Let's talk about 2.4 baby

[smallwheels]

How many years will we have to wait, guys? Any ideas?​

Interesting, how another thread that started constructively by asking which of the features announced for 2.4 would be the most interesting ones got taken over and derailed by grunting people who have nothing in mind but destructiveness. If you were interested in the slightest in your question you would be well aware that the current time frame for 2.4 was communicated in early December 2025 as follows:

we are targeting a release for some point in 2026.

Which, wether you like it or not, the team is not even close to miss at the moment (even given however that I would not bet that they won't miss it eventually). Given how you formulated your question it seems a pretty safe bet to assume that you are not interested in the slightest in a honest answer or a constructive discussion but rather to stir up the mood in the forum in a negative way.

Wo do you think could answer your "question"? If anyone at all it would be the XF crew, but I doubt even they could. But even if they could: Do you honestly expect them to react to a post like that?

So what do you expect to achieve with that kind of posting? We all share the frustration and disappointment regarding the non-communication and timeline shifts by XF. However: Ignoring the official announcements and destrucive postings surely do not improve the situation.

 

[frm]

Interested in custom field searching and hope very much so that, as it's probably going to be the id of the custom field, if it can be cleaned up by using custom routes for pretty and direct URLs to find the exact items (much like prefix filtering, but more SEO focused).

https://xenforo.com/community/search/12345678/c[customFieldId]=red_cars

To

https://xenforo.com/community/search/red-cars

Neat if prefixes could do it, though I haven't tried too hard before giving up, ie:
https://xenforo.com/community/forums/have-you-seen/?prefix_id=53

To

https://xenforo.com/community/forums/have-you-seen/xf-23

 

[mjda]

Looks like the solution chosen by the team for their mediocre communication is to stop all communication altogether.

Yeah, it's definitely a bummer that they've chosen that road. Communication has been their weakness for quite some time and, instead of getting better at it, they just quit doing it.

I can't say I blame them completely though. It's a vicious circle we've created between us and them. They give us timelines, we riot when they miss it. They give us answers, we demand more.

We essentially taught them that being transparent just paints a target on their backs. It's incredibly frustrating for those of us who just want casual updates, but I get why they decided to just pull back and work in silence. I just hope they eventually find a healthy middle ground, because total radio silence isn't a great long-term strategy for the community either.

 

[cdub]

Let's bring the discussion back to something more fun like 2.4.

Hey guys... I'd like to remind everyone that I created this thread SPECIFICALLY to talk about the new 2.4 features we're interested in and would love to use and DEFINITELY NOT to complain about XF.

Start another thread for that if desired.

Interested in custom field searching and hope very much so that, as it's probably going to be the id of the custom field, if it can be cleaned up by using custom routes for pretty and direct URLs to find the exact items (much like prefix filtering, but more SEO focused).

https://xenforo.com/community/search/12345678/c[customFieldId]=red_cars

To

https://xenforo.com/community/search/red-cars

Neat if prefixes could do it, though I haven't tried too hard before giving up, ie:
https://xenforo.com/community/forums/have-you-seen/?prefix_id=53

To

https://xenforo.com/community/forums/have-you-seen/xf-23

This post is more like it! Thank you. Cleaner URLs would be nice when sharing fo sho.

 

[Suzanne O]

There's obviously a lot of impatient people on here wanting the XF developers to hurry up with their upgrade project.
I'm prepared to wait and see what happens and yeah even i'm chatting about it on my own forum. Not as a whinge but as a positive thing because i know that change is about to happen shortly. Not in the next few days but it might be in the Aussie Spring.

 

[mjda]

Ok, back on topic, there are so many features I'm looking for (almost everything will be helpful to some extent). In no particular order, from what we've seen so far, these are the main ones I've got on my want list:

• The TipTap editor
• Featured content improvement: mainly just for the auto-expiry
• Flash message improvements: the way the current flash message covers my navigation bar, with no way to dismiss it, drives me nuts...

 

[ES Dev Team]

I can't say I blame them completely though. It's a vicious circle we've created between us and them. They give us timelines, we riot when they miss it. They give us answers, we demand more.

We essentially taught them that being transparent just paints a target on their backs. It's incredibly frustrating for those of us who just want casual updates, but I get why they decided to just pull back and work in silence. I just hope they eventually find a healthy middle ground, because total radio silence isn't a great long-term strategy for the community either.

I don't have this problem in the capacity of a small software company owner who works on high quality stuff that takes a very long time to build. The same is the case for the forum we run.

I just communicate with people every ~2 weeks what's going on. They know what they're going to get is quality, so they don't mind waiting as much. I take questions and answer them. I take suggestions. I announce new features. What's important is that motion is seen, and it's evident that the people who run the thing care about the needs of the people who will use it.

I still get occasional non-constructive criticism, but more often that not, that's just people just testing your **** and it's par for the course as the man in the arena. You fling that off, learn something if there is somethin to be learned, and keep going; that's your job as leader.

Unfortunately as a software developer, you need to interface with humans sometimes for best results.

 

[Suzanne O]

this @mjda
Think nearly everyone thinks when they see a thread like this that means well and they read nothing but negative comments it's like a big moment.

Getting this back on track here i'd like to see the video pic being replaced by a thumbnail of the actual video we've posted up in the media gallery as an automatic thing.
It happens on the cloud but for self hosting it's another moment to get through

 

[Taylor J]

Still just want the new editor and the CLI REPL which would make testing out new entities and stuff faster (Ruby on Rails enjoyer here and the Rails Console is such a nice dev ux feature to work with).

 

[duderuud]

We just have to get used to the idea that development has gone to a crawl or even worse. That's the reality of this software nowadays unfortunately.

 

[cdub]

I don't have this problem in the capacity of a small software company owner who works on high quality stuff that takes a very long time to build. The same is the case for the forum we run.

I just communicate with people every ~2 weeks what's going on. They know what they're going to get is quality, so they don't mind waiting as much. I take questions and answer them. I take suggestions. I announce new features. What's important is that motion is seen, and it's evident that the people who run the thing care about the needs of the people who will use it.

I still get occasional non-constructive criticism, but more often that not, that's just people just testing your **** and it's par for the course as the man in the arena. You fling that off, learn something if there is somethin to be learned, and keep going; that's your job as leader.

Unfortunately as a software developer, you need to interface with humans sometimes for best results.

We just have to get used to the idea that development has gone to a crawl or even worse. That's the reality of this software nowadays unfortunately.

Make different thread for this talk please. Don't want this one locked.

 

[Suzanne O]

Make different thread for this talk please. Don't want this one locked.

Keep listening to this guy here.

Why?

There's too much negativity.

Remember the last thread was locked on this topic because people where getting impatient and becoming angry at those who are busily creating the next forum software upgrade for us.
Enough of being nasty to the staff here.

Stick to suggesting new features or even updated features that you want in this 2.4 series of upgrades.

 

[mjda]

Keep listening to this guy here.

You don't tell me what to do...you're not the boss of me...

Seriously, though, back to the topic...I'm still curious to know if there are more things coming. @Chris D mentioned in one of the HYS posts that we might see some things in 2.4 from @Xon and @digitalpoint, assuming they have time to implement them. Considering that post was made over a year ago, and not knowing anything about how their development process is going behind the scenes, I'm assuming they've had time. He also mentioned the possibility of at least one, maybe two, "miscellaneous" HYS posts still incoming. So, it's quite possible we haven't even seen everything that will be included just yet.

Still more HYS left to come for 2.4? I think so!

 

[digitalpoint]

You don't tell me what to do...you're not the boss of me...

Seriously, though, back to the topic...I'm still curious to know if there are more things coming. @Chris D mentioned in one of the HYS posts that we might see some things in 2.4 from @Xon and @digitalpoint, assuming they have time to implement them. Considering that post was made over a year ago, and not knowing anything about how their development process is going behind the scenes, I'm assuming they've had time. He also mentioned the possibility of at least one, maybe two, "miscellaneous" HYS posts still incoming. So, it's quite possible we haven't even seen everything that will be included just yet.

Still more HYS left to come for 2.4? I think so!

2 of the HYS topics are already from “my stuff”. PWA/enhanced CSRF and flash message improvements.

 

[mjda]

2 of the HYS topics are already from “my stuff”. PWA/enhanced CSRF and flash message improvements.

Yeah, I saw that. The post I'm talking about, though, was after those features had already been announced. He could've misremembered, or forgot they'd already been announced. I'm just going off of what was said, and when it was said.

Here's the part I'm referring to:

I just counted and there are about 15 features that have been merged or are pending to be merged into XF 2.4 that we haven't announced yet. Some of these are smaller and aren't worthy of a dedicated HYS of their own (so they'll probably be rolled into a "miscellaneous" HYS or two), and some of these are going to be mentioned below, but while we have been "cooking" (as the kids say these days) it has meant that things like code reviews, and writing HYS posts hasn't been easy to balance. There is also potentially more stuff coming from generous contributions from esteemed developers such as @Xon and @digitalpoint, assuming we have time to implement (otherwise they will wait for... a future version).

 

[digitalpoint]

Yeah, I saw that. The post I'm talking about, though, was after those features had already been announced. He could've misremembered, or forgot they'd already been announced. I'm just going off of what was said, and when it was said.

Here's the part I'm referring to:

Nothing concrete at this point. Personally I’ve found that my Profiles addon turned into a 100% must have install for all my sites. I’d argue it should be core, but…

 

[mjda]

Nothing concrete at this point. Personally I’ve found that my Profiles addon turned into a 100% must have install for all my sites. I’d argue it should be core, but…

Definitely a few things I see in that add-on I'd be interested in. Reviewable about me, display names, verified user marks...all features that would be nice to have in the core IMO. I did write my own notes add-on, too, so it'd be neat if that were included in the core. Not that there's much to maintain there, but still...

 

[jul]

The TipTap editor looks nice. Suprised nobody has attempted to implement it themselves as TipTap is the biggest 2.4 update.

 

[RobinHood]

There's been close to 100 updates to TipTap V3 since it came out last summer

 

[🔥Iggy🔥]

it will be out of date by the time 2.4 is released