As stated before Breadcrumb NavXT 2.2 will be vastly different from 2.1, especially API wise. Work is underway on the core, which when stabilized, will allow work on the administrative interface to take place. This is the second major rewriting of the plug-in done in the last year. Previously, the modifications to the core were made to aid in adding features, and enhance modification to it. However, there where some shortcomings which should be overcome by the new more object oriented approach. So far this is the short list of what is changing:

• Anchor templates – akin to the WordPress’ custom permalink template, this allows more flexibility (i.e. allows users to set the rel element among other things).
• Streamlining of the options – options depreciated due to the use of anchor templates, ones that now are already set in WordPress (e.g. the static frontpage option), and ones that were depreciated due to structural changes. The current short list of depreciated options include:
  • URL Title Prefix – obsolete due to anchor templates
  • URL Title Suffix – obsolete due to anchor templates
  • Static Front Page – depreciated in 2.1.3 due to ability to automatically determine this thanks to the WordPress setting “Front page displays” under Settings > Reading.
  • Current Item URL Title – obsolete due to anchor templates
  • Archive by Date Format – reassigned, delimits between a hierarchical date archiving (multiple breadcrumbs in the trail), or the old method following the format specified in the WordPress setting “Date Format” under Settings > General.
• Deeper WordPress integration – not just with the removal of duplicated options, extensive use of filters should alleviate problems with plugins such as Polyglot and qTranslate (Previous support was via “hacks”.).
• Reorganization of the Administrative interface – Not only are the options streamlined, option names are more obvious, and grouped in a more appropriate manner. The interface is also tabbed into several virtual pages thanks to some JavaScript magic. This considerably shortens the apparent size of the options page.
• New Classes – A breadcrumb class and a breadcrumb trail class combine to make the plugin as a whole much more flexible. Unfortunately, this means directly accessing the class does change between 2.1 and 2.2 and thus will require attention from users who directly access the class.

Additionally, a WordPress sidebar widget plugin will be shipped with 2.2.0. This will remove the need for some users to ever touch a theme file, as long as their theme supports sidebar widgets. By this weekend the new core on SVN will be usable, as the bugs are worked out the administrative interface will receive the attention it needs. Around August 8th a Beta will be available, for this much change it is of the utmost importance that some serious testing is done before a formal release is made. If you would like to help test, stay tuned for a post announcing the beta, and report back on your experience.

-John Havlik

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Available immediately, Mtekk’s Testimonials 1.1.0 is a substantial improvement to the previous release. This release migrates from MooTools 1.11 to MooTools 1.2. Now requiring a particular domain or TLD is optional. JavaScript dependencies are handled elegantly now through WordPress’ methods. Finally, errors in form entry are now more elegantly reported to the user in a list above the form. Invalid form entries are marked as a member of the ‘merror’ CSS class. Valid entries will retain their data.

-John Havlik

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Announcing the immediate availability of Breadcrumb NavXT 2.1.4. Possibly the last release for the 2.1.x branch, 2.1.4 fixes mainly regressions in features found in 2.1.3. Some regressions were fixed in a hotfix posted previously, but others were not. Now, static front pages should work correctly, again. Top level pages in setups with static front pages will no longer show up as a descendant of “blog”. The post title max length property works as expected, again. All around this should be much better than 2.1.3, which introduced too many regressions.

Next up in 2.2.0, which will come out some time early next month.

You can grab the latest Breadcrumb NavXT from the Breadcrumb NavXT project page.

-John Havlik

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There is a regression regarding support of static front pages in Breadcrumb NavXT 2.1.3. It has been fixed with the help of a few alert users. You can hotfix your installation if needed, by grabbing the latest breadcrumb-navxt-class.php from SVN. The cause was some cleaning of the class, which inadvertently removed a branch from a if statement that was not orphaned as previously thought. This obviously will make it into the 2.1.4 release, which will be released before the 18th of July. Version 2.2 will debut in late July/early August.

Later this week a new release of Berry will be available. I’ve fixed a number of bugs, and tweaked the comments form. There seems to be a text size bug that will need fixing before the release is made, look for it on Friday.

MooTools 1.2 was released a week or so ago, thus out dating Mtekk’s Testimonials. I’ll get to work on updating that with some nice fixes along with migration to MooTools 1.2. Hopefully, that can be ready before the 18th. With the release of MooTools 1.2 work on WP Trainer will begin (again). Subcomponents of WP Trainer are already complete, the plug-in part itself is what need to be made, along with an interface of sorts. Deciding on the UI is one reason the project keeps getting deferred until later.

-John Havlik

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It time for the third service release for Breadcrumb NavXT 2.1. This is the second to last planed release for the 2.1 branch, heavy development for 2.2 begins this weekend. There are some fixes with bugs in the core breadcrumb class, especially relating to having a post as a member of both a parent category and one of its children. Some administrative interface cleanup has taken place, and the German translation was resynchronized with the administrative interface. Yesterday was the intended release date however a wait for the German translation to finish synchronizing took place, it is not fully up to date, but by the end of the week the distribution will have it fully updated.

New features to look for in 2.2 include fully customizable anchor structures (yes, that means you can use the rel=”” element for those who want nofollows (I’d advise against using nofollows, but that does not mean we’ll stop you)). Breadcrumb trails will no longer require to contain linked elements (for if you want to have them in your HTML title). Plus a bunch of other things. Begining today the Development build from SVN is considered unstable and possibly broken.

You can grab the latest Breadcrumb NavXT from the Breadcrumb NavXT page.

-John Havlik

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