Hi folks,

With the release of Focus2 I feel like a lot of the early issues with the new framework have been sorted out and so I'd like to get a sense from you how you think we are doing?

What do you liek about the new framework?
What dont you like?
What do you miss from T3?
Do you prefer T3?
What would you like to see added?
Do you like the interface?

We have a private road map and will publish this after we get some feedback from you.

My aim is to not add too much extra functionality but to maintain a relatively lightweight and fast code base.

One thing on the list for 1.2 is to make the social network stuff more fleshed out
and flexible.

You will be able to add new icons, new functionality etc in v1.2.

Thanks!

Hi Anthony,

Thanks for asking for our feedback!

I like pretty much everything about ZGF4. The main thing I miss from T3 is ThemeMagic, but I see that as more of a nice convenience instead of a must have addition. Here are some initial points of feedback (I might think of more to add later):

Additions to ZGF4 UI I would like to see:

• Set a row as full width, with a specified background color
• Add a background image
• More navbar-related CSS settings: padding, spacing, dividers, etc.
• Display logo and/or search in navbar, with a setting to stack either on navcollapse
• Settings for blocks: defining different colors/borders

Additions to documentation I would like to see:

• Explain a bit about the purpose for some of the main CSS classes (zen-container, spotlight, wrap, etc) to help us know what/when/where we should change or leave alone depending on the type of customizations we want to make.
• Tutorial for how developers can add their own new fields either into existing sections or new ones within the ZGF4 UI, without getting those changes overridden by core updates

Thanks - I'll pass these on to Anthony

He is away at the moment but will forward this on

Cheers and thanks again
Paul

Hi Paul,
Thanks so much for your feedback - it means alot. And also glad you liek what we are doing

Yes we have had a few requests for that. Will look at adding it in the future. Although it may not suit all designs.

Yep thats a good idea.


The navbar layout control is a bit limited at the moment. Will try and figure out a way to make it more flexible.

I had wondered about that as I Know that some templates do this as well.

At the moment it gets done via module classes, which adds more complexity because its another place the style is applied. The reasons why I haven't implemented them are:

1. Makes the layout tool more complicated. We could extract it and add to the effects or theme setting perhaps.

2. It makes the style locked to the template rather than the module content. So if the module content changes you may have an icon, color etc applied that does not reflect the new module content. Keen to hear your ideas here.

Re the extra documentation ... will do

Thanks again.

Anthony

Thanks Anthony for responding, and for considering the ideas I shared. Here is a little more about what I was thinking in regards to the idea of creating some settings for blocks within the ZGF4 UI:

• Either add a new link/tab for "Blocks" or add the block settings to one of the existing links/tabs.
• Have groups of settings that are organized under the names of the CSS classes that would map to different blocks (such as blockcustom1, blockcustom2, blockcustom3, etc.)
• Within each of those groups, have the standard color pickers and text boxes that let users define all the settings for different blocks
• Once those settings are saved/compiled to LESS, then all the user has to do is use the CSS class either as a module class suffix or in a div as part of a Zen Shortcode layout.

Regarding your point #2 below - I am hoping it might overcome your concern since users would retain control to use those template-defined CSS classes only for the blocks/modules where they want them.

Thanks again to you and your team for giving us quality solutions and great support!

Thanks Paul - I think the new tab for block styling might work well.

I think the new tab might operate something like an advanced style tab. I'll have a play with adding some new stuff after I get the next theme out the door.
Thanks again!

Here my first feedback

First: To me the style options in the template backend are confusing as they always seem to override each other and you never know which steps to take where.

Example Fokus 2: I changed the color and disabled the pixel overly feature. But it seems that it turns on again when I change the positions in the template while it is still the same template and color set. So why should I save the settings under “theme” again.

My suggestion is to order the options according to a workflow like
1) choose positions,
2) choose layout
3) apply it
4) save it.
which comes up all the time or not having the dependency.
It would avoid a lot of confusion as every time you work on the site and do some minor changes it feels like one has to go through the whole template setup process again.

Second: Then thumbs up for the grid block styling! It is the first customization I normally have to do with custom.css. The feature would be even better if I could choose between
apply it to full width/screen to the grid row or
apply it only to the container width of the grid row as a lot of customers still find it more compact in look to have a background and a container color.

Have a good day

Thanks for chipping in here ...

1. There is a bug in the current release (will be updated later today where some of the checkboxes reset.)

Is that because the settings reset?


Is that the reset issue from above?


2. Yes I wanted to add some sort of gui for this. So the user could click on the wrapper, the container or even the module and apply a style.

Just need to look at how to add that in a concise kind of way.

Thanks!

hi there,

I think I have been writing about it before in another thread. One feature for ZGF4 I would like to have is advanced one-page settings. By that I mean a flexible integration between regular layouts and one page layouts.

I post you one example here: www.welt.de/lesestueck/2015/nazis-im-nahen-osten/

It is a perfect example of what I have in mind. In the top navigation, you see a link back to the regular news content while this special report is told in a one-page layout.

I can think of it for artists websites, galleries as well as news layouts and for landing pages you want to have deeper down your site with an option to have people with more interest navigate to other content.

What do you - dear forum members - think?

I don't recall seeing that other thread, but I think MaMuster's advanced one page layout idea is interesting. I wonder if that could be achieved by using an existing one page layout combined with a separate menu + menu module to control navigation within that one page layout?

Here is another idea/request for the ZGF4 roadmap: add support for having second level navigation links be displayed in a dropline style.

Hi guys -

@onepage I might be missing something here but is it just the logo that links back to the main page?

@dropline Yep thats a good idea

I miss the ability to control the width of the various columns for the mega menus which I could get with T3. But, other than that I am loving your framework.

Thanks Sean I'll pass that along to Anthony on Monday

Cheers
Paul

Anthony Olsen wrote:
Update to my 1 & your questions: It seems until now that it was the bug that has been solved with the latest release. All has been related to the reset issue.
Anthony Olsen wrote:
perfect. Looking forward to this one.

Anthony Olsen wrote:
You are right. I was a bit too enthusiastic once I saw the page. Sorry.

Still, it comes close to an example of an integration between regular content and a one pager. In addition, I think one has always to bear in mind that they have such a strong brand that people go back to the regular content anyway. And I like that the last two menu items are again with another function.

I know that I could publish a menu item in a module position on a one-page setup, but it loses the intriguing visual style of the one page menu. Thus, I am thinking a mixing of one page navigation and regular menu or a two level solution in the same style.

Sure, it is no problem to hard code a link into a template for a single one page set-up.

But I think a cleaner solution is via the framework which gains by offering a kind of unlimited combinations of content presentation as clients can do the setup afterwards themselves, too. With unlimited content presentations, I mean navigation + content presentation structured by a one-page menu.

Combine the power of the upcoming zentool features for galleries to such a feature … and here we are at what I think could be a cool way of structuring content for many sites.

Thanks for the update

I'll ask Anthony to check out your latest when he is online

Cheers
Paul

MaMuster wrote:
Can someone please point me to where can I learn more about "the upcoming zentool features for galleries"?

I looked through blog posts and forum threads, but didn't find anything about that. Thanks in advance and I apologize for going off-topic.

I'll check and get back to you later today - not sure we finalised it yet

Cheers
Paul

Thanks Paul, and understood. My question/request on that point is not urgent - I am just interested to learn more about this if has been published somewhere.