Status of jReviews 2.0 development

March 13, 2008 at 11:54 PM

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to provide a brief update on the status of jReviews 2.0 so you know know it's coming and also what's coming. jReviews 2.0 is a major code re-write in order to move jReviews towards a model-view-controller (MVC) framework which will make it much easier to add features and customize. The database structure will remain intact in this release and so will the administration, on the surface. The real changes are all under the hood for better performance and to lay the foundation for future improvements.

Here's a summary of the most important changes:

1) Move towards MVC framework making it more modular and much easier to customize

2) Replacement of patTemplate in favor of php templating. This greatly increases the possibilities of customizing the templates. patTemplate served it's purpose but it's too restrictive. There will also be less template files to work with and all variables you can think off will be available in the template, a big contrast to the current version.

3) Move towards jQuery for effects. jQuery works well with both prototype and mootools, thus avoiding conflicts with other extensions and templates that use them. It also has a lot of cool plugins that can easily be incorporated by users to the templates.

4) Independence from the xajax mambot/plugin, but also work with it if found.

5) Compatible with Mambo 4.6.x, Joomla 1.0.x and Joomla 1.5. A lot of testing will be required for this, but the use of an independent framework makes this possible. The first version will still have legacy code in it, but I'll remove most of it with time.

I keep crossing stuff from my todo list, but new items just keep appearing ;) so it seems like I'll never finish! I am getting closer and hope to have a version out soon. The problem is it's not just jReviews that needs to be re-written. It's all the modules, plugins and addon components!

Alejandro

March 13, 2008 at 11:56 PM