XF 2.4 XenForo 2.4 status and what's new under the hood?

Where are we?​

TL;DR: We're working hard to release XenForo 2.4 ASAP, but it's taking longer than expected due to scope changes and strategic decisions to wait for certain upstream developments that will benefit the long-term roadmap. Here's an analogy to explain why:

Software development is like planning a cross-country expedition with multiple destinations.

When you set out for version 2.4, you're not just driving to the next town over. You're charting a course through unknown territory with several strategic stops planned along the way - each representing a major milestone or feature release.

But the challenge is the landscape keeps changing along the journey.

• New roads open up (better technologies emerge)
• Bridges get washed out (dependencies break or become obsolete)
• You discover scenic routes that would benefit all future travellers (opportunities for architectural improvements)
• Weather conditions shift (market demands or user needs evolve)
• Your vehicle needs unexpected maintenance (technical debt must be addressed)

You can't just focus on reaching the immediate next stop. You must consider how each decision affects the entire journey ahead. Taking a shortcut to reach 2.4 faster might leave you stranded when trying to reach 3.0, 4.0 or even 5.0.

This is why scope changes occur: experienced developers are constantly recalibrating the route based on new information, ensuring the expedition can successfully reach not just the next destination, but all the strategic waypoints that follow.

The delays aren't detours, rather they're course corrections that keep the long-term journey viable.

To be slightly less cryptic, these are some of the specific challenges we have faced along the way:

A new Tiptap version is coming​

When we announced that Tiptap is coming to XenForo 2.4 it was 95% complete, and we then took a bit of a pause to work on other projects, which we have talked about since and will be discussing in this thread. Since then, Tiptap have announced Tiptap V3 which is currently in beta. Given how core the editor is to the forum experience, it makes a lot of sense to ship XenForo 2.4 with Tiptap V3 rather than Tiptap V2 as originally planned. While the changes involved are not too extensive, we also don't want to ship 2.4 with a dependency that is still in beta and subject to change. While we are not planning to wait for Tiptap V3 to be stable, necessarily, we do at least want to give it a little bit more time so we have a higher degree of confidence that we're shipping a stable editing experience.

We started talking about a rewrite (again)​

While this is not currently the direction we've decided to go in, it's responsible for us to at least consider all routes available to us to help us reach our destination.

After nearly 8 years since the release of XenForo 2.0, many of the technologies we use are showing their age, many of the decisions we made have started to slow us down more than we would like, and as a framework, XenForo becomes a less productive framework to work with. The solution to this problem can be to start from scratch, but we have ultimately decided that this is not something we need to do at this stage.

Instead, over the next few versions, including 2.4, we will be attempting to make iterative architectural changes to the framework so that we all have greater tools at our disposal to improve both the developer and user experience, particularly focusing on the implementation of developer tools and features that have become commonplace in other frameworks, such as Laravel.

Some of our best features are simply not finished​

There are one or two features that we see requested consistently from customers in our community forums and feedback channels, and we're excited to confirm they are coming in 2.4! However, it serves no one well if we release such highly-anticipated features before they are ready and before they have the usual level of quality, polish, and extensibility you would expect from a XenForo release. We'd rather take the extra time to get them right than rush them out and disappoint users with a subpar implementation that requires immediate patches or lacks the flexibility for customisation. We'll be sharing exciting details about what these features are and how they work in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

We can't keep up!​

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).


With all of that now being said, while 2.4 is taking longer than we wanted, we have been busy and we are very much nearing the end of development.

And, while disappointing (to all of us) it is important to maintain perspective. XenForo 2.2 was released in September 2020. XenForo 2.3 was released nearly four years later. XenForo 2.4 is not 3 more years away.

But, you clicked this to find out what's new, right? So let's go.

 

[smallwheels]

There's by the way one thing in the opening post of the thread that really seems potentially worrying: This

experienced developers are constantly recalibrating the route based on new information

in combination with that:

• You discover scenic routes that would benefit all future travellers (opportunities for architectural improvements)

Developers, especially experienced developers, might actually enjoy those scenic routes. And enjoy them more than building a release. This danger becomes bigger the more technical DNA an organziation has - the natural equilibrium of devs, that want a perfect stack and product and marketing guys that want to sell features is lost with too much influence existing with the tech guys. XF seems a company owned and driven by devs. This is what made and makes it a very good product from a technical perspective, but with said downside and danger of prioritizing and exploring scenic routes too intensively, sometimes getting lost on the map completely and forgetting about time, goals and targets. The journey of creating a new release each time is typically a bit like the Odyseey and the crew might have met a couple of Sirens along the way.

I can absolutely not judge if that has happened here but I've seen it often enough happening that I won't outrule the possibility.

 

[ebikes.com]

^-- bingo

As someone who is a full time CTO to 2 companies and part time to others, the above statements are deeply worrying and it means the software could be delayed for a very long time. Most software projects have to deal with architectural or technical debt at some point, and in some cases, the software doesn't make it. But at best, progress on the software can halt for years.

I have been exactly here with other software vendors many times. Someone decides to refactor the entire thing, and the software doesn't make it. And i am the person who gets hired to clean up the mess and/or make hard decisions.

My personal anxiety about this project is very high and it would be nice to get an update for sure.

 

[smallwheels]

Customers would not get antsy if they were communicated with regularly.

Given the bahaviour on this forum I do have my doubts regarding that.

I run a web development shop with 7 programmers at the moment. Our clients need to hear we're still on it every 2 weeks approximately, or they get anxious.

That's good practice for a service company doing project work, but XF is a product company. Different story.

I imagine there's some damage done in the form of - some people who wish to buy the software, encounter this anxiety offgassing thread and get the impression that this company is not interested in their needs based on how they ignore current customers. The being late on the promises ( software almost always runs late ) problem is less concerning than the lack of communication.

To be fair: As others already mentioned the behaviour of parts of said customes could also drive away new customers that are looking for a friendly and constructive community. Apart from any delayed releases the sheer amount of open, unresolved and unanswered bug reports on this forum speaks for itself: currently 9 pages, the oldest open bugs dating back to 2018 or so. And these are only the ones for core.

In all fairness: No new customer should buy a XenForo license and expect fast paced releases, a high level of responsiveness or a feature loaded product that evolves further quickly. All of that is not the case and will probably never be the case and should therefor not the reason to decide for XenForo.

This is an incredibly cheap problem for Xenforo to solve and i don't feel like asking for a monthly update is an unreasonable request of any software company.

It is a cultural problem in the first place and regarding "unreasonable request": Have you tried this with any product company, big or small, in the software business? Again, I do have my doubts that you will succeed. Apple, Adobe, Microsoft etc. as a start, OpenSource projects as another group and smaller software companies as a third. I highly doubt that you will succeed. Project work as a service is a different world.

I don't say that I like what is happening - all I say is that whining and yelling won't change anything about it.

 

[smallwheels]

As someone who is a full time CTO to 2 companies and part time to others

OT: mathematically you work way to many hours.

 

[Mr Lucky]

To be fair: As others already mentioned the behaviour of parts of said customes could also drive away new customers that are looking for a friendly and constructive community.

That's a good point, but I wonder if any prospective customers may not be too bothered about what's being said on the forum as (I think) most people know that the happy customers don't post. They just get on with their forums. I believe the negative stuff on here therefore is probably a minority of customers.

 

[Wildcat Media]

I believe the negative stuff on here therefore is probably a minority of customers.

A very small minority, at that.

Me? I don't care if 2.4 ever gets released. Forum members are perfectly happy using 2.3. They log in, they post, they move on with life. That's all a forum needs, and that is all they care about. As long as the current version is actively monitored and patched for vulnerabilities and bugs, that is all I care about.

Oh, sure, it's nice to have all the latest and greatest new features (I do like shiny new things!), but in the end, we have members from 20 years ago who may appreciate the little quality of life improvements that come along, but certainly never asked for them, or threw hissy fits like an angry mob because the next version was delayed. They. Don't. Care. If our forums were still barebones as they were in 1997, they would still post. My first forum started in 1995 as a freakin' guestbook, and I still have some of those contributors as regular guests (and a few are still on the staff). That kind of makes the software side look irrelevant.

That's the big picture. Members just want a place to take part as a community. That's it. Our memberships and visits (and content) have grown continuously for 20-25 years (depending on forum). So it's not the software. It's the end users that matter more to me.

I'm only here to watch ringside.