XF 2.2 Assorted improvements

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We're fast approaching the time where we're able to unleash XenForo 2.2 on this very forum but, before we do, we wanted to tell you about a few slightly more miscellaneous features that we've been keeping under our hat.

Advanced options switch

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have already spotted some hints about this in some of our earlier screenshots. 🤫

XenForo has an ever-increasing number of options and then by the time you put add-on options in the mix, the options pages may start to feel somewhat daunting and unwieldy at times, especially for new admins to the platform. After all, there are nearly 200 options in XenForo alone.

We (and add-on developers) are now able to mark options or entire option groups as "advanced".

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What this intends to do is simply hide some of the options we deem to be more "advanced" so as to simplify the option lists while also making it very easy to unhide if the need presents itself.

To do this you can toggle "Advanced mode" for your admin account. The easiest way to do this is from within the option list itself when options are hidden. Clicking "Show them" will reveal the advanced options and enable "Advanced mode" permanently for your admin account.

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An alternative and perhaps slightly more pre-emptive way to enable Advanced mode is from the "cogs" menu in the admin control panel header. You just need to toggle the checkbox in the menu footer:

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Other places you can toggle it are from the list of option groups and while editing an administrator account.
 
Thanks, I guess the padding makes the difference. I haven't thought about that. The demo looks fine.
 
Are there any additional configuration options for setting the jobs to run server-side? Definitely more great additions by the way...

I'll be continuing development of my (now mostly redundant) addon: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/cli-job-runner.6478/ to cover more advanced use-cases not provided by the core.

Given the main use-case of a unix based cron for jobs is for sites with low to no traffic - the functionality now baked into the core will suffice for most people and they won't need my addon.

If there are more advanced specific usages (eg greater control over the timing of job running), or debugging jobs - that aren't provided by the core, I'll make sure they are included in my addon.
 
I'll be continuing development of my (now mostly redundant) addon: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/cli-job-runner.6478/ to cover more advanced use-cases not provided by the core.

Given the main use-case of a unix based cron for jobs is for sites with low to no traffic - the functionality now baked into the core will suffice for most people and they won't need my addon.

If there are more advanced specific usages (eg greater control over the timing of job running), or debugging jobs - that aren't provided by the core, I'll make sure they are included in my addon.

Oh, I have already used this as the basis for what's in my application right now. However, I didn't want any jobs to be run through front-end requests. All my jobs are processed server-side even with high traffic amounts.

The only thing I would consider adding for your plugin is configurable error handling if a cron job runs into an error. (attempt to re-run again, if X number of errors send an email)

Basically, thanks for making this addon, haha.
 
We're fast approaching the time where we're able to unleash XenForo 2.2 on this very forum but, before we do, we wanted to tell you about a few slightly more miscellaneous features that we've been keeping under our hat.
Does this mean ALL the new features for 2.2 have been mentioned? Or is there more? 🤞🤞🤞
 
Some nice features in here. Some could be quite handy.

Advanced Options - Would be great if we can customise this, as often there are settings which once changed, you never need again.
Auto Save - This is awesome. Quite a few times now I've been writing an essay in reply to someone only to have the bloody browser crash (less so now that I've ditched IE completely), or you duck off to take a piss and browser has locked up. This will be a huge help.
Custom Prefixes - Really handy!
Email options - Not relevant for me, but for a lot of others.

I'm guessing this is the lsat HYS before 2.2 drops, and theres quite a few significant upgrades across the board.

One thing I'd like to see is a forum checklist where one can note down all their settings. Or at least a way to export all those settings.

The alerts menu now represents the number of alerts you have not yet viewed. Opening the alerts menu marks all of the alerts viewed.
I have addons so not sure if they have changed default alerts behaviour, BUT has that changed from previous where only if you click the item does it Mark as Read?

Clicking the menu and marking everything automatically as read/viewed will be a bit of a pain. Or have I missed something (quite likely!)?

I've had some of my prefixes misused (understandably as well, since they are supposed to be short) so this is a real gamechanger for me since I use prefixes basically as sub-categories and they are required. Pretty awesome.
So many users fail to realise how powerful prefixes are too.
 
Hmm, I am not completely sold on the alert changes - in fact I think they might be confusing as users find it very hard to understand the nuanced difference between "viewed an alert" and "read the content".

We've recently migrated a froum from WoltLab to XenForo 2 and it took a lot of support to explain users "why alerts don't work on XenForo":
  • On WoltLab, opening the alert menu does "nothing" (it just does display the alerts) - on XenForo it marks the alerts read (XF 2.1) or viewed (XF 2.2)
  • On WoltLab, reading the content not only marks the alert read but also deletes it - but only when clicked from the alerts menu; just reading the content via other ways does not do anything
We've had endless complaints from users about 1) "not getting alerted/missing alerts" (from users who opened the menu and did not read the content for every alert) and "alerts not getting marked read" (from users who read the content but were confused the alerts are still being displayed in the menu).
We've installed @Xon's Alert Improvements which did help group 1) a lot, but group 2) still does complain.

I'm therefore pretty sure that this change will yet again cause a lot of confusion and require a lot of time to support.

Ideally, I think the system should be flexible enough to allow users to work like they wout like it to be.
 
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