Tassos Marinos Developer of Joomla Extensions

2024 January Product Updates

Published in Blog by Tassos Marinos on Wednesday, 07 February 2024

2024 January Product Updates

Welcome to this year's first product updates article, unveiling various revolutionary features and enhancements across our product suite. Our latest additions include the Conditional Content Shortcode, empowering users to tailor content within Convert Forms Emails, Success Messages, or EngageBox popups dynamically. This groundbreaking feature allows for personalized text display based on user input, geolocation, or device type. Smart Tags also boast new modifiers like prepareContent for parsed shortcode functionality and shortNumber for streamlined numeric representation.

Furthermore, our extensions seamlessly integrate with the latest Joomla 5, ensuring compatibility across Joomla 3, 4, and 5 environments. Convert Forms now offers enhanced conditional logic for personalized forms, while Advanced Custom Fields present significant enhancements to the Gallery Field, featuring Tags Filtering, modern UI, and editable gallery items. Stay tuned for more updates as we innovate and enhance user experience across our product range.

Conditional Content Shortcode

Are you looking to customize content presentation within Tassos' extensions? Want to tailor text display in Convert Forms Emails or Success Messages based on user input? Or maybe personalize popup content in EngageBox, leveraging visitor geolocation or device type? Look no further!

We're thrilled to introduce a groundbreaking feature - The Conditional Content Shortcode! This powerful shortcode empowers you to craft personalized and dynamic content with a simple code snippet, offering your audience a new level of customization and engagement.

{if conditionA = value AND conditionB = value}
	// Content here
{else}
	// Alternative content here
{/if}

Key Features

  • Chain multiple conditions with AND and OR operators.
  • Display alternative content using the ELSE keyword.
  • Choose from various comparison operators (Equals, Starts With, Contains Any, Less Than).
  • Perform Numerical, Date, Text, and List comparisons.
  • Huge collection of conditions: Date, Device, Geolocation, User Group, URL, Referrer, and more.
  • Leverage built-in functions for dynamic value modification: today(), date(), dateDiff(), count(), and more.

The Conditional Content Shortcode is supported in EngageBox and Convert Forms extensions.

Smart Tags New Modifiers

We're thrilled to announce the expansion of Smart Tags functionality by introducing two new modifiers, enriching your experience with Tassos extension suite. Smart Tags, the versatile pieces of code that provide valuable information about various aspects of your Joomla environment, now offer even greater flexibility with these new enhancements.

prepareContent Modifier

The prepareContent modifier addresses a common challenge faced when using Smart Tags that return values containing other shortcodes. In such cases, these shortcodes may remain unparsed, affecting the intended functionality.

Imagine you're using the {article} Smart Tag to retrieve the text of a specific article. Within that article, you've included a Joomla module using the built-in shortcode {loadmodule}. To ensure all shortcodes within the returned article content are properly parsed and rendered, pass the prepareContent modifier in your Smart Tag syntax:

{article.fulltext --id=XX --prepareContent=true}

shortNumber Modifier

Another exciting addition to our Smart Tags repertoire is the shortNumber modifier. This feature simplifies numeric representation by converting long numbers into a shorter, more concise format. For example, 1000 becomes 1k, and 10000 transforms into 10K.

Consider a scenario where you showcase subscriber counts in your AcyMailing-based newsletter subscription form using the {acymailing.subscriberscount} Smart Tag. To present these numbers in a concise and user-friendly manner, pass the shortNumber modifier in your Smart Tag syntax:

{acymailing.subscriberscount --list=XX --shortNumber=true}

With these powerful modifiers, Smart Tags become even more versatile, allowing you to effortlessly customize content and enhance user experience across your Joomla environment.

EngageBox

Experience enhanced engagement with EngageBox's latest updates. The IF shortcode enables easy conditional logic implementation, while streamlined Custom JavaScript enhances flexibility.

EngageBox Joomla5 Native Compatibility

Joomla 5 Native Compatibility

With the release of Joomla 5, we have ensured seamless integration with our product suite. EngageBox 6.3.0 is now natively compatible with Joomla 5, eliminating the need for the Backwards Compatibility plugin. This enhancement ensures smoother functionality across Joomla 3, Joomla 4, and Joomla 5 environments.

Enhanced Conditional Logic with IF Shortcode

As we already wrote, EngageBox now provides an IF shortcode that allows you to perform conditional logic within the popup’s content based on certain conditions. The shortcode is versatile and can be employed almost anywhere you can write text within the EngageBox popup builder. It seamlessly integrates into key areas, including:

  • Content
  • Floating Button Message
  • Custom CSS
  • Custom Code

To learn more details, visit Using the Conditional Content Shortcode in EngageBox

Custom JavaScript Enhancements

We have revamped the Custom Code option in the Advanced tab in response to user feedback. Renamed to Custom JavaScript, this feature exclusively supports JavaScript, streamlining the code input process. Notably, enclosing your code with script tags is no longer required. Please note that only JavaScript code is now accepted in this option. If you were utilizing HTML, CSS, or other code types, please remove them from this field.

Fixes and Improvements

This update also addresses two critical issues. Firstly, we've resolved a problem with the Homepage Condition, ensuring accurate detection of whether the current browsing page is the homepage. Additionally, we've fixed an issue with the Menu Condition, especially when the "Also on Child Items" option is enabled, preventing any potential failures.

Convert Forms

Unlock advanced customization with Convert Forms' updates. The IF shortcode facilitates personalized form creation and transitioning to Custom JavaScript, streamlining integration for flexible form design.

{if field.name = John AND field.myDate > 10/07/2024} 
	// Your content here
{else}
	// Alternative content here
{/if}

Enhanced Conditional Logic with IF Shortcode

Convert Forms now offers an IF shortcode, empowering you to perform conditional logic based on user input across multiple sections, including Success Message, Emails, HTML Fields, and even PDF Form Submissions. With the IF shortcode, you can create personalized forms based on specific conditions, such as:

  • Showing content if a field equals a certain value
  • Displaying content if a field contains a certain text
  • Revealing content if a number field is less than another number
  • Showing content if a certain dropdown or radio button option was selected
  • Displaying content if a field is empty
  • Showing content if a date field corresponds to the current day
  • Displaying content based on how many files the user uploaded
  • Showing content based on the submission date
  • Displaying content based on the submission count

Visit, Using the Conditional Content Shortcode in Convert Forms, to learn more details.

Custom JavaScript Enhancements

Like EngageBox, Convert Forms has renamed the Custom Code option to Custom JavaScript. This enhancement streamlines the code input process by exclusively accepting JavaScript code. Now, you can effortlessly integrate JavaScript functionality into your forms without wrapping your code with script tags.

Important Fixes

In addition to the enhancements, Convert Forms addresses several critical issues to ensure optimal performance:

  • Fixing Intro/Full Article Image issues on subfolder sites created via the Content App.
  • Rectifying AcyMailing's behavior to consider language when a subscriber is created.
  • Ensuring Convert Forms shortcodes are parsed correctly in the EngageBox Free version.
  • Correcting the placeholder (hint) setting for fields when editing a submission.
  • Resolving the issue where non-required Date fields do not allow direct input.
  • Improving the accuracy of the Detect Visitor Country option, which may fail to detect the country in certain circumstances.
  • Fixing the Webhook data format sent incorrectly in FORM request format.

Advanced Custom Fields

This month, Advanced Custom Fields introduces significant enhancements to the Gallery Field, offering a more intuitive and feature-rich experience for managing and showcasing your gallery items.

Introducing Tags Filtering

A groundbreaking feature that revolutionizes how you organize and showcase your gallery items.

gallery preview

With Tags Filtering, you can:

  • Tag each gallery item with multiple tags for ultimate flexibility.
  • Choose to display filtering tags above or below the gallery for optimal visibility.
  • Present an "All" Tags option for comprehensive viewing.
  • Sort tags in custom order or alphabetically to suit your preferences.
  • Opt to disable tags on mobile for a seamless mobile experience.
  • Customize tag style colors to match your website's aesthetic, ensuring a cohesive and visually appealing presentation.

User-Friendly Modern UI

Experience a sleek and modern Gallery Uploader UI that enhances usability and elevates the overall aesthetic of your gallery management process. The redesigned interface ensures a seamless and professional user experience, allowing you to upload and manage your gallery items effortlessly.

gallery new ui

Editable Gallery Items

Dive deeper into each Gallery Item easily through our modal editor, enabling you to edit and customize individual items precisely. Elevate the visual impact of your gallery with ALT descriptions and Lightbox descriptions for each item. Adding descriptive text and context to your gallery items enhances accessibility and engagement, making your gallery more informative and compelling.

gallery item edit

We've got something BIG in the works

While our plans for the Joomla automation plugin announced earlier have been postponed due to unforeseen technical challenges, we would like to reveal another new project: A versatile content creation toolkit for Joomla users that will reduce the reliance on multiple extensions.

Tassos new Joomla Extension is coming

Over the years, we've developed various custom fields for the Advanced Custom Fields extension. These custom fields include functionalities for creating videos, galleries, maps, countdown times, FAQs, PayPal buttons, progress bars, iFrames, and much more. While these add-ons were initially designed to work with custom fields, we realized the potential of expanding their utility beyond just that. Imagine being able to render these add-ons anywhere on your site, not only using custom fields but also with Joomla modules and shortcodes. This sparked the idea for our upcoming Joomla product.

What Can You Expect?

Our new Joomla Extension will feature a comprehensive collection of various visual and functional elements, empowering you to enhance your content creation process. From dynamic widgets to versatile modules, this extension will offer a wide range of tools to elevate your Joomla website. In addition to the collection of widgets and modules, our extension will support even more features, including Smart Tags, Headers & Footers, and Snippets, further expanding its functionality and versatility.

The extension will be available in both Free and Pro versions, catering to users with different needs and preferences. Whether you're a casual user looking for basic functionality or a power user seeking advanced features, we have you covered.

The development of our new Joomla product is nearing completion, and we're gearing up for a BETA release very soon. Are you eager to get your hands on it? Sign up below to receive a personal notification via email as soon as it's ready!

Note for Bundle Users

For our valued Bundle users, we have some exciting news! You'll get instant access to the Pro version of our new product at no extra charge. If you're not already a Bundle user, now is the perfect time to upgrade and enjoy all the benefits!

Stay tuned for more updates and announcements as we embark on this exciting journey to redefine content creation in the Joomla ecosystem. We can't wait to share this innovative new product with you!

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