XenForo 2.0 Discussion

[Chris D]

You already have differences in OSes as Helvetica Neue is - to my knowledge - not installed by default on Windows and Segoe UI is definitely not installed by default on OS X. So Mac would get Helvetica Neue while Windows will get Segoe UI with this priority.

Correct. But comparatively they aren't totally dissimilar. The point is that those fonts will likely be available on 99.9% of all devices, so rather than it being a different appearance on every device you use, it should be mostly familiar regardless of which device you use. Again, moot point, because if you don't like it, you can change it (just like you can now).

 

[Lawrence]

Kudo's to the team, those screenshots look amazing!

 

[Alpha1]

I kinda miss Kier - not really mentioned in screenshots

You are not looking well enough.
And I may be wrong, but the design seems to have Kier written all over it. I remember Kier's style mockups from 7 years ago which had a similar touch.

A widget system! Glad I don't need to eat my shoes on a bet on it.

 

[Ernest L. Defoe]

A widget system! Glad I don't need to eat my shoes on a bet on it.

Would have been funny trying to watch you or anyone else for that matter eat shoes.

 

[Jake B.]

Everything is cool.

Still just

beavering away on XF2 primarily

I hope?

 

[Alpha1]

Would have been funny trying to watch you or anyone else for that matter eat shoes.

I'm sure I disagree with that statement.

 

[TLDR]

You are not looking well enough

Shhh, don't tell anyone, but I think those screenshots are kind of doctored. According to the stats, there are two members. Chris D and Mike posting in that announcement. And Kier is supposed to be the last poster in the test forum....

 

[Russ]

Shhh, don't tell anyone, but I think those screenshots are kind of doctored. According to the stats, there are two members. Chris D and Mike posting in that announcement. And Kier is supposed to be the last poster in the test forum....

Just go ahead and submit a bug report, they'll sort it out.

 

[Chris D]

[Not A Bug]

That could be a guest poster, or the forum stats cache may not have been updated yet, or perhaps we just made a bad job of generating the test data we used for these screenshots

 

[TLDR]

Aha!

That could be a guest poster

In which case your "look closer" argument does not mean anything.

or the forum stats cache may not have been updated yet

Well, a forum installation where you intend to take screenshots where you do not update the cache before taking the photos... That's somewhat hard to believe.

or perhaps we just made a bad job of generating the test data we used for these screenshots

From a marketing standpoint: You should stick with the "It's a guest post" explanation.

 

[Jake B.]

[Not A Bug]

That could be a guest poster, or the forum stats cache may not have been updated yet, or perhaps we just made a bad job of generating the test data we used for these screenshots

We all know Brogan made all 300k posts and then just changed the 'username' in xf_post and xf_thread to Kier/Mike/Chris

 

[James]

Well, a forum installation where you intend to take screenshots where you do not update the cache before taking the photos... That's somewhat hard to believe

By cache he meant the backend cache. To take a screenshot of a style doesn't need any backend data caches updated, just the browser style cache which will update due to versioning on the css url.

So many questions from a username! Kier is still listed as a director on companies house so until that disappears he's still part of XF.

 

[TLDR]

Yeah well, XF1 has the possibility to run cronjobs manually.

And asking for Kier seems to be some sort of running gag by now

 

[Amaury]

In case this was overseen:

Are there any plans on bringing back the feature of searching for threads you started in a forum? I don't know or remember why it was removed. https://xenforo.com/community/search/?type=post

Also, a question based on this latest update, though if this is better in the update thread, please let me know.

I assume a lot of it depends on how heavily customized your styles are, but approximately how broken can we expect styles to be when upgrading to XenForo 2.0 when it's finally released out of beta to the public and approximately how much work would be needed to fix them? For example, our styling is mostly done through style properties and custom CSS in EXTRA.css for elements that don't have style properties. When it comes to actual template edits, they range from hiding certain elements, such as the warning points on member cards and profiles, to changing the layout of some areas combined with CSS usage. Our discussion list, for example, is one area with a changed layout:



Would something like that become too broken?

 

[Chris D]

In case this was overseen

I don't recall the circumstances that led to its removal, either. Essentially if there's a feature you want that doesn't currently exist, the Suggestions forum is the best place to track that. That feature doesn't currently exist in XF2.0, but unless there's a Suggestion thread for it, it's unlikely to.

but approximately how broken

Assume 100% at this point.

 

[Amaury]

I don't recall the circumstances that led to its removal, either. Essentially if there's a feature you want that doesn't currently exist, the Suggestions forum is the best place to track that. That feature doesn't currently exist in XF2.0, but unless there's a Suggestion thread for it, it's unlikely to.

Done: https://xenforo.com/community/threads/ability-to-search-for-threads-youve-started-in-a-forum.119476/

 

[CyberAP]

Wow. The biggest update since the announcement of XF 2.0. New technologies, approximate beta release date.

I am mostly impressed by featuring BEM in the development process, I'd have never imagined it come true and now it is!
New conditional syntax is wonderful, I hope the rest of it is as simple as "$trophies is not empty".
Js-call classes now moved to data-properties, a very reasonable change I think.

But I also noticed some things that make me not very happy:

• Text-icons. I consider this an outdated practice since we all can profit from SVG (sprites, especially) and it's more suitable for styling. Plus text-icons always render differently in quality from browser to browser (because they utilize text rendering engine, which may also have ClearType enabled and ruin the pixel-perfect look), this also applies for different OS, Displays' PPI.
• It's still a «Home page forum list» app. Maybe I'm too judging but personally I never use XenForo homepage as an actual homepage. It's «New Posts» or «Resources» as a starting page for me, depending on the site. It has its purpose of course, but I get so much more information from «News Posts» than from looking at all the forums and users online. All in all it's all about posts, that's what I'm looking for in the first place. So what I really want to see is an option to subscribe to specific forums/threads/users/resources/activity/tags/ just by starring them and then all that activity collected on one page with an appropriate interface. But, wait a minute. XenForo already has that page! It's called News Feed and is present here since the first alpha! We just need to broaden its functionality from just a user activity to any activity. And the last thing that makes sense to me is an option to set a custom starting page. Globally and personally. So we can get our News Feed or New Posts every time we go to a forum or a guest can see a list of new posts specially selected to have an interesting content for newcomers. That way it profits everyone I think. Anyway just my thoughts on it.

As from a front-end point of view that would be cool to see PostCSS plugins come and join the technology stack, in return we'll get an automated sorting, prefixing and a lot of useful stuff for developers. There are even php versions for some of them.

Maybe we'd see the incoming of <article> element for posts with embedded schema? Or maybe JS animations on GSAP instead of jQuery.animate();?

Anyway, it was very nice to see the progress developers made so far, tempted to see what's under the hood of that monster called XF 2.0.
Judging by what's already inside, you can do much more stuff than on XF 1.5.9 right now with less effort.

 

[CTXMedia]

Scratch that @Amaury ... just seen your suggestion ...

 

[Jake B.]

So I've got to ask now @Chris D...

Active States with the Navigation Manager.. Do they work with custom links? I assume they would with the 'node' option, but what if I want one to link to a specific thread, for some odd reason, if the URL matches (or partially matches) will it make that tab active?

 

[Chris D]

Text-icons. I consider this an outdated practice since we all can profit from SVG (sprites, especially) and it's more suitable for styling. Plus text-icons always render differently in quality from browser to browser (because they utilize text rendering engine, which may also have ClearType enabled and ruin the pixel-perfect look), this also applies for different OS, Displays' PPI.

It's using Font Awesome which through a number of methods makes a good job of rendering well on all browsers and OS'. There was an issue with FA and Chrome in Windows but that appears to have been sorted. It's obviously super simple to implement and it has allowed us to effectively strip out all graphics we currently ship with XF, except a few.

It's still a «Home page forum list» app. Maybe I'm too judging but personally I never use XenForo homepage as an actual homepage. It's «New Posts» or «Resources» as a starting page for me, depending on the site. It has its purpose of course, but I get so much more information from «News Posts» than from looking at all the forums and users online. All in all it's all about posts, that's what I'm looking for in the first place. So what I really want to see is an option to subscribe to specific forums/threads/users/resources/activity/tags/ just by starring them and then all that activity collected on one page with an appropriate interface. But, wait a minute. XenForo already has that page! It's called News Feed and is present here since the first alpha! We just need to broaden its functionality from just a user activity to any activity. And the last thing that makes sense to me is an option to set a custom starting page. Globally and personally. So we can get our News Feed or New Posts every time we go to a forum or a guest can see a list of new posts specially selected to have an interesting content for newcomers. That way it profits everyone I think. Anyway just my thoughts on it.

With XF1 you can already set a default index route, which effectively allows you to do what you're talking about, globally, at least. The rest are certainly reasonable suggestions.

As from a front-end point of view that would be cool to see PostCSS plugins come and join the technology stack, in return we'll get an automated sorting, prefixing and a lot of useful stuff for developers. There are even php versions for some of them.

Maybe we'd see the incoming of <article> element for posts with embedded schema? Or maybe JS animations on GSAP instead of jQuery.animate();?

There's certainly lots of wonderful libraries out there, but we're not using any of the ones you mention, specifically. Animations in 2.0 are mostly CSS based where possible, though we're still using jQuery animations in a few places.

In terms of schema, this is on the list, not least for the fact that we're currently using the pretty much deprecated http://www.data-vocabulary.org/. Schema.org is certainly more flexible with likely more to offer XF than what we have already in XF1.

Judging by what's already inside, you can do much more stuff than on XF 1.5.9 right now with less effort.

That's pretty much what we're aiming for The true test will be when we release the preview builds but we're confident that people will be pleased with the results.