Breadcrumb NavXT 5.2.0

Holy feature refinement Batman! Breadcrumb NavXT 5.2.0 features several squashed bugs, a slight change in how post type archives are handled, and refinements in the settings page. Additionally, the Max Title Length setting was deprecated, in favor of using CSS to limit the title length.

PHP Requirements

Breadcrumb NavXT 5.2.0 drops support for PHP5.2 and below. The migration to the new adminKit library has introduced code that depends on language features present only in PHP5.3 and newer.

Changes Post Type Archives

In prior versions, if enabled, post type archive breadcrumbs would always represent the post type of the current post’s post type. In most cases this is the desired behavior. However, if using “post parent” as the post hierarchy, it may be preferable to use the post type of the top post in the hierarchy. This is the new behavior in 5.2.0. It was introduced to improve support for bbPress, is it has several post types with the post parent hierarchy spanning multiple post types.

Deprecation of Max Title Length

Limiting the length of titles within breadcrumbs has been a feature in Breadcrumb NavXT since its inception. While the current implementation of this feature is more sophisticated than the original implementation, it has flaws that are not easily fixed. It does not understand HTML, and thus can break HTML tags. Additionally, from a semantical point of view, the breadcrumb trail markup should never be truncated. Back in August, a guide on using CSS to limit the breadcrumb title length was release, this is now the officially recommended method of limiting the breadcrumb title length.

Settings Page Updates

Breadcrumb NavXT 5.2.0 updates to a new version of adminKit, with this new version comes two enhancements: improved settings saving feedback, and stylized enable/disable setting groups.

Previously, when saving settings, if something failed other than parts of the submitted settings, nothing was reported. This has been fixed to report when settings were not saved, and when the settings were not saved due to no changes in value for any of the settings.

Additionally, settings that depend on another setting to be checked/enabled will automatically be unavailable (disabled) until the dependency setting is checked/enabled. This is intended to clarify what settings will/can be used given the current settings configuration.

The Translation Team

[glot-translators=breadcrumb-navxt]

As always, you can grab the latest version of Breadcrumb NavXT from the Breadcrumb NavXT page. If you experience any issues with this version of Breadcrumb NavXT, please leave a comment on this post detailing the issue.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

Breadcrumb NavXT 5.2 and PHP5.2

Breadcrumb NavXT has maintained PHP5.2 compatibility ever since WordPress dropped PHP4 support about four years ago. However, the time has come to move past PHP5.2 and on to newer versions of the language.

Due to new features in the upgraded adminKit library, Breadcrumb NavXT 5.2 requires language features that are not available in PHP5.2. To complicate matters further, PHP5.2 is no longer available in the package manager for the Linux distribution I run on my testbed server. Thus, even if I wanted to maintain PHP5.2 compatibility, I have no easy means to test for it.

Lastly, PHP5.2 is no longer maintained by the PHP authors (PHP5.3 has the same issue). Therefore, Breadcrumb NavXT 5.2 requires PHP5.3 or newer and it is very likely that Breadcrumb NavXT 5.3 will require PHP5.4.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

Breadcrumb NavXT and bbPress Compatibility

Notice: This topic is being revisited in August/September 2020, with a new guide that is more applicable to how Breadcrumb NavXT and bbPress work as of that date. Below is the original article which remains for historical purposes.

While developing Breadcrumb NavXT 5.2, I spent some time investigating the compatibility issues between Breadcrumb NavXT and bbPress. Within Breadcrumb NavXT, every attempt is made to use the WordPress API, when possible, to maximize the compatibility with other plugins such as bbPress. However, this is not always enough, and the findings of this investigation are presented in this article.

Continue reading

WP Lynx 1.0.0

Presenting WP Lynx 1.0.0, the first major refactoring of WP Lynx. This version prominently features a new Lynx Print adding interface which mimics the new WordPress media manager. In addition to this new interface, the plugin’s internals were reorganized to match the plugin base layout style implemented in modern versions of Breadcrumb NavXT. Also new, WP Lynx now includes minimized script and style files. Lastly, the maximum number of redirects the page scraper will follow is user configurable.

On the bug fix front, this version has code that should prevent instances of Lynx Prints being added within existing Lynx Prints in a post (aka prevents Lynx Printception).

You can grab the latest WP Lynx on the WP Lynx WordPress.org plugin page.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

An Update on WP Lynx 1.0.0

This has taken much longer than originally expected, but a new version of WP Lynx is finally nearing completion. All of the issues for the 1.0.0 milestone have been closed, and the SVN trunk has been updated with a preview release. The release of WP Lynx 1.0.0 is slated for the end next week. Much of the plugin has been rewritten and reorganized for this release. The largest user facing change is a major update to the Lynx Print adding interface. See below for a screenshot of the new Lynx Print interface.

WP Lynx 1.0.0 Lynx Print Adding Screen

The new Lynx Pring Adding Screen

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]