ProcessWire Weekly #400

ProcessWire 3.0.192 and a weekly update from Ryan

In this week's weekly update Ryan covers a couple of topics: the latest core updates, which are now available via the dev branch at GitHub, and a new module he's been working on.

You can read more about the module in question from the weekly update, but the long story short is that it's going to be a kind of a front-end counterpart of the PageAutosave module. This module will handle saving front-end forms while they're being filled, and also provide an option to notify users of abandoned form subscriptions.

There's a bit more to it as well, so be sure to check the weekly update thread for more details — it's a very interesting concept to be sure.

What's new in ProcessWire 3.0.192?

As for this week's core updates, ProcessWire development version 3.0.192 includes 20 or so commits, 11 issue fixes, and also merges 5 pull requests from contributors. Here are some of the highlights from the commit log, in no particular order:

• The bundled HTML Purifier library was updated to version 4.14.0, which — among other things — adds support for PHP 8, as well as improves support for PHP 7.3 and 7.4.
• In addition to the purifier library, our own core code was also updated for better compatibility with PHP 8.1.
• New wireLength() and wireLen() functions were added. These allow reading the length of any provided variable, whether a string, integer, float, boolean, object, array, or null.
• Admin Theme Uikit was updated (via a pull request from Bernhard Baumrock) to support LESS variables and strings defined via PHP.
• Another pull request, from Radon8472, fixed an issue where WireCache might not have closed output buffer correctly under specific circumstances.
• A pull request from MrSnoozles added links for moving quickly between language versions when working on translations in the admin.
• A pull request from Philipp Daun added support for dynamically populating language tab labels.

There were also a number of other fixes included in this version, so if you're using the dev branch of ProcessWire, it might be a good idea to update. None of the issues were particularly fatal and/or likely to occur under typical circumstances, though.

That's all for our core updates section this week. Again, go check out the weekly update from Ryan for more details about the form autosave module he's working on, and the weekly core updates. Thanks!

Weekly forum highlights, tutorials, and other online resources

For this week we've gathered a list of support forum highlights and other useful and hopefully interesting resources. As always, please let us know if there's anything important we've missed, so that we can include it in one of our future issues.

• For starters, we've got some module update news. First one is for AdminStyleRock, the latest version of which now provides an easy way to change the primary color scheme of the admin via text input. This feature was made possible by the latest core updates, which added new ways to pass variables to admin LESS compilation.
• Next up is a major update for Symprowire — the project aiming to combine the strengths of Symfony framework and ProcessWire, introduced back in ProcessWire Weekly #376. The latest version of Symprowire takes a brand new approach, and looks even more interesting than it did before — definitely worth checking out!
• Another module related update is a heads-up for registered beta testers of Padloper: Padloper 2 is now available for testing. If you're on the list of testers, you should have received information for downloading the module and related starter site profile. The rest of us will have to wait a while longer to see the finished module in action.
• A list of highlights wouldn't be complete without at least one handy code snippet. In a recent forum thread Robin posted a handy hook example for preselecting the child template when adding new pages programmatically. The trick can be used to always enforce a specific template, or choose the template based on the parent page (or any arbitrary criteria).

As a little bonus (not directly related to ProcessWire), Marcus Herrmann — the author of the ProcessWire Accessibility Tools (PWAT) module — has made his ebook "Accessible Vue" freely available. Even though the book is indeed about Vue.js, it contains plenty of valuable information even if you've never worked with Vue. The book is available from accessible-vue.com in various formats, including a plain HTML web version.

If you're interested in ProcessWire news, discussions, and updates, there's always something going on at the support forum. Since we're only able to include a tiny selection of all that in our weekly updates, head down to the forum for more.

Site of the week: ED

Our latest site of the week belongs to ED. Founded in 1996 and based in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Iraq, ED offers high-end IT services and telecom solutions — including software development, digital solutions, and cybersecurity services — for their customers.

The website of ED was developed by the London based web design agency ID Studio Web Agency, and features a stunningly beautiful design, wide range of different layouts and content types, multilingual content (English and Azerbaijani), and lots and lots of quality content. The transitions and animations used on this site are particularly eye-catching, and the mobile usability of the site is also top-notch.

The front-end of this site is based on the Bootstrap front-end framework, and utilizes the Animate On Scroll JavaScript library for various animated effects. As for third party ProcessWire modules, there are none that we could spot, so not much we can say about the backend implementation.

Big thanks to ID Studio Web Agency for sharing this amazing project with us, and our congratulations to the client, ED, for their new ProcessWire powered website. Great job from everyone involved in the project!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 400th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 15th of January. 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!