IMPORTANT: Gantry 4 Feature Requests

[Andy Miller]

Hey guys, I am going to write a blog post and explain our plans for our next version of Gantry but in short, we've had a slight change in our roadmap.

Originally we had intended that Gantry 4 would be a huge revamp of our current framework.  This was never intended to be backwards compatible with Gantry 3 as we planned on changing many of the underlying mechanisms for configuration and features.  We also had plans to radically change how you configured modules and features in relation to menu items and other mechanisms (categories, dates, etc). Another major part of this redesign would of been the inclusion of responsive capabilities into the framework as this is a very hot topic at the moment.

This was quite an audacious undertaking and  we have decided that there are some things that we just don't want to wait for. We have found that we can quite easily provide underlying responsive capabilities in the current 3.X version of Gantry to enable us to create a very powerful and flexible responsive template.  We are working on this now and will release it as next month's RocketTheme Joomla club template.  As the development of this has progressed we have decided that we want to move this capability back into Gantry along with some other high level features and release this as a fully backward-compatible Gantry 4 release.  

Please note, this does not mean that simply installing Gantry 4 in your existing 960 grid configured templates will automatically make them responsive.  There will be lots of CSS fixes and content tweaks required as designing responsive templates is a much more complex and time consuming proposition compared to a fixed grid template.

What this means then, is that we plan on releasing Gantry 4 in a much shorter time frame than we had originally planned.  Also this means that our bigger plans will be pushed into Gantry 5 that will be released next year and will not be backwards compatible with previous versions.

We have a high level list of requirements for Gantry 4, but by necessity this is a fluid list and may change:

1) New responsive frontend Gantry template

2) Refreshed backend administration UI

3) Minor administration performance optimizations

4) LESS for base CSS with PHP-based compilation into CSS.  We will provide various options including ever-page load,  manual, and also change-based recompilation for maximum flexibility during development to production lifecycles

5) General merge of Joomla and WordPress codebases

6) Many frontend performance optimizations related to class loading, caches implementations, and rendering

What we need from you the users, is thoughts on SMALL but important features or issues that we could address in this release. Please note, we want this to be a timely release, so don't ask for full WYSIWYG UI with drag and drop capabilities :) That's just not going to happen in this release.  We want to ensure we can make this fully backwards compatible and get the maximum benefits for the minimum development effort.

So please respond to this email with your thoughts and ideas. We will review your requests and see if any of them are suitable for this Gantry 4 release, or maybe are more suitable for Gantry 5.

This is your chance to make a difference!

Cheers,

Andy Miller

Team RocketTheme authors of Gantry Framework

[Selim Rana]

Hey Andy Miller,

Thank you so much hear about that. we are so excited about gantry4 because we are waiting for that. it's already cover all feature which you describe. so i think it's enough for gantry4. again thank you.

regards
selim rana

[Elliott Evans]

Hi Andy, 

Would like to say a huge thanks for all the hard work you and your team have put into such a great framework.

Some features that may be useful either in Gantry 4 - 5: 

I recently came across a HTML5 template using the Gantry Framework and Bootstrap which works well. This may be for Gantry 5? 

http://jbootstrap.prieco.com/ 
http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/ 

Regarding Gantry 4, For the mobile could the rokNavMenu change to a dropdown menu? 

Thanks again, 

Elliott  

[Jean-Baptiste]

Hi Andy,

First, thank you for the great job you have done for many years.

Then, to my opinion, Gantry should be HTML5/CSS3 ready and follow the HTML5 Boilerplate recommendations (html5boilerplate.com).

There are some points interesting to me :

• ACL implementation to restrict access to tabs, features configuration or whole template style.
• Social media integration such as Facebook open graph on menu item basis. (http://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/).
• Translations !!!! I Gantry is a great extension for Joomla! or Wordpress. Make it understandable for strangers :-D
• Multiple Backend UI layouts (one for developer like me and an other for my customer, who do not mind about "features" or "gzip" for example)

So be creative and continue to make Gantry the best Framework for Joomla! and Wordpress.

Good luck and see ya.

[stu...@dynamicpress.eu]

Hi Andy,

First of all, heartfelt thanks for the tremendous work done in the Gantry in recent years.

 

And congratulations on the very right decision to transfer fundamental changes to Gantry 5 and, as I understand, as soon as possible to complete Gantry 4 with the most important changes.

 

From that list the changes in Gantry 4 most important seems responsive design and should be an absolute priority.

No matter what we think of its versatility and limitations. No matter what we believe to be the best mechanism to achieve responsivity.

This is the need of the market and expectations of our customers.

In my opinion this is so important that even advised me to close the list the planned changes in version 4 as soon as possible. 

As well as the removal of all the changes that would make the over-extension of the work on it.

 

I will eagerly wait for Gantry 4 :).

 

Good luck!

 

Karolina

 

[Gonzalo Suez]

Good news Andy. You will incorporate LESS, which is very good.
But, what happens to Bootstrap in the core of Joomla 3.0? Do you plan to use with Gantry?

I incorporate adapt.js to Gantry, and works fine ;). But there are better alternatives for responsive site, Foundation, Semantic, 1140, etc, etc ... you think consider one of these for Gantry?

Finally, what about HTML 5 in Gantry?

Best Regards

[Tom]

Hello Andy and first of all thank you for a great job you guys done with Gantry!

Some of my thoughts about features or changes, which I would really like to see in Gantry 4.

I'm not sure if implementing those would be possible, or if you could count it as "SMALL" or usefull ;) but here is my "small" list:



Regarding to Responsive Layout.

1. I think that nice addition would be an option to disable specific sections on mobile view, for example to hide whole section (let say "mainbottom") on mobile view.

There are two reasons why I think it could be usefull:

a) Many or most of extensions are not ready yet to work on responsive layouts, using that kind of extensions in many cases can break template layout, thanks to this option we

would be able to hide or avoid this extensions on mobile view.

b) Thanks to that option we will still have an option to choose, which content should be displayed for mobile users, and very often needs are quite different when we are using

mobiles and desktops :)

I know that we can use simple css class and add it to even module suffix but display:none; is not a good solution.

That option should belong to Joomla core, to choose in module settings where module should be displayed, on all devices, desktop only, mobile only, but I'm not sure

if something like this is even planned for Joomla 3.0.


2. I would really like to see a changes in layout settings of mainbody and sidebars.

Andy, I know that Gantry is based on a grid, and that is more natural to use it that way with grid, but specific sizes of sidebars (based on a grid) personally is killing me

;) .

Many times I found 3 columns sidebar to small, 4 columns sidebar too big for this what I want.. . All this can be adjusted, but that needs to many hacks to keep

layout in place.

What I would like to see instead of current mainbody settings:

Option to set sizes of specific sidebar in %, while mainbody will always have a "auto" width. Also every sidebar should have an option where by default it should be

displayed  - left or right side of mainbody.

Simple example:

sidebar-a - 22% left
sidebar-b - 37% right
sidebar-c - 27% right


Currently if we set mainbody layout to let say 8 | 4, and we use sidebar-b it will be displayed on right side, if on some other page we will use sidebar-a, it will also be

displayed on right side in same format 8 | 4. If we want to move sidebar-a to left side I need to create new copy/style of template, override settings, and assign it to desired pages, not very user friendly ;) .




3. Legacy for gantry css files is a great addition, can we add grid-XX.css to that list (gantry.css and joomla.css) :) ?

4. If Gantry 4 will continue to use the 12 column grid, it would be great to have the HTML markup for the grid, compatibile with bootstrap markup in gantry 4 release.

5. Not too important, but - Google Web Fonts, to add new font to the list, we need to update font list in template and in library, otherwise it is not displayed on a list in

template settings (if font family is added to template list only), or I missed something here :)

and that would be all :)

Cheers!

Tomasz

On Wednesday, July 11, 2012 10:59:13 PM UTC+2, Andy Miller wrote:

[Corradomatt]

Wow!! This is awesome news! Keep up the great work and thank you, thank you, thank you for giving back to the community. The list of upcoming upgrades looks great and I can't wait to see version 4 and then 5!

The only suggestion I can make pertains to the wordpress version of gantry. Not sure if it's more trouble that you think it's worth BUT - would it make sense to lose mootools in favor of jquery? I realize that this will cause issues (especially in relation to joomla) but wordpress utilizes jquery all ready and if it was possible to have the wordpress version of gantry simply use the wordpress version of jquery I think it would go along way to improve usability, performance and complete integration within wordpress.

Just a thought :)

-Matt

[Shazdeh]

This list of new features is giving me a boner! This is fantastic! Can't wait to see them.

در پنجشنبه 12 ژوئیهٔ 2012، ساعت 0:29:13 (UTC+3:30)، Andy Miller نوشته:

[sam]

i want to test the Gantry 4 .. where to download it for testing

[Сергей Мочалов]

I want to see:
1) Mootoools switcher - turn off/turn on Mootools
2) International translation (first off all - Russian)
3) Free access for support forum (not for only club subscribers)

четверг, 12 июля 2012 г., 0:59:13 UTC+4 пользователь Andy Miller написал:

[cbrischetto]

In Gantry 3 there were many color choosers.
Are them gone away in v.4???

[Siriö Aštaröt]

An important novelty would be include several features that I had to custom make personally.

• More social buttons (Linkedin, Reverbnation, Xing, youtube, etc...)

• Change custom template width between 960 and 1320 for widescreen monitor (90px in 12 columns/200px in 6 columns)

It would be good that capacity, to web sites show your other social networking pages.

Cordially,

Siriö Astarot

EMP - Audioestudio

[Wrathbone]

I would really like to see tighter Mobile Version controls:

1. Easier customization of logo
2. Removable default menu
3. Ability to change mobile homepage, and set module assignments to individual mobile pages

[Semsettin Beser]

Hi Andy,

I am using Ammon template with GAntry 4.1.1 framework( just updated) however, I have this error when to try show default login page of the ammon template.

Fatal error: Call to a member function init() on a non-object in /usr/home/nesibeay/public_html/portal/templates/ammon/html/com_users/login/default_login.php on line 15

 I had to disable the line $gantry->init(); then it worked normally. Is there any problem with the 4.1.1 working with the ammon template.

Thank you for your help.

require_once(JPATH_LIBRARIES.'/gantry/gantry.php');

// $gantry->init();

gantry_import('core.utilities.gantryjformfieldaccessor');

11 Temmuz 2012 Çarşamba 23:59:13 UTC+3 tarihinde Andy Miller yazdı:

[Henning]

I suggest to get in contact the author of this template ...

[Gustavo González]

Hi everyone, i'm new in this group and also in Gantry. I'm get really fascinated with this framework cause is really simple to do and custom a lot of things. If this section is about to post request for Gantry, i need to ask if there is a possibility to switch languages in such sections of Default template, without i have to be worried about upgrades(examples: text resizer: just like reset settings text can be changed;change link font colors, in link and hover mode, by section, not globally, cause i can need to put a different font color in a section and another in other section; support and switch between language packages globally) Thanks and i will appreciate your answers

[Leoalv]

Hi Andy. We would like to know if you have plans to add the ability to enable and disable the compilation of master-dfhdfhdfdfd45dffd.css to see css files as gantry-core.css, bootstrap.css, global.css etc, or your version less; is a way for the developer to start.

Or this feature is possible now? because in point 4 of your entry you wrote the following:

4) LESS for base CSS with PHP-based compilation into CSS.  We will provide various options including ever-page load,  manual, and also change-based recompilation for maximum flexibility during development to production lifecycles

Thanks Andy for the framewrok

[Zach Lanich]

Hey Andy. I really LOVE Gantry so far, but I'll list a pet peeve that I think would help improve the framework:

1) Ability to create overrides for archive templates for specific custom post types. I don't see the options in the "Template Page Types" box under "Assignments". It seems that CPT integration is either slightly limited or the RocketTheme Themes don't bother to program it to play nice with them. So in other words, the "Template Page Types" box should pick up the different template types for CPT's specifically too. Otherwise I can't even create a separate set of sidebar widgets for the "Archive" page for my CPT "Books" for ex.

Other than that, I have loved everything so far and am GREATLY looking forward to the full responsive support and I'm just as excited about the new Responsive Theme so I can build off of it for custom projects. I was kinda hoping I'd be able to use it on my current project. Any word on when that theme will actually be out?

On Wednesday, July 11, 2012 4:59:13 PM UTC-4, Andy Miller wrote:

[Siriö Aštaröt]

Would be good to follow the example of Metropolis template, adding the SOCIAL position in core Gantry for view the social icons with ability to switch left or right.

[Gonzalo Suez]

good idea ;)

--------------------------------
Gonzalo Suez
www.gsuez.cl
in...@gsuez.cl
facebook.com/gsuez.design
twitter.com/gsuez

2013/2/28 Siriö Aštaröt <sirio-...@live.com>

Would be good to follow the example of Metropolis template, adding the SOCIAL position in core Gantry for view the social icons with ability to switch left or right.

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[Juanito Gallon]

I just recieve one of the update of the gantry to our websites and updated the framework to gantry 4.But it seems I cant access our widgets and gantry settings.When I click on it,its all blank.And when I preview the site its didnt show all.Just my header.

 

Here is the link http://www.cleaningservices-vancouver.com/

 

Anyone can tell me why?

[Jakub - RocketTheme.com]

Hi,

Can you please enable the WP_Debug in the wp-config.php ?

Thanks,

Jakub

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[Zach Lanich]

Hey Jakub, could you give me an idea of when the Wordpress Gantry 4 release will be available? Or am I unaware if it already is? haha. Thanks.

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[Jakub - RocketTheme.com]

Hi,

It has been released today :)

Thanks,

Jakub

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[Zach Lanich]

Hey Jakub! I'm soooo excited for this v4 release. I'm already drooling at all the changes. I was wondering if there will ever be more extensive developer documentation for gantry & it's responsive theme development?

[Jakub - RocketTheme.com]

Hi,

Soon we'll be updating some documentation so stay tuned ;)

Thanks,

Jakub

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[Rowby]

I would like to see a switch to turn off the Mobile Menu display for specific devices.  Such as Tablets.  Or if it can't be device specific, then resolution specific.

I would like to be able to completely turn off the mobile menu and use a 3rd party menu system instead of the built in Gantry menu.

Thanks for your excellent work!

Rowby

[Sazler]

I second that I would like to be able to keep the mobile menu but use 3rd party menus for the other resolutions.

[Phyrix]

Hi Andy.

I would even be afraid of requesting this but i have experienced the gantry framework I seriously am considering to start developing in it even without any knowledge of php and none needed i think lets see.
I might sound ridiculous but if you see my work you will understand.
Anyways speaking of my lack in knowledge will not change my request.

Module positions:
I will admit to have seriously customized some templates i have worked on in the past and will probably continue doing so untill i have the whole gantry template making under the foot.
Untill then though a serious feature i will enjoy is a background module position and or many like for instance background 1 bg 2 etc.

The use of this would be for videos much like in the one rt template but much more feature rich (for instance allowing a person to make multiple full width sliders at different heights in the background)
Or how about making a menu transparent in color but allowing a person to upload their own pattern?
Just a question :P

[Theme Rox]

Hi Andy,

Would like to say a huge thanks for all the hard work you and your team have put into such a great framework and really saving our time to develop premium theme. We are using gantry to develop our premium templates in themeforest. I have some advice for future version.

1. Skip Moo-tools and use Jquery

2. Give modernizer support

3. Full front-end bootstrap support like in gantry if i want to make tab then I have to add bootstrap tab script separately.

For Wordpress
1. Facing very difficulties to make Quick Start Pack like Rocket Lancer So if there you have any documentation then it will be great to read or learn from there. i think it will help the developer.

Thanks

 

[Susan Makhanu]

Bravo! the this idea of Gantry framework, my question is.. How do you change the color of the rt-header instead of Dark to show blue or any other??

Thanks
Susan

[Peter Kuhlmann]

Hi Andy, great work I like Gantry, but here are some wishes:

1. Enable or Disable LESS switch - if LESS is always enabled its hard to anylyze with Firebug
2. Replace the 960 grid to 960 grid with percent instead of pixel.
   

[francesco ciotola]

me too

[duckrogers007]

HI!

One big demand, which in my opinion will be endorsed by many, somehow get gantry more friendly for multi lanugaes.
In example, with polylang.
I had to find another solutions for multi language sites, just because gantry is poor in that department. But from all frameworks, gantry is like home to me.
Please do sometinhg about that. Or just better documentation, or some tutorial on your home page.

Big THANKS!

[Selim Rana]

Hey Andy,

When will be publish the Gantry 5? Gantry 4 already over 1 year and you mentioned:

What this means then, is that we plan on releasing Gantry 4 in a much shorter time frame than we had originally planned.  Also this means that our bigger plans will be pushed into Gantry 5 that will be released next year and will not be backwards compatible with previous versions.

 

so when we get the new version?