krileonCB Activity 6.0.0 has arrived! With it comes a massive amount of new features and a complete rewrite of the entire plugin. There's so many things packed into this release that it'll be hard to cover it all! Check out the details below.
First and foremost this is a significant migration. We've implemented robust migration into the install process of CB Activity 6.0.0. Some servers may not be able to handle the migration in 1 go. Should the install fail do not panic! Simply install it again and it will resume migration where it left off. Please be sure to verify your entire usage of CB Activity throughout your site as a lot has changed. A new CB Auto Actions release is also available as the many system actions for CB Activity are no longer necessary.
A complete redesign and clean up of the UI has been applied to every aspect. Bringing it more in line with other social media design practices.
This extends to all aspects of CB Activity and isn't limited to just the activity stream. Even making a new post has been substantially cleaned up and simplified.
Making posts is jam packed with new features like live previews instead of text only posts. Lets take a look at how mentions look.
You now get a nice popup for mentions and hashtags as well. This lets you quickly and easily select someone to mention or a hashtag to include in your post. This then converts to clean HTML as it would display in the post itself.
Location feature has been completely redone from the ground up. No more clunky manually supplying address. It now uses a built in map (supports OpenStreetMaps and GoogleMaps), automatic location selection, AND searching for nearby places!
Actions have also been given a nice update. They're no longer a dropdown select element and are now a nice popover that supports accessibility first keyboard navigation and focus handling.
Hope you're still with me! I know this is a long post, but there's so much to show! Up next is a complete rewrite of the Reactions popover. It now includes better searching, keeping track of recently used reactions history, and a built in local favorites system. It also sports completely accessibility first navigation support. Both Tenor and Giphy are supported.
Emotes has been completely redesigned from its old system. Emotes are now strictly browser and system supported emotes. They are no longer stored in the database. A simplified categorized selector with history is provided. Skin tone selection is also supported for all emotes with multiple colors.
Since the old emotes system doesn't exist anymore let me introduce you to the new Sticker system. Stickers are not limited like Emotes were. Stickers can be images, videos, or even custom HTML! They let your users neatly insert custom content into their posts. It supports searching, categories, and a history system. Included are some cute cat stickers! Your old emotes will be migrated to Stickers so no worries they'll still work!
Themes were also enhanced with new accessible UI and cleaner preview as well as selection.
You'll notice in all the above there's a circle bottom right of the post window. This is actually the new message limit indicator. Since message limit is based off character count and not word count it's not very user friendly showing character count as an indicator. So instead this circle will gradually fill as the limit gets closer and closer to give an indicator they're reaching post limit.
All buttons and toggles throughout CB Activity have been resized to accommodate mobile. This means they're all at minimum the size of a finger press to account for touch controls.
It's not just posting features that feature a slick new redesign, but also activity itself. Gallery media now more cleanly collapses into modal grids and better supports comment display.
Activity stream filters system has also been greatly expanded with search capabilities. So in addition to custom asset filters for a stream you can now directly search for a mention, hashtag, or even post message itself!
We're still not done yet! All popup windows have also been redone and given a consistent look. Likes being the biggest enhancement. Like types now have meaning! You can filter the likes window by type as well.
A new robust post share feature has been implemented for activity. Sharing lets users share a post across other sites in addition to supporting reposting to their own profile.
You'll notice Embed above. That's right. We support external embedding activity! A small JavaScript script is included with the iframe to automatically size the iframe post of the post contents. This uses the same practices that other social media use to resize iframes for their embeds. Lets take a look at how a Repost is shown!
Not even the dropdown menus have escaped a redesign! Dropdowns for activity and comments to perform actions on a post have been increased in size to account for mobile and given a clean aligned look for their associated icons.
I bet "Bookmark this Post" caught your eye! You can now bookmark posts. It's like a built in saving system. You can then visit a stream that exclusively shows all posts you've bookmarked!
It doesn't stop there. The report functionality has been enhanced with auto-moderation. When a post has reached a configured report threshold it can automatically be censored. This would require a manual action from a user (a click) to see and interact with the post.
All of these stream features are now easily managed from a single clean interface. There no longer are parameters scattered everywhere. Streams are now stored in the database for both activity and comments that can be managed from their respective pages.
Now lets jump into some non-stream features such as managing of hidden items. Hidden activity and comments are now managed from a single page instead of multiple separate pages. Hidden notifications doesn't exist anymore. The reason for this are notifications are now PUSH based instead of PULL based. This means a user needs to be explicitly assigned a notification. That allows the user to just delete themselves as a recipient of that notification so no longer needs hidden support.
Speaking of notifications the design has also been standardized to fit within the single row layout shown above. All of notifications other features remain except there's now a new robust context parsing functionality to try and better locate where a notifications link should send the user when clicked.
This same design and context parsing functionality is then applied to two new views. Liked and Followed. These views let a user see at a glance everything they've liked and followed as well as quickly being able to unlike and unfollow that content.
The fun doesn't stop here! There's just too much to even talk about in a single post. So please take a look at the journey CB Activity 6.0.0 has taken for a deeper dive into what is now available.
https://www.joomlapolis.com/blog/kyle/19022-cb-activity-6-0-0-beta-1
https://www.joomlapolis.com/blog/kyle/19024-cb-activity-6-0-0-beta-2
https://www.joomlapolis.com/blog/kyle/19031-cb-activity-6-0-0-beta-3
https://www.joomlapolis.com/blog/kyle/19034-cb-activity-6-0-0-rc-1
For a full list of changes check out the changelog below.
https://forge.joomlapolis.com/projects/cb-activity/issues?query_id=85
If you're interested in CB Activity and want to see more take a look at its page below (we'll be updating this page soon!).