Form2Content Development Plan
We would like to give an overall overview of our development plans concerning Form2Content and the related extensions.
updated: 19-03-2018
Joomla 3.8.x
We currently have Form2Content Pro 6.17 in pre-release. This major release has a lot changed under the hood and is also the basis for further development. The moment it is stable we will update both Form2Content Lite and the documentation. Changes in F2C Pro 6.17 include:
- Form2Content workflow and Content Types simplified.
- Field manager now includes both Joomla and custom fields (easy ordering).
- Simplified template system (no more “default templates”).
- Custom fields more plugin based (for developers).
- Template manager improved. (create templates and add template parameters inline).
- Several template parameters simplified (for future users, old ones remain active).
- Custom translations via language file.
- Recaptcha upgrade to V2.
- Removed legacy Mootools code, now replaced by jQuery.
- Obsolete: Field translations. Please use the new custom translations mechanism.
- New batch refresh in the back-end. (not limited by the number of selected articles anymore).
Form2Content extensions
The F2C extensions are currently compatible with Joomla 3.8.x and Form2Content Pro 6.17.
Form2Content anywhere
The popular Form2Content anywhere plugin developed by Pieter Jan de Vries has been updated in order to be compatible with F2C 6.17 and Joomla 3.8.x. There is also a new "system plugin" version which will replace the "content plugin". This means you can add any F2C data anywhere in your website including in the back-end of the website.
Joomla 4.x
Joomla 4.x introduces a lot of changes. There is suppost to become available a "compatibility layer" for extensions but as off Joomla 3.8.6 this isn't yet available. Currently we are already updating a lot of core code, both refactoring and adding the Joomla changes.
The goal is to have a major Form2Content 6.18 release which is compatible for both Joomla 3.8.x and Joomla 4.x. Form2Content lite will of course also be updated. We will try to be backwards compatible but there might be some changes. If this does occur we will naturally make sure that they are documented and that you will know this is the case when downloading the extension.
Form2Content extensions
As a result of the many changes and core refactoring, the F2C extensions such as F2C Search and F2C KML Feeds will need to be updated when Form2Content 6.18 is released.
Feature development
Because of the many Joomla changes and overall limited documentation we spend roughly 80% of our time on compatibility issues. The remaining 20% is used for developing new features. When doing this we take into account the wishes expressed in the forum.
Paid feature development
When time is available we do on occasion push paid feature development to the front of the development que. Any development done will always become part of future versions of the Form2Content extension.