Discuss Joomla! 3.5 Release Candidate

[pe7er]

Here you can discuss about the release of Joomla 3.5 Release Candidate (only for testing, not for production websites)

See Announcement: http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=911774

[sakattack]

So...I just read the announcement about joomla 3.5 RC4 , and yet another delay in the stable release. Please, explain to me, how is it a good idea to put out a php 7 compatible joomla version 4 months after php 7 release? When everyone else already has it (wordpress), we have to wait yet again, and for what? utf8mb4 , or in other words...emoticons.

Seriously guys, who thought of bundling php 7 support with utf8mb4 support? Terrible idea

[deleted user]

The two weren't an all-in-one package. The work on PHP 7 support started long before the work for utf8mb4 did. It just so happens that the efforts for those two items were both merged for the same scheduled release and the latter one needed some extra effort to get production ready. If you're familiar with Joomla's recent security releases or have read any of the documentation around WordPress' utf8mb4 support, you'll know there are a lot more technical reasons why that is needed than being able to throw some emoji in your content.

[Richard67]

I 100% agree with mbabker, utf8mb4 is not only for emojis, it also has security aspects.

Furthermore it was not the only big thing. One of the other big things was to make Joomla! update channels secure, so also CDN and hosing provider had to change stuff to support all clients. I am not sure if other CMS are already this far, having all their docs and help and update channels fully supporting https for any possible client version and configuration (except maybe stone aged Netscape 4 or so).

With 3.5.0 all those things will be https, a change which you will not see in foreground but will work silently and smoothly in background, and 3.5.0 will have more such changes, which will not appear as the big revolution in the foreground but in the background make it all safer (https), faster (sql query and php code optimization, more minified css and js, optimized images, ...) and more reliable (uncountable bug fixes).

I see here a performance gain coming only from Joomla! when testing, not from changing to PHP7, so if you do both, the effect should really remarkable.

Sure, things could have been done faster maybe, but then with more risk for bugs. Migrating people's data to utf8mb4 is a thing where you better test 10 times more than releasing it with silly bugs just to make people happy.

Joomla! is 100% made by volunteers, people like me, who maybe 1 month have much time to work for Joomla!, but then in the next month may disappear for weeks or months because back in their job, or someone gets sick with a flu, and this can sometimes be unpredictable. And so it is not easy to make and keep schedules, less easy than it would be for a large commercial company.

Remember: Joomla! is free! That does not mean it shall be less good than a paid CMS. But it should make poeple maybe be less cherry picking when looking for somethig to complain about.

Sometimes I think people have more courage to complain about free software made by volunteers that they have with commercial software. Or do really all people who were forced to update to a buggy and not ready Windows 10 where for some reason suddenly start menu can disappear completely, do they all post their opinion to Microsoft?

No, they take it as it is because they are paralized by the power of such big companies.

But here, where is not such big company behind it, I feel people have more courage to complain.

Remember: People like me work for Joomla! for fun, not for money. If we only get complains and coplains and again complains, the one or other of us might lose fun with it.

So please stay fair with Joomla!, be patient and wait a little bit more, and you will see the result will be good.