Discuss Joomla! 3.4 BETA 1 Released

[pe7er]

Here you can discuss about the release of Joomla 3.4 BETA 1
See Announcement: http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=872044

[FlashRebel]

It tooks almost one year from Joomla 3.3 and there is no one improvement for user. Why bother users with this update?

[brian]

Why not contribute

[ot2sen]

It tooks almost one year from Joomla 3.3 and there is no one improvement for user. Why bother users with this update?

Even two of the smaller changes will be seriously great for the user.

- Having user registration default to Off
- No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA support

and it is quite fast too, which most will appreciate

If you have doubts then try check out the beta 2 and see for yourself:
http://www.joomla.org/announcements/rel ... eased.html

[darb]

It tooks almost one year from Joomla 3.3 and there is no one improvement for user. Why bother users with this update?

I see your comments are just negative like this http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f ... 8#p3265908 . If you dont like Joomla dont user or post it. But you have many errors in your post that showing that you dont use Joomla so how can you judge/know about Joomla if you dont use it?

[leolam]

I see your comments are just negative like this http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f ... 8#p3265908 . But you have many errors in your post that showing that you dont use Joomla so how can you judge/know about Joomla if you dont use it?

As stated before: "We all know the 'value' of this "Flashrebel" here on these forums "It" is just a troll so don't expect anything useful of this poster at any moment?"

Refuses to contribute, only has negative comments here and even on the CMS-lists, does not even know what has changed in J 3.4-beta1 or beta-2 and just posts as usual to be negative. This Troll 'Flashrebel' should have been banned from these forums already a long time ago. Just ignore the idiot.

Leo

[FlashRebel]

I see your comments are just negative like this http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f ... 8#p3265908 . If you don't like Joomla don't user or post it. But you have many errors in your post that showing that you dont use Joomla so how can you judge/know about Joomla if you don't use it?

What kind of errors do you mean? I don't judge Joomla, I just post my opinions which are different than yours.
Really don't understand why you and leolam attacks me, if you have different point of view than me. You can presents your thoughts or argue about topic and facts, but why to create sci-fi stories and do attacks personally?

[darb]

I see your comments are just negative like this http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f ... 8#p3265908 . If you don't like Joomla don't user or post it. But you have many errors in your post that showing that you dont use Joomla so how can you judge/know about Joomla if you don't use it?

What kind of errors do you mean? I don't judge Joomla, I just post my opinions which are different than yours.
Really don't understand why you and leolam attacks me, if you have different point of view than me. You can presents your thoughts or argue about topic and facts, but why to create sci-fi stories and do attacks personally?

I don't judge Joomla

Exactly what you are continuously doing without competence of anything about Joomla. I and Leolam dont attack you - we dont like your posts that is full of errors everywhere.

You judge Joomla with your opinion about things that are not correct and misleading other readers that believe you have any competence of judging anything about Joomla - which you dont have.

Leolam and I with many others get pissed of your ridiculous anti-Joomla negative attitude and ignorance.

Why are you here if Joomla is not right for you and you dont use it?

No, you are only interested to spread badwill and make people not trust Joomla in favor of other CMS?
Pls do some real tests of Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla in real life dev projects and come back with some facts if that is what you want.

One last example"...there is no one improvement for user. Why bother users with this update?"

This is the latest news about Joomla 3.4 development.

http://www.joomla.org/announcements/rel ... eased.html

A big thank you goes out to everyone that contributed to the 3.4 release! Right now we're over 1,930 commits since 3.3.6's release last October. Best of all is that the new features are awesome!

To make you understand: 1.930 commits means 1.930 improvements from Joomla 3.3.6 to 3.4b2. And there are many core functions that is improved that you seems to not be aware of and that is not announced as new functionalities.

So your comments once again are nonsense everywhere and doesn't contribute anything for Joomlas progress.... on the contrary.

I suggest and agree with Leolam that the moderators ban you and take away all your posts in this forums bcs you have not helped or contributed to Joomla or people in this forum(s) at all. More of a sabotage commitment for some reason.

After you are banned you can come back with a non rebel name and be a nice guy that want to contribute to make Joomla better instead with a positive attitude but with critics what is wrong and what can be improved.

This is a free open source project own by the community ( Open Source Matters http://opensourcematters.org/) not like Drupal owner (Dries Buytaert) and Wordpress owner (Matt Mullenweg) thats what I like but of course have some negative impact for getting things quickly in the right directions.

I also have many things I want to improve about Joomla but as always you cant get all in you life can you?

[FlashRebel]

@darb with my critique I don't break any rules on forum, what on other side you and leolam do.
I would like to keep conversation on topic.
I have several website with thousands daily visitors, so that is real test ...
If you personally think, that after almost one year Joomla brings enough improvements to you, it is ok, I have different opinion already posted in another threads.

Anyway you are completely right and I apologize for bother you and other Joomla enthusiasts with my thoughts about Joomla on Joomla forum.
I will not do it more. GL

[darb]

@darb with my critique I don't break any rules on forum, what on other side you and leolam do.
I would like to keep conversation on topic.
I have several website with thousands daily visitors, so that is real test ...
If you personally think, that after almost one year Joomla brings enough improvements to you, it is ok, I have different opinion already posted in another threads.

Anyway you are completely right and I apologize for bother you and other Joomla enthusiasts with my thoughts about Joomla on Joomla forum.
I will not do it more. GL

Thats a good decision. I know you will be happy with Wordpress after you have posted millions of anti-Joomla posts here.. Good Luck.

[EvanGR]

The real issue here is marketing and communication. By reading the beta release reports I also get the impression v3.4 is going to be a minor upgrade. If it isn't, it's not being communicated very well.

To make you understand: 1.930 commits means 1.930 improvements from Joomla 3.3.6 to 3.4b2.

Not really, it means 1.930 changes. A change can be as insignificant (to the user) as a change in code comments or a text file. It could also be changes/restructuring to the code that have no impact on user experience. Therefore is not a strong argument for "improvements to the user".

[deleted user]

It may not be an improvement for the user in the form of a new feature or a bug fix in the software, but there are other ways those commits can improve the user's experience. Automated tests (to help ensure the underlying code is working as intended), improved doc blocks (which serve as a form of API documentation), and refactoring for improved performance are a few of those categories. So while you're right in that every commit doesn't immediately mean that something is improved for the user, every one of those commits is an improvement somewhere in our ecosystem.

[EvanGR]

@mbabker

Not disagreeing, but the delivery isn't optimal. Suppose some MAJOR re-work has been done behind the scenes that will allow for some great features in the future (but no obvious changes yet), and you release it as Joomla 4. To the user, because nothing is changed, this would communicate that Joomla progress is stagnant, or even in the wrong direction.

In short, no matter the amount of work on the code, it's better if version numbers reflected on the expectations of the users (i.e. mostly features).

If this release doesn't offer anything new or exciting, it might be better perceived as a bugfix/maintenance v3.3.7. And bump it to 3.4 or 3.5 or whatever, when the cool new stuff is actually available.

Just an opinion.

[deleted user]

It may not have features that may be exciting for the end user, however there are some new features and the project has adopted a version strategy based on Semantic Versioning which states that a new minor version is issued when there are new features. Admittedly, most of what I can think off of the top of my head is going to be more developer centric (refactored APIs in the extension install library, added PDO MySQL support, Redis caching, and Composer integration being a few items), but there are some notable items for end users (such as the fully implemented front-end module editing and support for the new "NoCaptcha ReCAPTCHA"). I don't think there is anything wrong with a release having more developer centric features than user centric features, but it isn't a wise long term plan to do so.

[itoctopus]

It's been some time since we had an update for Joomla 3.3.6 and what we have right now is not a security update, which is great (this means that those sites using 3.3.6 are still secure)

I would love a release that will remove code that no longer works and one that will fix bugs. One of the major bugs that any Joomla administrator has is with caching. A notable problem is that the "Email this article to a friend" functionality will not work with cache turned on (it will work the first time, but it won't work again). The problem really lies in the token being cached as well (actually, it is not really the token, but the hashed URL). Note that this problem happens even if only the global cache is turned on, and not the system cache.

There are many other problems also related to caching. I realize it's a very hard thing to work on but it's very important for large sites and it does cause problems. People are resorting to 3rd party cache extensions or to core modifications to address inherent caching problems in Joomla.

Another thing that it is nice to work on is security. For example, blocking access to all files other than the index.php file as described in our post here ( http://www.itoctopus.com/index-php-shou ... la-website ). In subdirectories, you can deny access to PHP files or to all files (using deny from all ). In my opinion, future versions of Joomla should include these .htaccess directives by default. It is unbelievable how many exploits can be avoided with these very simple steps. By the way, I know that this decision will be "highly political" since there are major Joomla extensions directly invoking files other than the index.php file - but these issues can be addressed with a workaround at the extension level.

Security wise, another thing that would be nice to see would be a simple firewall blocking keywords such as "eval(" and "base64".

I think security should be a huge focus because it did cause a massive churn of Joomla users at the end of the Joomla 1.5 lifetime.

The last thing (and very important thing) that I would really love to see would be optimizing the performance - mainly focusing on optimizing the queries in content views. There are many SQL joins that are not needed.

PS: Have you removed any extensions as planned? Such as the com_weblinks, com_redirect, etc...?

[darb]

The real issue here is marketing and communication. By reading the beta release reports I also get the impression v3.4 is going to be a minor upgrade. If it isn't, it's not being communicated very well.

To make you understand: 1.930 commits means 1.930 improvements from Joomla 3.3.6 to 3.4b2.

Not really, it means 1.930 changes. A change can be as insignificant (to the user) as a change in code comments or a text file. It could also be changes/restructuring to the code that have no impact on user experience. Therefore is not a strong argument for "improvements to the user".

Of course depends on how you see things in life but 1.930 changes in my positive world is changes for something better not negatively changes for something worse for Joomla or what do you think?

[darb]

what are the major contributions and fixings in this beta release?

Please read here takes about 1 minute to read on first page of Joomla.org major contributions: http://www.joomla.org/

Specifically here the Flash Rebel below.
Joomla Announcements

http://www.joomla.org/announcements/rel ... eased.html

Click here to see all detail fixings...on Github https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/is ... !+3.4.0%22+

Thanks for your first post here and welcome back! (FR)

[darb]

It's been some time since we had an update for Joomla 3.3.6 and what we have right now is not a security update, which is great (this means that those sites using 3.3.6 are still secure)

I would love a release that will remove code that no longer works and one that will fix bugs. One of the major bugs that any Joomla administrator has is with caching. A notable problem is that the "Email this article to a friend" functionality will not work with cache turned on (it will work the first time, but it won't work again). The problem really lies in the token being cached as well (actually, it is not really the token, but the hashed URL). Note that this problem happens even if only the global cache is turned on, and not the system cache.

There are many other problems also related to caching. I realize it's a very hard thing to work on but it's very important for large sites and it does cause problems. People are resorting to 3rd party cache extensions or to core modifications to address inherent caching problems in Joomla.

Another thing that it is nice to work on is security. For example, blocking access to all files other than the index.php file as described in our post here ( http://www.itoctopus.com/index-php-shou ... la-website ). In subdirectories, you can deny access to PHP files or to all files (using deny from all ). In my opinion, future versions of Joomla should include these .htaccess directives by default. It is unbelievable how many exploits can be avoided with these very simple steps. By the way, I know that this decision will be "highly political" since there are major Joomla extensions directly invoking files other than the index.php file - but these issues can be addressed with a workaround at the extension level.

Security wise, another thing that would be nice to see would be a simple firewall blocking keywords such as "eval(" and "base64".

I think security should be a huge focus because it did cause a massive churn of Joomla users at the end of the Joomla 1.5 lifetime.

The last thing (and very important thing) that I would really love to see would be optimizing the performance - mainly focusing on optimizing the queries in content views. There are many SQL joins that are not needed.

PS: Have you removed any extensions as planned? Such as the com_weblinks, com_redirect, etc...?

Agree on all these issues and this should be for priority for dev team and new version(s).

[leolam]

So when both 'itoctopus' and Darb are so heavy in favor of certain aspects of coding and testing why not Join us in the BugSquad instead of COL and contribute to improvements?

It is so simple to judge and tell us what to do so Joomla is "us and that includes you guys so do something positive instead of Crying Out Loud ! Join the JBS and contribute to improve Joomla!!

Leo