January 2023 Developer Update

[julian]

Hey, something looks different here... I can't quite place my finger on it

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In this month's developer update, we'll keep it short and sweet. Three new updates, one major, and two minor.

v3 beta has arrived

Today we released beta versions of NodeBB (v3.0.0-beta.1) and the Harmony theme (v1.0.0-beta.1). This milestone is mostly symbolic, and signifies that we've reached a point where most or all of the pages in the theme have been re-designed, and are ready for more widespread testing.

While we don't consider v3.0.0 or the Harmony theme production-ready for anyone other than ourselves, we certainly wouldn't mind it if you tried using it. Since both Persona and Harmony are compatible on the v3.x beta, you can switch back and forth to try it out.

Let us know what you think, and let us know if you find any bugs. There will be bugs... the real question is how many

Updated drafts support

This month Baris worked on refactoring the drafts system to better handle the design needs of the Harmony theme. If a picture is worth 1000 words, how many is a gif worth?

Instead of being limited to one draft per category/topic, you can nowcreate multiple drafts. Baris also fixed up some bugs related to drafts when editing posts.

Push Notifications via ntfy

We've been following along with the news about UnifiedPush and are excited to see where it will go. We've had trouble with various push notification implementations, and have experimented with a couple, with no reliable results:

1. The desktop notifications plugin often didn't work if the app was closed or inactive due to system battery constraints (so, basically all of the time)
2. PushBullet monetized, and we decided to discontinue work on the plugin, as it was not a solution available to everyone.
3. The firebase plugin worked quite well, although had zero support on Apple devices, which made it a no-go.

This is why I was very excited when I discovered ntfy.sh, a hosted pub-sub service that can act as a gateway for push notifications on browser and on mobile devices (iOS included)!

What sealed the deal for me was the fact that the author maintains an open-sourced server solution, so you are able to support your own server if you like, instead of using the ntfy.sh server. It'll allow our implementation to be used in the future, when ntfy.sh decides to monetize their service.

To that end, I've created nodebb-plugin-ntfy, bundled with v3.0.0-beta.1, which allows you to subscribe to push notifications on your phone/browser — give it a try!

You can access the push notification settings via your user settings menu:

[phenomlab]

Super excited by all of this. Have been following and using harmony in git and an running it in Dev. Very much like the work done thus far and it's great to hear that beta1 has officially surfaced.

Thanks for all of the work on this.

[crazycells]

Thanks for the update! Looking forward to trying this for our website... Some bugs I can see:

• Last reply preview looks abnormal:

• Panels from the toolbar go out-of-screen when the screen is minimized (not to the absolute minimum)...

• On suggested topics... link previews look larger than normal:

[julian]

@crazycells

• https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/issues/11150

[DownPW]

Very very big thanks to the all team for your hard work

So I See these bug with french language :

Other questions for V3 functionnality :

• for the skins Switcher, will this menu be customizable in the selection? Can we add custom css files for example?
• Hope the chat improvement for large forum is on the way or maybe a modification of global Chat Plugin performance.
  The other interesting idea would be to create so-called public chatrooms that a user can join without restrictions.

Thanks

[julian]

So I See these bug with french language

Perhaps you francophones should be less verbose I kid, I kid.

[Andrey]

@julian Thanks for this great update, looks amazing! How to upgrade from version 2.8.2 correctly? Do I need to install the alpha version first? Or you can use: git reset --hard v3.0.0-beta.1

[baris]

@DownPW the issue with the dropdowns should be fixed now. Thanks for reporting.

The skin switcher is using https://bootswatch.com/ so it could be possible to add more there by creating new skins.

[crazycells]

• topic cover pics do not show normal size...

https://community.nodebb.org/category/13/nodebb-blog

[crazycells]

quick reply says drag and drop images

But I cannot drop any images there directly, it does not accept them. I have to click "reply" first and then drop images...

[baris]

These two are fixed, thanks for reporting.
https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/issues/11155
https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/issues/11154

The imges on topic list teasers is filed
https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/issues/11152

Gonna discuss if we should just remove the image on teasers(which results in empty teaser if the post only contains an image) or size it down like the topic thumb.

[baris]

In case people miss it harmony theme allows changing the header element alignment and toggle the sticky bar in topic and category pages. You can find those settings at theme settings

[Angel Dust]

@baris yea ur right tbh

[Brutus5000]

@julian said in January 2023 Developer Update:

This milestone is mostly symbolic

This concerns me a little as incrementing the major version breaks the compatibility constraints of many plugins for no technical reason. I had a similar feeling for the 2.x release series. So they don't even appear in the interface anymore and deactivate on updating.

[phenomlab]

@baris @DownPW Looking at the Bootswatch site, they are encouraging you to "write your own", but don't seem to have any mechanism to add custom skins. Based on this, I've decided I'm going to push ahead with the Skin switcher I was developing for v2, and move this into v3.

I have code ready - it just needs small modifications to make it work with BS5.

[phenomlab]

@baris @julian Is there any way to disable the skin switcher in Harmony (I know you can prevent the user from setting their own skin in settings, but it seems this has no effect on the switcher itself as it can still be used, and skins selected). My code will place a dropdown on the panel in the same location, and will effectively replace the functionality.

[DownPW]

@phenomlab said in January 2023 Developer Update:

@baris @DownPW Looking at the Bootswatch site, they are encouraging you to "write your own", but don't seem to have any mechanism to add custom skins.

Yep, indeed, that is also what I was able to understand. It was the same philosophy for bootstrap V3

I also think of devoting myself to your solution which perfectly matches the expectations of customization

@phenomlab Will I have to adopt your actual swatch or keep the theme switcher as it currently exists on my forum?

@julian @baris Sorry to bother you with this but will there be a solution or changes for the global chat plugin for forums with a lot of users as listed on the github ticket or not?

[phenomlab]

@DownPW said in January 2023 Developer Update:

Will I have to adopt your actual swatch or keep the theme switcher as it currently exists on my forum?

You can continue to use your own swatch, but don't forget that there is a considerable amount of effort required on your part due to elements changing because of the migration from BS3 to BS5. You define the swatch colours based on the :root CSS/LESS attributes

[DownPW]

Or maybe I can use your swatch if it's possible. I pass on Sudonix to talk about it @phenomlab

[DownPW]

I don't know if it's a bug but I see the text color of pagination active is black and I see that on the code. maybe I wrong

And that :

I have this blank menu when I want to edit a post directly after publishing. I must refresh the page :