Even a Sunday doesn't stop the new features coming in 1.2. However, this is likely to be the last HYS for XF 1.2, so take that as you wish. :)
User preference to disable Flash uploader
Some users have run into problems where Flash is enabled but Flash-based uploads would fail. Individual users can now turn off the Flash uploader even if the admin has enabled it.
Robot identification in online visitors
The online visitors lists now distinguishes guests from robots based on user agent and counts them separately.
When viewing the list of online users, robots will be displayed differently, showing you a bit of information about the robot. The online users list can now be filtered to just members, guests, or robots.
Command-line...
Have you seen...?
This forum spotlights some of XenForo's interesting features. Spotlights on features in upcoming releases will be posted here.
Following on from the bulk user management feature we showed earlier, XenForo 1.2 will also allow you to do bulk thread management from the control panel. You will be able to search for any thread with this set of criteria:
Note that this finds threads and not posts within them.
And then you can take the following actions on matching threads:
I don't believe we showed this with bulk user management, but the same option applies there. If you're unsure if the matches are correct or if you want to manually filter them down, you can click the "view or filter matches" link. For bulk thread management, you'll get results like this:
You can use the check boxes on the left to manually filter which of the matched threads will be...
Permissions in XenForo are very powerful. However, this can also create confusion, especially if you are just getting to grips with the concepts in XenForo's permission system.
The biggest challenge is often determining why a user has (or doesn't have) a permission. XenForo 1.2 adds a permission analysis system to help you determine this.
Using it is very simple:
First, you can choose whether you just want to look at global (user group and user) or node permissions. Global permissions still factor into node permissions, so I'm just looking at the latter here.
Then you enter the user you want to check the permissions for and--if you're checking node permissions--the node to check. After submitting the form, you'll be given a...
While the conversation concept in XenForo works well, there have been some challenges managing your conversations, particularly if you have a lot. XenForo 1.2 makes some changes to improve this.
Most of the changes can be seen in this one screen shot:
So the first thing to note is that conversations now have their own tab, which allows us to give a few additional navigation links to specific lists.
From there, you'll note that conversations can be starred. You can see the conversation listed there is starred. Starring works like you're probably used to in emails; it's mostly to allow filtering.
You can also bulk manage your conversations (over multiple pages) using the inline moderation-style check box. You can star/unstar...
In XenForo 1.1, if you want to customize the display of certain users, you're generally limited to user titles and user name styling. However, sometimes this isn't flexible or clear enough. Sometimes you want to be able to draw attention to multiple things for a single user.
Enter user group banners:
Banners can be configured per user group:
(I am aware of the first banner on the second column having its top border wrapped back. This is a browser issue that we're looking into.)
You'll note that this set up is similar to how thread prefixes are configured. You can use custom CSS classes to completely change the display of banners (such as by replacing them with images).
I've demonstrated that you can have more than one...
While 1.1.4 added some spam prevention tools, XenForo 1.2 takes these further. This is by no means the end of our fight against spam though.
In 1.2, we've mostly focused on adding support for APIs and adaptable spam prevention techniques. Let's look at a few.
Deeper Stop Forum Spam Integration
We actually detailed this a long time ago. While 1.1.4 added support for checking a DNSBL that used the Stop Forum Spam database, 1.2 has a much more configurable integration:
In addition to simply checking registrations against SFS, you can also get an API key and submit back to them automatically when spam cleaning a user.
If you opt to use the SFS integration to check registrations, the Tornevall DNSBL will not be checked.
Project...
XenForo 1.2 adds another commonly requested feature: the ability to watch a forum. The forum watching system works rather similarly to the thread watching system, just on all content within a forum.
When you click the link to watch a forum, you'll see an overlay like this:
Notification-less watching options may be expanded in the future (such as with indications on the new threads list).
Notifications work identically to thread watching notifications: you'll only receive one about a thread until you view it on the forum.
Like threads, you can manage your watched forums in bulk via a dedicated page. This can also be used to simply filter only to forums you're interested in.
Administrators can also limit the type of...
In order to better support smaller-screen devices such as mobile phones and tablets, XenForo 1.2 will be introducing a responsive version of the default design.
What is responsive design? At the simplest level, it allows you to specify CSS that applies only if the screen width is below a certain level. This allows the design to be significantly altered to fit smaller screens. For example, tabular or horizontally-focused designs don't work well when you only have a screen that's 320px wide (an iPhone).
So, what options will XenForo provide?
Here you can see that we provide 3 "inflection points". In general, they correspond to particular classes of devices.
Narrow (max width: 480px): phones vertical, some phones horizontal...
I've never hidden my frustrations with XF 1.1's editor (which is based on TinyMCE). In 1.2, we have entirely removed the existing editor and replaced it with a new one based on Redactor:
So obviously this looks quite a bit different--and I know plenty of people didn't like the 1.1 editor look--but the functionality is there. So what advantages do we have? Well there are various ones:
Much lighter code and faster to load. Redactor depends on jQuery and benefits from that.
When pasting, most formatting is removed (though some is kept). However, if you're pasting from one XenForo editor to another (or within the same one), all formatting is maintained.
White space is maintained for code tags when pasting from Webkit. This was an...
We missed last week, but lets make it up with a look at a bunch of new things coming in 1.2. We do still have various "big" things to show, but we'll save them for another day.
Template editing improvements: tabs, ctrl-s, auto tabbing
The template editor in the admin CP is now easier to code directly within with a few changes:
Pressing tab will now insert an actual tab.
You can save the template using ctrl+s (or cmd+s).
When you press enter on a line that starts with whitespace, the next line will automatically start with that amount of whitespace. (Basically, this keeps your tab depth.)
If you highlight multiple lines, you can use tab or shift-tab to indent or outdent all of the selected lines automatically.
<xen:set> improvements...
A large forum will probably get a lot of reports, so in 1.2 we've tried to streamline the reporting system and make it easier for moderators to work with. Let's see what new options there are...
Reporting to a forum
Before I start, if you're one of those people that really doesn't like the default reporting system, you can turn it off and have reports create threads in a forum. If you have a workflow around this, then you can go back to using it but obviously you'll need to setup things like prefixes or workflows to define how to mark "closed" reports, etc.
If you choose this option, none of the changes that I'm listing below apply to you, so you can just ignore the rest of this message if you want. ;)
Updated reports counter
The...
Let's take a break from some of the bigger feature improvements coming in 1.2 and look at some of the smaller tweaks. This isn't necessarily an exhaustive list. I can't really remember everything. ;)
User thread title editing
A new permission has been added to control whether users can edit the titles of their own threads. This is automatically tied into the post editing length permission.
This also includes editing the prefix as well.
Style property cache size reduced
If you have a number of styles installed, you may have had to fight with MySQL max_allowed_packet due to the style property cache size. The cache will now only store changes from the default value, reducing the size of the cache per style.
Template compilation...
In our second updating about template improvements, we're focusing on tools to make it easier to keep your changes up-to-date and to see what changes you've been making.
Template Merging
First up is the ability to merge changes into templates after upgrading XenForo, an add-on, or a distributable style.
This is done via the existing outdated template interface:
You have the option to automatically merge changes if possible. This will merge any updates where a conflict is not detected. If a conflict is detected, you will need to use the manual merge interface, which you can access by clicking on "merge changes" for a template. Here's what you'll see:
The yellow and blue highlighted blocks indicate the changes that are being...
