Joomla! 1.6 takes its time, but is still coming. While we actively monitor the SVN development tree to make sure our own YireoTM extensions will be compatible with Joomla! 1.6 Stable as soon as it arrives, there were a couple of interesting articles written by the Joomla!TM developers which we overlooked. Let's take a look at some of the highlights in the new Template Manager and the Redirection component.
Improved template manager
Joomla! core member Andrew Eddie wrote in the following article about the new Template Manager in Joomla! 1.6. While there are some minor improvements (like splitting up the template parameters into Basic Parameters and Advanced Parameters) the biggest feature seems to be Template Styles. Instead of just assigning a Joomla! template only once to a couple of pages through Page Assignment, with Joomla! 1.6 you can create multiple styles and assign each style to certain pages.
An example: Let's say you have a Joomla! template which offers a parameter to switch the overall color of the website (red, green and blue). Now, if you want to simulate various sections in your site, you might want section 1 to have a red color, section 2 to have a green color and section 3 to have a blue color. Because Joomla! 1.5 only allows you to assign a full template to certain pages, the only workaround is to make three copies of the same template.
Unfortunately this also means you have to maintain three sets of template, for instance when changing the site logo, you need to do that three times. Joomla! 1.6 solves this problem by using different Template Styles that make use of the same Joomla! template, but just with different parameters.
Syntax highlighting when editing index.php
A major improvement is also the syntax highlighting when editing code through the Template Manager. With Joomla! 1.5 we always recommend webdevelopers to use a separate HTML-editing program (like Dreamweaver) and then upload the files through FTP to Joomla!. One of the main reasons for this is syntax highlighting, which adds nice colouring to all HTML-code, CSS-code and JavaScript-code, so webdevelopers can reckognize tags easily.
Now with Joomla! 1.6 the Template Manager offers syntax highlighting - making it much easier to modify templates through the Joomla! Administrator pages.
Redirect System Plugin
One other feature of Joomla! 1.6 is the Redirect System Plugin, which is accompanied by the Redirection component. The plugin allows for redirection of 404-pages to other pages. Instead of just showing an ugly red error-box when a page could not be found, the Redirection functionality allows you to configure destination URLs to which the visitor should be redirected.
We have developed a similar component ourselves - Dynamic404 - but while the Joomla! 1.6 redirection only allows for static redirection, the Dynamic404 component does this automatically, without the need for you to configure anything. This makes it much easier to change URLs or migrate from Joomla! 1.5 to Joomla! 1.6. Certainly Dynamic404 will be compatible with Joomla! 1.6 and it will still add benefit to your site - even with the new improved Joomla! 1.6 functionality.
