K2 sub-templates extend the templating capabilities of Joomla! by allowing the creation of multiple, named sets of view overrides for K2 (the component) and certain K2 modules.
Any K2 component sub-template can be assigned to a K2 component category or K2 component menu item, and any K2 module sub-template is assignable to a module instances that support sub-templates (i.e. K2 Content module).
An un-official, and possibly incomplete, list of plugin events for K2 as of v2.6.2
Front-end:
Back-end:
DOCman 1.6.x has an interesting behavior of using the Itemid of the first DOCman menu item it finds in the menu tree, not necessarily that of the page you are editing, when manually inserting a link in a Joomla article.
For example, if you have a DOCman category layout with an Itemid of 111, and have also created a single article menu item, with the Itemid of 115, DOCman's DOClinks will not use Itemid=115 when inserting a link into the single article. It will, instead, use Itmid=111 as that is the first DOCman item it finds.
The fix is to first insert the DOCman link as you would normally, then manuall change the Itemid parameter of the URL. In the above example, DOClink inserted
index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=591&Itemid=111index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=591&Itemid=115An abbreviation of Wikipedia's definition of Responsive Web Design (RWD) is that it is an approach [where] a site is crafted to provide an optimal viewing experience across a wide range of devices
While I agree with this definition, it needs to be further refined as also creating a cohesive user experience among all devices. If a user were to sit down with a number of different devices (let's say a smart phone, tablet, and notebook computer) that user should be able to transition from one device to another without any sort of learning curve or need to become re-aquanted with the site. This is not to say that the design on each device would look the same, but the user experience would be similar and equally intuitive.
In an act consisting of equal parts of pure @beep groupie-ism and Responsive Web Design fanaticism, I closed up shop early today and drove the six hour round trip to Boston and back (not to mention consuming copious amounts of coffee and fast food terror) so that I could be present at Real World Applications of Responsive Web Design featuring Ethan Marcotte, Mat Marquis, and Miranda Mulligan.
To sum up the event, it was awesome. Awesome in the sense that it inspired awe, and an "ah ha!" moment. That moment occurred when it became clear on how media queries should be used in a device agnostic application. In other words, approaching EM based media queries that are focused on content.
In his talk, Ethan described the atomic unit of measure for a site's media queries to be based on "the ideal line length of a single column of text." That atomic unit of measure is the basis for further media queries, or breakpoints. For example, the font type and size, and even line height used in a site's design may lend to the optimal line length of a single column of text (i.e. the tiny screen version) to be 20em. With this being the case, other natural increments may occur at 30em, 45em, and even 60em. Determining these increments are as much art, science, and feel (start resizing your borwsers like crazy). In any case, they have nothing to do with screen size and device resolution, and never will.
A simple and effective way to handle to the various quirks between the different versions of Internet Explorer is the use of conditional comments to load specific stylesheets, declarations, or even classes. For example, HTML5 Boilerplate addresses this by implementing Paul Irish's Conditional stylesheets vs CSS hacks? Answer: Neither!:
However, conditional comments add extra code to your document and are limited to only Internet Explorer.
Since Joomla! 1.5, JBrowser has existed to help us identity the client's browser by examining the HTTP_USER_AGENT. By leveraging JBrowser, we can not only eliminate the use conditional statements in templates, but also expand browser specific rules beyond IE and do this server-side.
Requiring new users, that are registering on your website, to accept a Terms and Conditions agreement can be accomplished through the use of a simple Joomla! template override. This override, in fact, only requires adding the following line of code to the com_users/register override:
This line of code has a few aspects worth mentioning:
One of the amazing aspects of the Joomla! project is that it brings together like-minded people from across the world and unite us as members of an online community, sharing a common goal. This community is the power behind Joomla and is what makes it the best CMS. As a member of the online Joomla community, it's easy to forget the power of personal contact and face-to-face meetings.
Not too long after I released the Construct template framework, I received a report of some strange behavior when it was being used along side of a very popular, and widely used Joomla extension. This particular extension uses the following CSS, which is applied to empty divs:
In my framework, I use the following CSS, which I apply to various page elements that also contain content:
In this situation, the CSS from this extension was causing all of the template's page elements, that had a class of clr, to basically disappear. So, how do we handle a situation like this? Which should take precedence, the template or the component? In this case, I was basically forced to rework my framework as this extension was applying styles to a very broad and generic CSS class. If this extension had used a unique class applied to it's outer most element, they could have isolated their styling of generic classes to just the extension.
