Hi everybody, it’s been a couple of days since Virtuemart released a brand-new, stable version VM2.6 that works under Joomla 2.5.xx.
Some people say; “I should keep my website and it’s components always up-to-date, updates are good!” while some others say: “as long as the new version doesn’t include critical security bugs fixing, I don’t care about the update, i have a live and running website already, and i am happy about the layout. No need to mess up things”.
Personally, I am agree with the 1st one more, updates are good and it is always good to keep everything up-to-date. But the second thought is not completely nonsense, you know what they say: “If it is not broken, don’t fix it” 🙂 it’s simple as that.
As we know from the official sources, VM2.6 doesnt include any critical security bugs fixing comparing to VM2.0.26d (which was the previous version). But VM2.6 includes a lot of improvements, both UI, functionality and performance. Updating the Virtuemart is up to you, but I would strongly recommend you to do so.
Like all Virtuemart Templates, our templates also work based on Template Overriding – which is a god blessing feature of Joomla allows us to change the website layout without touching the component core files. Therefore, we all had concerns that what if Virtuemart API’s have changed with this new version, that means, the template overriding won’t work anymore properly and an update for the Virtuemart Template itself becomes a necessity. Luckly, Virtuemart developers decided not to touch API’s till Virtuemart3.x, which is a good news. But there was something they did with the new version in terms of frontend layout, they changed the jQuery version numbers if it gets loaded from External Source (Google Api Library). Basically you have 2 options:
- Load the local copy of jQuery
- Load the jQuery from external source (Google Api Library)
The 1st option loads jQuery1.6 while the second option loads jQuery1.8.1. Until VM2.6, virtuemart was loading jQuery1.6 no matter where (local or external source) therefore, we had developed our templates to work with jquery1.6 version. Due to this minor front-end change, if you update your Virtuemart without updating our Template, you will most likely end up with a jQuery conflict issues.
To avoid this problem, we are re-organizing the javascript lines and javascript plugins we use in our templates and releasing a new version template-by template, day-by day. Since it is a good time for releasing updates, because everybody is doing update; we are not just fixing bugs and resolving compatibility issues, but we are also adding many other cool feature that we have been planing to add to our templates. So, by getting updates, you are not just making our templates compatible with VM2.6, you are also making them more powerful and more user-friendly as well.
As of today;
We have updated 3 of our templates, they are working perfectly with VM2.6 and the updates includes lots of UI/UX improvements as well.
CleanMart: v1.3 has been released.
- – CleanMart is now fully compatible with VM2.6
- – Facebox Modal Popup has been replaced by Fancybox v2. It gives much better performance.
- – One of the most desirable requests: It is now possible to put reCaptcha below the Ask a Question form to avoid spamming.
- – Lots of UI improvements (mostly CSS)
More info: https://www.flexiblewebdesign.com/Virtuemart-2-Templates/CleanMart
PureMart: v4.0 has been released.
- – PureMart is now fully compatible with VM2.6.
- – Facebox Modal Popup has been replaced by Fancybox v2. It gives much better performance.
- – One of the most desirable requests: It is now possible to put reCaptcha below the Ask a Question form to avoid spamming.
- – Lots of UI improvements (mostly CSS)
More info: https://www.flexiblewebdesign.com/Virtuemart-2-Templates/PureMart
Asymmetric v1.2 has been released.
- – Asymmetric is now fully compatible with VM2.6
- – QuickStart package comes pre-installed Joomla2.5.19 + Virtuemart2.6
- – Facebox Modal Popup has been replaced by Fancybox v2. It gives much better performance. Beside, it is fully responsive.
- – One of the most desirable requests: It is now possible to put reCaptcha below the Ask a Question form to avoid spamming.
- – Responsive layout issue with the modern slider module has been fixed. In iPhone screen resolution, there 2 products per row are listed
- – Responsive layout issue with search modal box fixed.
- – Responsive layout issue with login modal box fixed.
- – AJAX Updating improved (AJAX when NEXT-PREV clicked or Custom Field-Generic Child is selected)
- – Lots of minor but important UI improvements (mostly CSS)
More info: https://www.flexiblewebdesign.com/Joomla-Virtuemart-Templates/Asymmetric
We are working hard to make all of our templates be compatible with VM2.6 as soon as possible. If everything goes as expected, by the next week, all of our templates will be updated and they will all be compatible with VM2.6.
Cheers.
Flexible Web Design
Yes, these issues are very bad.