ProcessWire Weekly #41

Latest core updates: ProcessWire 2.5.20

Continuing from last week, the bulk of latest core updates is related to enhancing the image editing capabilities of ProcessWire. Most importantly all images in image fields now boast an edit icon, which opens various editing features in a modal window.

Currently implemented set of image editing features consists of resizing and cropping, and, according to Ryan, more features are likely to follow. Edited image can be saved as a new copy or used to replace existing image, and in the case of replacing, existing size variations are re-created where possible.

In other news, various (mobile) usability enhancements were made this week. ProcessWire's modal windows are now consistently created in one place, and they are now capable of adapting to various screen sizes – including filling the entire screen on very small screens. Additionally jQuery UI Touch Punch library was added to the Admin UI in order to better accommodate touch screen users.

For more details on these updates, especially the image editing ones, read the latest processwire.com blog post by Ryan.

New module: GeoInfo

GeoInfo is a new module built and released by pmichaelis, and a handy tool for converting an IP address to an approximated location – or latitude and longitude to place details. Behind the scenes the module makes use of geoPlugin, a free web service.

The module adds two new methods the Page object, making them available to developers via simple API calls. Basic usage examples:

// convert an IP address to a location
$page->GeoInfoIP('IP ADDRESS');

// convert latitude and longitude values to place info
$page->GeoInfoLatLong('LAT', 'LONG');

For more details, return values, and usage instructions, please visit the modules directory page. For support or questions, head down to the support thread.

New module: Pages to JSON

Pages to JSON, authored by Tapio Löytty and Goran Ilic, is one of the latest additions to the ProcessWire modules directory. In a nutshell, this module provides support for effortlessly converting Pages and PageArrays to JSON strings.

The module works by adding a new toJSON() method to both Page and PageArray objects. Basic usage of the module is very simple:

// you'll probably want to set a JSON header first ..
header('Content-Type: application/json');

// output current page as JSON
echo $page->toJSON();

// .. or find a bunch of pages and output *them* as JSON:
$results = $pages->find('template=tag');
echo $results->toJSON();

For more details and usage examples head down to the modules directory page, and if you need support, there's also a support thread. Thanks to Tapio and Goran for a very useful little module – this will most definitely come in handy in future projects!

Site of the week: Axis Animation

There's no doubt that the site (or sites, really) built by New Now Ltd for Axis deserve to be highlighted in our "site of the week" section. Not only are the sites really gorgeous, but they're also extremely flexible – skilfully crafted to work with screen sizes ranging from mobile all the way to 4K.

Axis is an award-winning animation studio founded in 2000. They employ directors, designers, artists, animators, writers, and producers and create content for video games, movies, commercials, and online entertainment. Unless you've spent the last decade or so living under a rock, it's almost inevitable that you're familiar with some of their work.

The Axis group consists of three parts – Axis Animation, AxisVFX and Flaunt. Each part has a site of it's own, and in order to make management effortless, instead of actually having three completely separate sites, a modified multisite module is used.

With the back-end of the sites powered by ProcessWire, the front-end is powered by the Foundation framework. Foundation being perhaps the most advanced responsive front-end framework out there, and an easy way to build a mobile-first, responsive sites and web applications, this is indeed a very powerful combination.

New Now have posted a rather detailed write-up, The 4K Website, about the dilemmas they were facing while working on these sites, and the exact solutions used to solve those. In their post, they have also described in detail the reasons for choosing ProcessWire as the CMS platform for this particular project and the kind of modifications and modules they use to power these sites.

Congratulations to Axis for having such an awesome site, and a huge 'thank you' to New Now for sharing your insights on the process required to put these sites together – great stuff, folks!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 41st issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content next Saturday, 28th of February. 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!