed for new submissions. No new feature patches or branches will be considered for 1.6. Inclusion of new features or branches will be deferred to the 1.7 release cycle. All work in the trunk will be geared towards stabilizing the features in the trunk at this milestone. Bugs and other issues will continue to be managed via the issue tracker.

  It is important to note that any work on features in branches can (and should) continue after this milestone; it will just no longer be geared towards 1.6 in favor of 1.7. It should be easier to keep branches up to date with the trunk beyond this milestone as we expect there will be fewer drastic changes to the code base than during the alpha phase of the development cycle.

• louislandry

  We encourage people to continue to do work on future features and such, but we won't be including them into the 1.6 release cycle.

  This is somewhat different than how it has gone in the past.

• D3vil_

  hi @ all

• louislandry

  Generally speaking though, yes... we are after today entirely focused on bug squashing for release

• louislandry

  that clear as mud?

• coder4life

  So do we expect to see a faster 1.7 as a result, because it seems like we have set the framework for joomla in 1.6, is 1.7 more feature focused?

• louislandry

  1.7 is not feature focused at all

  1.7 will be a time based release

• coder4life

  I see

• louislandry

  we will set a date

• rvsjoen

  is there a timeframe on RC1 ? or is it the 'when all the most important things are fixed' - kind of beta cycle

• coder4life

  I know I am a little ahead of schedule here, but im curious, what is the plan from 1.6-1.7?

• louislandry

  no set timeframe

  From the blog post: At the point where we feel Joomla! 1.6 is ready for prime time we will prepare the first RC packages for release (Milestone 3). This milestone indicates that we believe 1.6 is ready for early adopters and integrators to be treating it as a stable release. We expect no API changes, minimal user interface changes, and minimal behavioral changes between the RC milestone and the general availability release.

• AndrewEddie

  RC1 will be some multiple of "2 weeks" after the beta is launched, so it depends on how many betas are cut

• coder4life

  What do we like to incorporate into joomla core for 1.7 that did not necessarily turn up in 1.6 version

• Little^John

  in conjunction to rvsjoen - what are the timeframe for testing before release? (many extensions needs serious work before they would compatibly w 1.6 mvc?)

• louislandry

  coder4life: The simplest answer to that right now is we don't know, but will be having a meeting and setting a vision and goalposts for what we'd like in 1.7 during the RC phase most likely for 1.6

• coder4life

  Ok thanks louslandry, keep us all updated, I might have some curious developers interested :)

• louislandry

  Little^John: I don't understand the question.

• rvsjoen

  i'm a bit concerned about what I call the windows-vista syndrome, developers that won't see a reson to release 1.6 native components knowing that 1.7 will probably come shortly after

• louislandry

  I promise you we will do a much better job of doing just that for this go around.

• AndrewEddie

  coder4life: once the beta is release, that is the time for devs to start testing their extensions against 1.6

• coder4life

  @AndrewEddie, I did not ask that question :)

• louislandry

  rvsjoen: duly noted... but they will run into the same issue with 1.6 -> 1.7 as with 1.7 -> 1.8 and so on.

• rvsjoen

  indeed

• louislandry

  At some point they will either update or people will stop using their software

• Little^John

  so, 1.6b will go out and by that time a release date for 1.6 will be set? (is this the official time for extension devs to do their magic?)

• louislandry

  such is the nature of the beast I suppose.

• jlleblanc

  jvsjoen: plus, my impression is that the 1.6 -> 1.7 changes will be less drastic

• rvsjoen

  jlleblanc: yes I agree

• ivo

  who knows without a roadmap

• louislandry

  To be fair we don't know what those changes will be yet, but there will certainly be less time for drastic changes.

• piegus

  Is 1.7 will be released 6 moths afrter the stable 1.6?

  or its not set up yet

• louislandry

  That is the general target we are tryign to hit. When 1.6 is released we will announce a date. We do not want to do a release during christmas for example, so we will be flexible a little bit as to exact.

• AndrewEddie

  Little^John: when the beta is released, successive betas will come out every two weeks. When we are happy with the quality, RC's will then come out every two weeks - the main difference here is RC's are considered production ready; then at some point GA is declared and the 1.7 clock starts roughly 6 months from that time

• coder4life

  So does Joomla ACL require extension developers rework their code for the ACL, or will there be a simplified conversion process (im guessing some basic documentated information)

• AndrewEddie

  coder4life: it should be a set of very simple instructions

• Little^John

  AndrewEddie, okay. Thx.

• louislandry

  Generally speaking making your component utilize the ACL in 1.6 will require only a few lines of changes assuming you are doing things the way Joomla does them now.

• coder4life

  obviously developers will not be taking advantage of the full use of the ACL though, correct?

• louislandry

  That would depend entirely upon the developer and the use cases I would imagine.

• jerimiah

  I presume if something is coded to 1.5 standards, updating to 1.6 is minor - if something is still coded to 1.0/mambo standards it will be a kick in the pants?

• AndrewEddie

  I think there will be a lot of pressure for them to introduce the ACL features, just because the core is doing so much

• louislandry

  jerimiah: I think that is a pretty good summary.

• AndrewEddie

  jerimiah: ++

• jerimiah

  seems fair to me

• rvsjoen

  the access management in existing 1.5 components seems to me that is what takes the biggest hit when it comes to rework

• piegus

  Are you going to let every person (who know how to program...) to apply patches for releases after 1.6? just like theres in drupal?

• AndrewEddie

  the ACL is only one of the new things you can take advantage of - it's one of many things the devs have to play with

• louislandry

  piegus: what do you mean by "apply patches"

• Little^John

  Will there be focus on native logging in the future or will that be left for extensions? (eg. userlogins, acl hit/deny lists, various statistics)

• jerimiah

  Is it optional for developers to ignore the ACL if they have been living without it thus far (as in the feature isn't useful for their extension)?

• AndrewEddie

  jerimiah: correct

• snellcode

  piegus: you want commit access for everyone? :p

• AndrewEddie

  jerimiah: sorry, yes, it's optional

• coder4life

  How will Joomla perform in speed, seems one of the things Joomla has always struggled with, it has gotten better over time, but are we optomizing the backend to make queries more efficent?

• piegus

  luislandry: I mean to write patches so team or everybody can rate/accept them so it will be implemented in core

• louislandry

  Currently anyone can submit patches to the feature tracker... that has been the case for 1.6 and will continue into the future. We are also giving people who want them branches to work in now and will continue into the future. We will not be giving everyone commit access to the trunk though...

  piegus: we have had a feature patch tracker for a long time now... and we will certainly continue with it.

• louislandry

  coder4life: It will perform as well as we can all make it perform. Certainly glad to look at suggestions for improvement.

• AndrewEddie

  it's worth noting that the feature patch tracker will close today, and reopen when 1.6 is released, then will happen for each release between Beta and GA

• louislandry

  For clarity: http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/tracker/?action=TrackerItemBrowse&tracker_id=8549 is the feature patch tracker.

• AndrewEddie

  coder4life: I'm hearing mixed reports on the ground that it's twice the speed through to it's twice as slow. Nobody has done conclusive benchmarking yet to a common baseline so I really don't know

• jools

  Title: JoomlaCode > Projects > Joomla! > Tracker > Joomla! 1.6 Feature Patch Tracker > Browse Tracker Item (at joomlacode.org)

• voland

  Do you have plans to improve social integration - like working openId without registration need?

• Little^John

  No comments on native logging..?

• AndrewEddie

  sorry, missed that one

• louislandry

  That happens when they don't come in one at a time :) sorry.

• AndrewEddie

  best answer is it's up to the community

• snellcode

  did comments make it into 1.6?

• Little^John

  np :)

• louislandry

  On logging I would love to see some work done on that, but hasn't interested anyone enough to actually put the work in as of yet.

• apotropaic

  I haven't been keeping track of all the new features of 1.6, are we going to be able to override xml files found in tmpl from templates? And perhaps even create new ones from within the template html folder

• AndrewEddie

  if someone or a group of people are interested in that, and I know there are one or two, we might expected to see a patch come through, or some branch work

• coder4life

  Can we choose to collect from our users, can we add fields to our registration, then set up extensions to utilize those fields?

• AndrewEddie

  regarding social integration

  again, we don't know whether that will be there because we don't know what the developers in the community are interested in focusing on

  however

• AndrewEddie

  1.7 is more or less slated at the "year of content"

  *as the

• D3vil_

  will custom fields come into 1.7 ?

• AndrewEddie

  so I expect that theme will play heavily

• Little^John

  louislandry, I havent done anything yet, but will have to do it in some time. I actually thought logging and having a history to go back, was natively supported (and almost a dire 'need' on modern webapp). Okay, I might return to this topic later when we have done some work on it. Thx. :)

• piegus

  I have a question about features. Is there gonna be support for multipages and subdomains?

• AndrewEddie

  sorry guys, just catching up on the questions, making sure we don't miss any

• AndrewEddie

  apotropaic: do you mean the XML files that define the layouts?

• Gerlof

  @Little^John Do you mean a logging function like Dioscouri is developing? http://www.dioscouri.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=177&Itemid=412

• jools

  Title: SCOUT Overview - Dioscouri Design (at www.dioscouri.com)

• Gerlof

  @jools I was first ;P

• louislandry

  We do not know exactly what will come in 1.7, but during the RC -> GA phase of 1.6 we will be working on setting a vision for 1.7 as well as a release schedule for it. What ends up in it will largely depend upon what developers like yourselves put into it.

• ivo

  @jools is a url > page title robot

• louislandry

  Generally speaking though we have been thinking about it as a real focus on beefing up the content system.

• voland

  And one yet question about truely MVC model. Some monthes ago i tried to create admin template - but after looking code i understood that it`s impossible withot patches. Do Joomla 1.6 will have true MVC in admin part&

• Gerlof

  @ivo me newbie

• apotropaic

  AndrewEddie: Yes the one that affects layout.

• AndrewEddie

  apotropaic: sorry, actually had to look at the code. Yes and no. You cannot override a core XML layout file, but you can add new layouts, with XML files to the template's override folder

• louislandry

  coder4life: There is a way to capture different user fields and such using plugins/layouts yes.

• AndrewEddie

  apotropaic: also with the modules, you can add additional layouts in the template and you can pick from those in the module edit screen

• apotropaic

  AndrewEddie: is that new in 1.6 or has it been there in 1.5 as well? This is a killer feature

• AndrewEddie

  apotropaic: this is new in 1.6

  and yes, I think it's a killer feature for creativity :)

• ivo

  @coder4life check out usermeta you can use that now http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/usermeta/

• AndrewEddie

  thanks

• jools

  Title: JoomlaCode > Projects > User Meta > Home (at joomlacode.org)

• louislandry

  voland: 1.6 admin has been refactored to use the MVC. In fact yesterday we merged in a second admin template with a great number of template layout overrides.

• coder4life

  @louislandry, AndrewEddie, Ivo Thanks

• louislandry

  I think we got all of them are out there.... if not please repeat.

• voland

  louislandry: well and I can reconstruct helper to include new filelds and interfaces?

• piegus

  Is there gonna be support for multipages/subdomains? In 1.6

• snellcode

  did comments make it into 1.6?

• AndrewEddie

  piegus: not natively no. In fact I've heard really interesting reports from business that Joomla is chosen because it does not have this feature. If your multi-domain site gets hacked, all the sites go down.

• louislandry

  voland: I don't know what your limitations may be on what you can do but I do know that it is worlds better now than it was before. If you run into issues bring them up on the mailing lists and we can try to work through them. Only way to know is to try.

• gregdaynes

  @piegus - check out Naveen Gavinis work on the GSOC '09 - https://community.joomla.org/gsoc2009/naveen-gavini.html

• piegus

  I dont know who's responsible for templates. But is there gonna be feature like dropdown menu ? :D

• bembelimen

  so instead that the multisite gets hacked, the hacker infects the server and hacks all pages by its own :P

• voland

  louislandry: thanks - I`ll try - the idea is to create human usable and fast admin interface

• louislandry

  Great goals to have voland

• AndrewEddie

  snellcode: so comments is an interesting story. Louis and I made a call the other day that we could either push for comments, or we could prepare everyone else's work and get it into the core. It was line-ball but we felt it better to leave that work and push through a lot of other necessary features. Bottom line is we missed the deadline and we thought it best to set a good example, but all that means is comme

  goes straight into the 1.7 process when it starts.

• louislandry

  bembelimen: depends on the environment ... that would certainly be a worst case scenario.

• artyom

  @voland: check also the new admin template. I already love it.

• AndrewEddie

  snellcode: so you win some and you loose some

• snellcode

  AndrewEddie: sounds good, and i agree sets the right example :)

• apotropaic

  AndrewEddie: I use this in a lot of my websites, even without overrides by adding them in the /components/com_content/ pages. When I found this, even on 1.5, I found that it really eliminated 95% of the reasons I thought I needed a CCK. I'm writing some tutorials on how to use this

• bembelimen

  louislandry just sounds a little bit lame, a security reason as contra for multi domain support....., when one site is infected, all other sites will (probably) have the same security holes

• AndrewEddie

  apotropaic: thats awesome

• louislandry

  It isn't a reason, it is an anecdote that andrew brought up.

• voland

  @artyom: i checked it in early alpha - it`s much better that the one in 1.5 but still far from ideal

• bembelimen

  nvm

• AndrewEddie

  bembelimen: that's just what I'm hearing on the ground. I'm indifferent to it personally, but I thought it was interesting.

• louislandry

  The reason it isn't done is because no one cared enough about it to actually do the work to get it done. I'd be happy to get you setup in a branch to work on it if you like?

• Little^John

  heh

• piegus

  Do you think you can make it with 1.6 before christmas?

  :D

• louislandry

  piegus: ABSOLUTELY

• piegus

  hurray!

• Little^John

  I think I asked this a week ago but, ... will it be possible to rename /administrator/ in 1.6?

• bembelimen

  piegus june 1.6 and (+6 month) christmas 1.7^^

• Little^John

  I think some components uses files across frontend/backend (like languagefiles), but for the core...

• ivo

  no security through obscurity

• AndrewEddie

  well, the more hands we have testing during beta, the quicker and better it's going to be

• louislandry

  I do'nt think so Little^John ... but i'd love to have someone look into what it takes to do that. Given the milestone we hit today not for 1.6 probably, but certainly would be a great thing for 1.7

• voland

  is there any work to improve PDF support. version of tcpdf in Joomla 1.5 seems 2005 year and it have no css 2 (and even real css 1) support. some thing more fresh in 1.6?

• D3vil_

  christmas 2010? never

• apotropaic

  Hey, I've been confused as to where I can help with 1.6 as a developer. Whats the best place to go to find out where I can help about 10 hours a week?

• AndrewEddie

  apotropaic: at the moment, the Bug Squad is the best place to start learning the ropes

• Little^John

  louislandry, ok. The ideal solution (imo), would be having the /admin/ completely separated from the frontend, so it could even be placed on a subdomain?

• AndrewEddie

  #joomla-bug-squad and http://groups.google.com/group/joomlabugsquad

• jools

  Title: Joomla! bug Squad | Google Groups (at groups.google.com)

• AndrewEddie

  that's the IRC chat and the mailing list

• artyom

  @voland: I mean the new template "Hathor" which was appeared few days ago in the trunk. Do you mean it or "Bluestork"?

• apotropaic

  OK thanks!

• louislandry

  I would very much like to access it through a subdomain. If you are interested in doing some research on that and working on it towards 1.7 I think that'd be a fantastic initiative... and I think you'd probably get some support from several people interested in it.

• jmcameron

  will there be updates to the installer for language installations for extensions that will let the component help files get installed in the right place? Don't think that is possible with current installer.

• AndrewEddie

  jmcameron: er, there's a few points there, let me go over a few new features and see if that helps

• louislandry

  voland: we dropped PDF support in 1.6 and are looking forward to third party solutions to that in the future.

• Little^John

  louislandry, okay. Would depend on the time needed/available for me, but surely wants to help. :)

• voland

  louislandry: sounds bad (

• louislandry

  Sure... the beauty of participating in OSS projects is you get ot spend as little or as much time as you want/can.

• sollostech

  Any thought to Google Sitemap integration at the Joomla core? I would like to set priority settings for search engines as a parameter setting as I compose a new article.

• Little^John

  haha, true, just wish reallife didnt take so damn long to complete... ;)

• louislandry

  voland: the feature was never good enough, and we didn't have the resources to really make it good enough. There aren't a lot of good PHP based PDF solutions out there and it really isn't in the scope of our project to write one right now.

• AndrewEddie

  1.6 will include the ability to have local language files for the extension, eg /components/com_foobar/language and the system will automatically pick them up. The installer includes several new events that will help extensions install, upgrade and uninstall, and there is also an update site feature where you can publish an XML on your site and Joomla will check if you have the latest version. Also you'll be abl

  install packages of extensions, and also libraries. Does that help?

• louislandry

  I sincerely hope that the third party dev community can come up with some good PDF solutions worthy of usage.

• voland

  artyom: I`ll check new template! thanks. PS - are u from russia?

• snellcode

  ive used fpdf to turn php data into pdf, works very well

• louislandry

  sollostech: It's an interesting thought... I haven't heard/seen anyone working on anything like that recently, but you could ask on the mailing lists if anyone is interested.

• elkuku

  Q: are there plans to make a 'tiny core' distribution - meaning - stripping off all that 'not so nessesary' extensios?

• jmcameron

  AndrewEddie: sounds like the language directory in the extension is the right answer. Of course that means restructuring the extension files, but hey that may be the easiest thing about the upgrade to 1.6! Thanks Andrew!

• sollostech

  louislandry: I will, I haven't subscribed to the mailing list, but I will.

• voland

  @louislandry: well - I used last tcpdf version and integrate it in 1 site, but I agree that it`s not very popular feature

• louislandry

  snellcode: its not easily themeable, it doesn't support good HTML -> PDF output conversion in a reliable way. It just isn't polished in a way that we expect for usage. Especially not when it is so easy to actually print rendered web page in the browser as a PDF on most modern operating systems.

• snellcode

  i feel that html > pdf is a bad approach

• AndrewEddie

  elkuku: that would be a great conversion to have on the dev list. Would be interested in hearing what people think at "lite" version consists of.

• louislandry

  Exactly, and we don't store data in other formats

  so the problem is much bigger than just slapping in a PDF library and generating PDFs

• snellcode

  php > pdf using php data directly is the only reliable way

• voland

  snellcode: as i remember fpdf doesn`t support unicode

• AndrewEddie

  elkuku: we'd need to do some restructuring of the installation app, but that's something we could work towards

• elkuku

  well i thought it could be scratched here also ;)

• jmcameron

  Thanks!

• elkuku

  yeah i think the installer could be 'splitted' sonehow.. sql and files..

• louislandry

  I would say elkuku that it is most certainly on my mind... and I do hope that I get time to work on that sort of thing during the 1.7 cycle. What the implications are for it I am not quite sure yet... and since it will have a big impact on a lot of things I think it deserves a larger discussion on list.

• Little^John

  How about uninstallable defualt components for one? I was quite puzzled that it is possible to uninstall com_banner and deleting mod_banner (not uninstalling - is greyed out), but still having the page break. Doesnt the sample components and modules need a cleanup to make it consistent? :D

• elkuku

  true - i just see people requestig more and more features/extesions - when it think we should go for a more 'modular' aproach

• louislandry

  Little^John: i'm sure we need to go through and clean that stuff up... you volunteering?

  :)

  at the very least... report the wierd stuff you find in the issue tracker: http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/tracker/?action=TrackerItemBrowse&tracker_id=8103 so it can be looked at.

• jools

  Title: JoomlaCode > Projects > Joomla! > Tracker > Joomla! 1.6.x IssueTracker > Browse Tracker Item (at joomlacode.org)

• Matrikular

  well, im a little late - hopefully not too late,...

  so - right now as hannes (hackwar) mentioned a couple of days ago at the jday.nl - people will be able to extend the user profiles. i looked into that an even longer time ago and was not so happy with extending xml files when a big goal of 1.6 was to get rid of parsing too many xml files ( hope i got it right )

  on top of that, will there be a clean help file about how to extend the user profile/s

• Little^John

  louislandry, I will then. Was just real puzzled about it :)

• louislandry

  Probably oversight :)

• Matrikular

  and ... will there be dynamicly added profile fields in 1.7 as, im sure every user expected to be in 1.6

• AndrewEddie

  Matrikular: yes, you'll be able to extend that with plugins. There is an "example" in the core.

• Matrikular

  ive looked at that and ... its a bit unhandy for the "normal" user dont you think ?

• AndrewEddie

  Matrikular: well, actually, you'll be able to extend all the component, so we'll need to sort some docs on that.

  you could right a plugin to add custom fields to Articles without too much trouble :)

• voland

  about extensions. what is your opinion to integrate or no (may be) in 1.7 powerful CCK with filters. Today we have many solutions like zoo k2 jseblod but this concurention I think not too good - there`s still no filters and search & sorting by fileds

• Matrikular

  sure, i was more interested in solutions on how a / the user profile can be extended

• Little^John

  Taking 1.6 into consideration, is right about now an absolute lousy timing for beginning the development of an entire new site (w. forum, blog, >10k users, etc)?

• Matrikular

  for example the contact component, or - well, to serve a community builder solution with a hook on creating profiles

• AndrewEddie

  Matrikular: have a look at the user profile plugin. It's "an" example of how you can do a really simple job, or you could bolt it onto a customisation component. The sky is the limit really.

• Matrikular

  okay, thx - ill have a look again then

• louislandry

  OK guys that will wrap it for questions.... so i'll finish off answering what is left :)

  voland: my opinion is that there are great things in each of those extensions worth exploring. Of them I think I personally like zoo's architecture the best, but as of right now we don't have any set goals for 1.7 We do very much hope to get a blueprint of what we want done for 1.7 soon and will be focusing on it during the RC phase as I said before. Whatever we do put into the core I absolutely would love to see it be very robust in its ability to filter and search on any fields.

• AndrewEddie

  Little^John: that's a tough call

• louislandry

  Little^John: I don't think its that bad. My hope is that we will be all very pleasantly surprised in how much easier it will be to go from 1.5 -> 1.6 compared to 1.0 -> 1.5 ... and I think that as with anything you use the best tools you have at the time. If when the time comes to migrate if you run into issues there is a large group of people on the mailing list and often idling in the IRC channels that can help you out.

  My advice is to just build the site... 1.5 isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

  You won't be alone when its time to migrate :)

  Thanks to everyone for a great session :)

• AndrewEddie

  yes thankyou

• Little^John

  Haha, good to know. Thanks both! :)

• voland

  Thanks for answers :-)

• gregdaynes

  Thank you Louis and Andrew

• coder4life

  Thanks for your time Louis and Andrew, now back to Joomla :)

• elkuku

  Thanks Louis and Andrew - those chats should be on a regular base ;)

• louislandry

  They are and will be :)

  you can also try to just ping us in the dev channel

• elkuku

  i will ;)

• louislandry

  unless i'm completely bonkers busy i am always happy to chat