ProcessWire Weekly #61

Core updates of the week: new version of AdminThemeReno and new API features!

ProcessWire 2.6.8, the latest version of the development branch of ProcessWire, introduces some pretty big and influential changes. While you can – and should – read the whole report from the latest processwire.com blog post (this week co-authored by Ryan Cramer, Tom Reno, and Peter Burlingham), here's a summary of what's new:

• The updated version of AdminThemeReno is now out and looks downright awesome!

Last week we linked to some resources related to AdminThemeReno and said that the new version would "hopefully make it to the core updates next week". Well, those hopes came to reality, and the latest version of this admin theme is now committed to the core package.

The latest version of Tom Reno's AdminThemeReno introduces usability improvements, quicklinks to useful resources, support for multiple user templates, hookable top navigation, styling for the System Notifications module.. and, of course, a whole new way of defining color schemes, brought to you by Peter Burlingham!

• A whole bunch of new API methods for your convenience

While Tom and Pete have been working on things related to the new admin theme release, Ryan has been crafting new and quite useful core API updates for the convenience of ProcessWire users out there. Here's a brief introduction to each new addition:

• $pageimage->maxSize($width, $height) returns a new version of a Pageimage, no larger than given dimensions, and without doing any sort of cropping or other modifications. This is convenience method for things like logo carousels, where you need all items to be within given dimensions, but can't allow them to be changed in any way.
• $session->forceLogin($user) is a new way of logging in as given user ($user can be a User object, or a username). This differs from existing $session->login($user, $pass) in that it doesn't require the password part. Very handy for API-level tasks you need to perform as a given user!
• $this->halt() is a new template level method. When you want to stop any further output from the system, you might've used PHP's die() or exit() in your template files in the past. $this->halt() is preferred over those, as it stops output, while still letting ProcessWire shut down cleanly.
• $page->createdStr and $page->modifiedStr are otherwise identical to pre-existing $page->created and $page->modified in that they return the date when current page (or any given Page object) was created or edited, but they return this date in a human-readable form (defined by $config->dateFormat) instead of a UNIX timestamp.

As mentioned earlier, you really should take a look at the blog post at processwire.com for an in-depth introduction to the updates summarised here – especially AdminThemeReno, which is introduced in the blog post by not just one, but two guest authors. The API additions, reasoning behind them, etc. are also described in the blog post, so remember to check those out too.

Big thanks to both Tom and Pete for working on the newly updated admin theme, and for taking the time to write about it!

LightWire by Nico Knoll: clean, minimal skin for the CKEditor Inputfield module

LightWire is a clean and simple CKEditor skin, designed by Nico Knoll – and now packaged as an installable module. The main thing about LightWire is that it looks and feels, as the name suggests, light.

Compared to the default skin that CKEditor ships with, LightWire removes all that is unnecessary, makes use of Font Awesome icons, and features a very clean minimalist design – making it a perfect fit for the newly updated AdminThemeReno.

Thanks to Nico for working on this and making the installation trivial by packaging the skin as a module. Very much appreciated!

ImageToPicture by Johannes Dachsel adds easy-to-use support for HTML5 picture tags to Pageimages

ImageToPicture is a new ProcessWire module by Johannes Dachsel. Somewhat similar to his earlier Textformatter Picture Element module, ImageToPicture adds support for the HTML5 picture element to ProcessWire's Pageimage objects.

Unlike the textformatter, which would automatically convert <img> tags to picture elements when applied to fields containing HTML markup, ImageToPicture extends the Pageimage class with brand new $pageimage->toPicture() method. This method returns the Pageimage rendered as an HTML5 picture element, and can be easily used in template files, etc.

For more details on the toPicture() method, its parameters, and the reasoning behind the whole module check out Johannes' blog post "Using the <picture> element in ProcessWire: revisited". The blog post is a good read, and the module itself is a very nice addition – our sincere thanks to Johannes for making this possible!

Site of the week: aslanbakan.com, the portfolio of Ömer Aslanbakan

This time our site of the week is the portfolio and personal blog of Turkish Front End Developer Ömer Aslanbakan.

A new addition to our sites directory, but since some of the blog posts date back to February, presumably this site has been out there for a while already. Either way, we're happy to stumble upon it now – better late than never, right?

Dubbed simply as aslanbakan.com, this site is a great showcase of it's owners front-end skills, and worth checking out simply for it's quite exceptional look and feel. In addition the blog part of the site, which also happens to be exceptionally beautiful, also has some pretty good content too – assuming that you're into front-end development tips and tricks, that is.

Thanks to Ömer Aslanbakan for sharing this site with us. We're always thrilled to see how our users around the world are putting ProcessWire into action!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 61st issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content next Saturday, 18th of July. 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!