ProcessWire Weekly #235

Some new features in the dev branch, and a status update from Ryan regarding the processwire.com site

As for latest core updates, there's technically no new ProcessWire release this week, but if you grab the latest version of the dev branch from GitHub you'll still get to play with a couple of new features. Ryan has also posted some news regarding the processwire.com website relaunch, and we'll summarise the key parts in a bit.

New and updated features in the dev branch this week

First of all, here are the main updates to the dev branch at GitHub since last week's ProcessWire 3.0.118 release:

• Collapsed File, Image, and CKEditor fields now automatically open if you drag a while on top of them. Robin Sallis suggested this convenient addition, and also provided the required JavaScript code.
• AJAX file uploads now process uploaded data in chunks of ~8 megabytes, instead of loading the entire file into memory at once. This should both make larger file uploads possible (removing memory constraint issues), and of course lower the memory usage of uploads in general. This feature was suggested and code for it provided by BitPoet.
• WireArray has a new method slices(), which takes the quantity of new WireArrays as a param, and then splits current WireArray into that many new WireArrays. This method is non-destructive (original WireArray is left intact) and returns a regular array containing WireArray objects.
• Lastly, the import/export feature for pages now supports created and modified dates. This need turned out while Ryan was migrating content from the current website to the new processwire.com site.

We should have more details on all of these, and perhaps even some additional things to add to the list, when ProcessWire 3.0.119 goes live next week.

Quick status update on the new processwire.com website

Now, in other news Ryan has been busy working on the new processwire.com website. You can read more from the status update at the support forum, but to summarise:

• Current focus is on the site copy, particularly on the documentation section, and also on the site directory. The plan is to get the site online as soon as possible, so that everyone can benefit from these updates.
• If all goes well, we might actually see some kind of a beta version of the site by the end of the year. Once this milestone is reached, we can really start collaborating on the project as a community.
• While we'll have to wait a bit longer to see the real deal, screenshots of the new site – it's initial state, that is – should be available much sooner.

That's it for our weekly core updates section. We should have more details available by next week, but in the meantime be sure to check out Ryan's post at the support forum as well. Thanks!

New module: Minimal Fieldset

Minimal Fieldset is a new admin helper module developed by Robin Sallis. This module adds a new configuration setting to existing fieldset type fields (regular, Page, or group) to make them "minimal" by removing the label and padding of said fieldset.

While removing labels and paddings may not sound that notable in itself, it does allow for certain admin layouts that wouldn't be possible otherwise. You can, for an example, use fieldsets to organize fields into columns without any of the unnecessary overhead from the fieldset itself.

Another really nice feature is that the heights of the fields within a minimal fieldset are automatically adjusted: if a field next to the fieldset takes up more vertical space than the fields in the fieldset, that extra space is divided evenly between contained fields, thus keeping the layout nice and tidy:

For more details be sure to check out the Minimal Fieldset support forum thread. This module is available via the Minimal Fieldset GitHub repository, or the built-in module installer in ProcessWire. Big thanks to Robin Sallis for his work on this module!

New module: Relative Image Urls to HttpUrls Textformatter

Relative Image Urls to HttpUrls is a new textformatter module developed by Bernhard Baumrock. This module was developed to make using ProcessWire generated content easier within emails.

By default ProcessWire stores URLs as relative paths whenever possible. Usually that's a great strategy, and makes the content more easily portable, among other things. Still, in some specific cases – such as generated content contains images and needs to be sent to reciepients via email – absolute paths would be preferable.

This Textformatter module solves exactly that issue: when enabled for a field, it takes local (relative) image URLs and converts them to absolute ones. This way the URLs you have in your database remain relative (/site/assets/files/1/image.jpg), yet URLs your site outputs are absolute (https://www.example.com/site/assets/files/1/image.jpg.)

Thanks to Bernhard for developing and sharing this convenient little output helper – it will no doubt come in handy in a number of future projects!

Site of the week: Castus – a web design agency based in Sheffield, UK

Our latest site of the week is the portfolio website of Castus, who describe themselves as "a goal oriented web design consultancy". The company is based in Sheffield, UK and, based on what we've seen so far, they do some pretty amazing work for their clients. Definitely check their portfolio out, and while you're at it, have a read about the company and their approach to web design as well.

The design of the Castus website is clean, beautiful, and somewhat minimalistic, yet at the same time the site has enough twists to make browsing it an interesting experience in itself. Transitions are used in a meaningful fashion, and often content is paired with images or video that remains in-place while scrolling – a very nice effect, in fact. While the sidebar menu is a feature that you don't see too often, on this particular website it works splendidly.

Regarding the behind the scenes stuff, only third party module we've spotted on the site so far is the commercial caching solution ProCache. Other than that, there were some typical JavaScript features, embedded Google Maps, and fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, but not much else we can tell you.

Finally, here's what the folks at Castus had to say about the process of building their own website with ProcessWire:

We were really happy to build our new portfolio website on Processwire! We wanted something that gave us plenty of control on the back-end, without any bloat on the front end - just a nice, easy to access API for all our content that left us free to design and build however we liked.

All in all this is a really magnificent site. Thanks for the folks at Castus for their trust in ProcessWire, and also thanks for sharing this project with us. Hopefully we'll get to see more of your ProcessWire work in the future!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 235th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 17th of November. As always, ProcessWire newsletter subscribers will get our updates a few days later.

Thanks for staying with us, once again. Hope you've had a great and productive week, and don't forget to check out the ProcessWire forums for more interesting topics. Until next week, happy hacking with ProcessWire!