Experimenting with v11

Some notes

Hello,

So I am playing with v11. Here are some notes:

1. install works great
1a. does not go straight to the setup wizard despite selecting that, have to trigger that to run manually, instead it defaults to making you agree to the rules first which is odd since you haven't really made them for your site yet.
2. import of catalog from csv works great
3. using special templates to make the item name as link and remove the view button works too, showing that this made it into v11!
3. themeing has become a headache....
3a. no search feature in templates or css files, a downgrade from v10 and earlier - will a search feature make a return? I can't tell you how much this would help lol.
3b. learning all the new theme stuff is always fun I guess.

But so far, I am enjoying the new upcoming v11.

Need to figure out how to get the wiki nav miniblock to work on v11... it gives an error. Fun times...

Hello!

Very recently I fixed 1a so that'll be fixed in 11.beta2.

We have a new system to comply with data protection laws where members have to agree to the declarations (if specified), and re-agree (when changed), and their agreements are logged in the database. This includes administrators.

Previously, the declarations setting had a default value, which means you were immediately prompted to agree to the rules. This is no-longer the case; the declarations will be blank by default (but the Setup Wizard will fill in default values if you use a rules template, but only after running the wizard, so you won't get prompted to agree to your rules until after the wizard has finished).

3a: You can add it to the tracker. My guess is probably not, at least not for 11.0. But maybe it'll be added in a future minor version. For the time being, use a separate text / code editor to manually modify your theme files. These programs usually have their own search feature.

Glad you're enjoying it!

3a: You can add it to the tracker. My guess is probably not, at least not for 11.0. But maybe it'll be added in a future minor version. For the time being, use a separate text / code editor to manually modify your theme files. These programs usually have their own search feature.

Yes I know you can use a text editor. I use kate quite often. It is just helpful when making small edits that you want to see and test the results of quickly, especially given the changes in the theme files. I understand though this is alpha stage and right now the priority is getting out a stable release. Thus why I am giving my thoughts as things some people might encounter.

I wanted to add in some new thoughts.

There are still some things broken with the new alpha release. The redirects is broken, made a bug report on it. Ocasionally still getting the wierd error when going through catalogue pages where it gives an error and changing number of items on page still does nothing. Themeing is still a bit more difficult given the learning all the new changes, but that's to be expected. It still doesn't redirect you to the inital set up configuration after finishing install. And the wiki page navigation Chris made for me is still non-functional on the new composr, I responded to that feature request with that update.

Still, y'all, Composr 11 is shaping up to be so much better than Composr 10. I have mad respect for those working on this, especially to Patrick Schmalstig who has been basically dealing with it all during Chris's completely understandable absence. This is no small undertaking, and I am quite impressed. I thought I would share some comparisons as I am rebuilding my v10 site in v11.

composr comparison.png

(Click to enlarge)

First, it looks over all more clean. Here is a comparison of viewing the details of a catalogue entry. The v11 in the one on the right with the white logo header. It just looks better to me. Maybe that's subjective? Also yay sticky headers!

composr comparison1.png

(Click to enlarge)

Here you can see the differences in editing the catalogue items (or adding them). Much cleaner! Also, c11 has auto complete for meta data tags!!!!!!!!!!!! So awesome!

composr comparison2.png

(Click to enlarge)

Y'all know I just had to show off the beautiful auto complete in action! I requested this i don't remember when. It is so good to see it in action! Such a big time saver, because if y'all didn't know, you can use these keywords to imbed only the catalogue entires that have those keywords whereever you want to in your composr site. It is such a powerful feature, and having the auto complete saves time and saves on accidently typing a tag differently. I'll still call them tags but its keywords lol.

composr comparison3.png

(Click to enlarge)

Y'all see what's on the bottom of the v11 site that isn't on the v10? That's right, the direct link to that item! That is so so helpful for quickly getting the info when buidling links and such. That was such a nice surprise!

composr comparison4.png

(Click to enlarge)

Here I wanted to show that you can make the child pages links in your wiki much cleaner in v11. I'm not certain if this was possible in v10. Maybe it was? But yeah. The one thing I miss in my v10 site is the previous, parent, next wiki navigation, hopefully we can figure out the changes needed to make that compliant and functional. But I can live without it for all the other improvements v11 is bringing to the table.

v11 is still in beta stage and not yet suitable for daily use for important websites, but if you are adventurous, make your backups, and don't mind testing things that will be broken here and there, give it a whirl.

One massive improvement v11 brings to the table is responsiveness and cross platform support. An annoying problem is that iphone users have a subpar experience on my v10 site because it won't follow the standards so easily. But in v11, the inbuilt responsiveness works without a hitch, for me at least, in both iphone and android and desktop environments. This is a massive QoL improvement that can't be understated.

So hats of to Chris, to Patrick for taking the reigns, and to all others involved in whatever way in working on this great new version! I can't wait to see what the finial product will bring and the future from there.

Mythus said

There are still some things broken with the new alpha release.

*beta (which you later corrected) but yes, there are many issues still on the tracker that I need to go through slowly but surely. And there are many issues with v11 throwing errors about missing language strings, symbols, constants, and options when people uninstall bundled addons. This is because the test suite meant to catch these kinds of issues was very sub-optimal. It did very basic scanning and assumed if a guard existed once, the whole file was okay, which is not true because there are likely multiple functions within a file that all need guards. I'm actually working on that now. It's a massive undertaking. But I'm hoping it will make v11 much more stable (though will still probably have bugs) after I'm done.

Mythus said

The redirects is broken, made a bug report on it

Yeah I'll have to take a look at this; you're not the only one who experienced this issue.

Mythus said

Ocasionally still getting the wierd error when going through catalogue pages where it gives an error and changing number of items on page still does nothing

Is this already on the tracker? Do you have that error?

Mythus said

Themeing is still a bit more difficult given the learning all the new changes, but that's to be expected.

v11 had a major re-working of the JavaScript and template framework to make it much more secure from XSS and CSRF attacks. Unfortunately, this does mean a big learning curve. Even I have to play around with it sometimes (Chris and I were not the ones who made the framework, it was a former developer… Salman I think?). But the v11 tutorials have been re-written to give an overview of the new framework.

Mythus said

It still doesn't redirect you to the inital set up configuration after finishing install.

Good catch; please add to the tracker. The installer should be doing that.

Mythus said

And the wiki page navigation Chris made for me is still non-functional on the new composr, I responded to that feature request with that update.

If this is something Chris made for you (e.g. a non-standard Composr feature) then sadly I cannot help with that without a contract; it goes beyond Composr support and into contracting work territory.

Mythus said

It just looks better to me. Maybe that's subjective? Also yay sticky headers!

It is indeed subjective. Not everyone prefers the v11 look over v10, but there are a couple primary reasons for the changes aside from the change in the JS framework:

• Modern webstandards demand mobile responsiveness. v10 didn't have that, so the default theme had to be re-built to support responsiveness.
• The goal with v11 was to have a basic, universal default theme. It's not meant to wow or impress people (though it might). It's meant to serve as a functional next-to-blank slate for easy customizing. That way, people do not have to rely as much on building entire themes from scratch in v11.

There is a way for those who prefer the v10 design to get a v10-like appearance in v11 (it will still have some differences though). Set the theme header style to classic, and change fluid width to one of the fixed width options.

Screenshot 2024-11-07 094629.jpg

(Click to enlarge)

This preview looks a little ugly because I ran the stress test loader on this install, so there are lots of dummy content.

Mythus said

Y'all see what's on the bottom of the v11 site that isn't on the v10? That's right, the direct link to that item! That is so so helpful for quickly getting the info when buidling links and such. That was such a nice surprise!

Actually, I did that for my own development and never did remove it, oops LOL. I put that there when I made the new site messaging addon for v11. It sadly shows up for everyone when it is supposed to only show up for admins. I'll need to figure out why it is. It also gets ugly when it gets long. I may just stick it in as a page rendering tool option instead, and it pops up in a text box within an overlay so you can easily copy it.

Mythus said

The one thing I miss in my v10 site is the previous, parent, next wiki navigation, hopefully we can figure out the changes needed to make that compliant and functional.

Hmm yeah I will need to look into that. Please add to the tracker; sounds like a bug to me.

Mythus said

One massive improvement v11 brings to the table is responsiveness and cross platform support.

Indeed, that was one of the big goals with v11's new theme. There were a lot of mobile issues with v10.

Glad you're liking the progress on v11! And good to hear incoming feedback from the community on it.

Patrick Schmalstig said

*beta (which you later corrected) but yes, there are many issues still on the tracker that I need to go through slowly but surely. And there are many issues with v11 throwing errors about missing language strings, symbols, constants, and options when people uninstall bundled addons. This is because the test suite meant to catch these kinds of issues was very sub-optimal. It did very basic scanning and assumed if a guard existed once, the whole file was okay, which is not true because there are likely multiple functions within a file that all need guards. I'm actually working on that now. It's a massive undertaking. But I'm hoping it will make v11 much more stable (though will still probably have bugs) after I'm done.

Yeah I'm not sure why I typed alpha lol, I knew what I meant though lol. And yes, I expect bugs. That's part of the point of running this to find and report them. Tings can look great on papaer and in test environments, it is when you actually put them to work do you start to find the problems. I can't code near to the level of you so, I figure I'll contribute this way. Still, given it is mainly just you, I am pleasantly surprised at how stable it has been. It does log a lot of errors silently, but eh, it hasn't interrupted anything major.

Patrick Schmalstig said

Mythus said

Ocasionally still getting the wierd error when going through catalogue pages where it gives an error and changing number of items on page still does nothing

Is this already on the tracker? Do you have that error?

I think I reported this earlier. You may even have responded to it, but I could be thinking of an unrelated error. It doesn't happen all the time, but the next time it does I'll screenshot the error and go to the tracker.

Patrick Schmalstig said

Mythus said

Themeing is still a bit more difficult given the learning all the new changes, but that's to be expected.

v11 had a major re-working of the JavaScript and template framework to make it much more secure from XSS and CSRF attacks. Unfortunately, this does mean a big learning curve. Even I have to play around with it sometimes (Chris and I were not the ones who made the framework, it was a former developer… Salman I think?). But the v11 tutorials have been re-written to give an overview of the new framework.

Yup, I knew going in that there were changes to this. I expected the relearning curve. It is all good. It does open up new areas for themeing and I have been able to implement some sublte changes that I really like. It hasn't been a bad experience. Just a learning experience.

Patrick Schmalstig said

Mythus said

And the wiki page navigation Chris made for me is still non-functional on the new composr, I responded to that feature request with that update.

If this is something Chris made for you (e.g. a non-standard Composr feature) then sadly I cannot help with that without a contract; it goes beyond Composr support and into contracting work territory.

Oh I know this. I was simply commenting lol! I refrenced that it no longer works in the feature request on the tracker so no one expects it to and in case anyone gets bored. I am curious as to what code changes would make it not work, and would love to figure it out myself. But, I am not even going to bother you with it until the final release is  out. I can live without this. It was just nice. Given what Chris was doing with it I am sort of surprised it didn't make it in as a feature, but I am expecting nothing here. You are overworked as it is sir.

Patrick Schmalstig said

Mythus said

It just looks better to me. Maybe that's subjective? Also yay sticky headers!

It is indeed subjective. Not everyone prefers the v11 look over v10, but there are a couple primary reasons for the changes aside from the change in the JS framework:

• Modern webstandards demand mobile responsiveness. v10 didn't have that, so the default theme had to be re-built to support responsiveness.
• The goal with v11 was to have a basic, universal default theme. It's not meant to wow or impress people (though it might). It's meant to serve as a functional next-to-blank slate for easy customizing. That way, people do not have to rely as much on building entire themes from scratch in v11.

There is a way for those who prefer the v10 design to get a v10-like appearance in v11 (it will still have some differences though). Set the theme header style to classic, and change fluid width to one of the fixed width options.

Oh I know that you can basically revive the old look if you want. I played with that lol. I like the new changes though. The theme I have working on my site I think is looking better on v11 than 10.

Patrick Schmalstig said

Mythus said

Y'all see what's on the bottom of the v11 site that isn't on the v10? That's right, the direct link to that item! That is so so helpful for quickly getting the info when buidling links and such. That was such a nice surprise!

Actually, I did that for my own development and never did remove it, oops LOL. I put that there when I made the new site messaging addon for v11. It sadly shows up for everyone when it is supposed to only show up for admins. I'll need to figure out why it is. It also gets ugly when it gets long. I may just stick it in as a page rendering tool option instead, and it pops up in a text box within an overlay so you can easily copy it.

Let's call it a happy accident lol. I can't tell you how helpful it is, far better than the old way of getting the id links. Especially in browers that like to hide part of the URL *cough*vivaldi*cough*. But yeah, only admins should get to see it.

Patrick Schmalstig said

Mythus said

The one thing I miss in my v10 site is the previous, parent, next wiki navigation, hopefully we can figure out the changes needed to make that compliant and functional.

Hmm yeah I will need to look into that. Please add to the tracker; sounds like a bug to me.

Nope, it is not part of the default composr. It is the added script that Chris made me. It is likely a change that was made to the javascript or whatever in the new themeing engine. Not a bug with v11.
 

Mythus said

And yes, I expect bugs. That's part of the point of running this to find and report them.

Sorry, when I reply to people on the forums, I have a habit of trying to address those reading the forums as well as the person who wrote the post I'm quoting… but I forget to make a clear distinction between the two. That was meant for those reading this topic, haha.

Mythus said

I can't code near to the level of you so, I figure I'll contribute this way.

It's a great way to help out. I immensely appreciate when you and others report bugs and suggestions for me to review so they can be addressed before v11 hits stable.

Mythus said

Still, given it is mainly just you, I am pleasantly surprised at how stable it has been. It does log a lot of errors silently, but eh, it hasn't interrupted anything major.

Anything you see that could be a Composr issue no matter how small, please let me know. I'll tell you and anyone reading this topic… if you feel like reporting a bunch of issues will annoy me, it won't. I actually appreciate that you took the time to find and report all those issues. The only time it will annoy me is if you report a lot of the same issues others have already reported, or if you report a bunch of issues relating to your own code and not Composr's. So go ahead, flood the tracker so long as they're Composr issues that haven't been reported yet.

As for stability, you can largely thank Chris for that. He massively improved the test suite for v11 (and I improved it even more and continue to do so). And Composr's error handling has also been improved (especially the ability to relay certain errors to me automatically). Also Adam Edington has reported a lot of bugs for me to tackle. And so have you, Master Rat, and a few others. It's not just me; it's you too to thank :) .

Mythus said

I think I reported this earlier. You may even have responded to it, but I could be thinking of an unrelated error. It doesn't happen all the time, but the next time it does I'll screenshot the error and go to the tracker.

Sounds good. You might have. I cannot keep track of all the issues in my head so I apologize. If you did, I'll see it when I go through them again.

Mythus said

It does open up new areas for themeing and I have been able to implement some sublte changes that I really like. It hasn't been a bad experience. Just a learning experience.

Nice! Good to hear. When you flesh out your designs (and v11 becomes stable), we'd love to hear what you learned and what you did sometime in the design section of the forums. Maybe you'll inspire other people to make their own theme edits. :)

Mythus said

I am curious as to what code changes would make it not work, and would love to figure it out myself.

I am honestly not sure. It could even be related to your redirection bug. Once I fix the redirection bug, let me know if it's still broken.

Have you added it as a feature request? If you do, and if I see other people monitoring it or commenting on it showing interest, I might put it in myself. But I'll need to know the basics of what he did and how you believe it would benefit Composr (on the issue). You could also sponsor to have it in Composr if you like (this will make the feature much more likely to be included). E.g. you could contract me to not-only fix it on your site, but bring it up to Composr standards and maintain it / include it within Composr itself. And you would be listed as the sponsor for the feature.

Mythus said

Let's call it a happy accident lol. I can't tell you how helpful it is, far better than the old way of getting the id links. Especially in browers that like to hide part of the URL *cough*vivaldi*cough*. But yeah, only admins should get to see it.

Yep, I'm a Vivaldi user too and know your struggle, LMFAO. I mainly needed it to get the page-link style URLs which are special to Composr (e.g. used in things like the Comcode page tag and site messaging). But yeah URL monikers when enabled will hide most IDs from the URL, but the page-link will tell you.

Just a forewarning, IDs will probably be changing in upcoming releases of Composr. Our plan is to deprecate sequential IDs in favor of GUIDs because they're much more secure. This won't happen in v11… probably what will happen is in one of the 11.x releases, it will default to using GUIDs in the URL but still support sequential ones, and then in v12 sequential ones will not work anymore. I'll have to think long and hard about how to do this smoothly (e.g. auto-editing links on people's websites to replace the ID with the GUID during upgrade).

Mythus said

Nope, it is not part of the default composr. It is the added script that Chris made me. It is likely a change that was made to the javascript or whatever in the new themeing engine. Not a bug with v11.

Ohh gotcha. You can still add to the tracker as a feature request if you like. It might get added in.
 

I have encountered the URI too long error again and have reported it.
https://compo.sr/tracker/view.php?id=6054

Here is the submission request regarding the wiki links:
https://compo.sr/tracker/view.php?id=4542