simple-review.com

Beta 2 has quickly released to fix a bug in Beta 1.

Changes:

• Fixed configuration layout in Internet Explorer.
• Fixed error after saving configuration.
• If a review has a type or Link or Rating it will be rendered as a link or star rating (if star ratings are on) when using {sr_title1},..,{sr_titleN}.

Known Issues:

• The review titles are not rendered on the category page.
• When Single Category Bypass is on ‘Top N’ do not get displayed.

Simple Review 2.1 Beta 1 has been released. It fixes the majority of the issues in the alpha releases and add new features.

• Review blurb can be greater than 400 characters.
• Can no longer submit a review with the rating greater than the max allowed rating.
• Pass by reference PHP error in Addon_Base.php.
• Can no longer add a category with the parent category set to itself.
• Titles now have a types Link, Rating and Text.
• Titles can now be marked as mandatory.
• jQuery is now a requirement (currently included via google).
• Categories have a new field ‘Page Name’ which can be used in the Url, it can contain non-ascii characters but this is not recommend as they will be Url encoded.
• Fixed bug where you could not create categories if legacy mode was enabled.
• Joomla 1.0.X is no longer supported.
• Internet Explorer 6 is no longer supported.

Known Issues:

• The configuration page layout is ‘messed’ up in Internet Explorer, please use Firefox or Chrome if it bothers you.
• When Single Category Bypass is on ‘Top N’ do not get displayed.

Work on 2.1 is going well and hope to have a beta out early September and then a final out October.

I recently added a new tag call Page Name which should be used as the URL to the review (or category) instead of the review titles. I was previously restricting it to numbers, the English alphabet and hyphens, I have removed this limitation and you can now use items from the UTF character set. For example a link to your URL could now look like this:

sardless.com/reviews/18-Characters-From-Your-Language.html (sorry I cannot seem to get foreign e.g. Japanese characters to work in this post so use your imagination)

However the caveat is that since the URL gets encoded Internet Explorer (even version 8.0) will still show the encoded text in the status and URL bar, Firefox and Chrome however will (correctly) decode the URL and display it in its native language. For the previous reason and others such as people who can’t type in your language cannot manually enter the URL I would recommend sticking to the English alphabet.

At the moment I am thinking about dropping support for Joomla 1.0.X and Internet Explorer 6 … we shall see.

Simple Review 2.1 Alpha 2 has been released. You can download it from here, make sure you download com_simple_review_2.1.0_alpha2_joomla1.5.zip.

Changes:

• Languages have been cleaned up and moved into:
  www\administrator\components\com_simple_review\
  addons\modules\Language_Module\languages\
  Note that at the moment the language cannot be changed from en-GB, you are free to modify en-GB to test.
• The category layout has been moved into a separate file:
  www\administrator\components\com_simple_review\
  addons\modules\Category_Module\templates\Default
  Note that at the moment the template cannot be changed from Default, you are free to modify Default to test.
• Works on PHP 4
• Created By and Last Modified By are now being saved (broken in Alpha 1)
• {sr_categoryID} tag now works
• Can now submit a comment with rating 0
• Non-ASCII titles in URLs are now handled correctly i.e. non-ASCII character removed, temporary solution a new field will be added for the Url.
• The administration review listing now has a category filter.
• Provide alternating star image in review listing.

You can see a list of known issues here, please also post any new issues you may find.

The second alpha for Simple Review 2.1 will be released shortly. The current version does not work on PHP 4 due to get_class() returning a value in lowercase, as opposed to PHP 5 returning the correctly cased value. The category HTML has been completely separated into a separate and simple file (view), so now almost anyone should be able to easily change the layout of the category pages. The languages have also started to be migrated into a new format in a central place. I am not using the Joomla 1.5 ini format as it makes it more difficult to maintain compatibility with Joomla 1.0, however the new format for Simple Review will be just as easy for translators.

Version 2.0.1 of the component has been released. It works natively on Joomla 1.5. It is an alpha release so there will be issues – do not install it on a live site.
Please download it and report any bugs in the specific forum. There are some known issues which I will report in the forum. I have also re-opened registration on the forum.

The license has also changed from the MPL to the GNU GPL.

Existing modules and mambots do not currently work.

Special thanks to the the following sites which made the upgrade possible:
www.kanich.net
theartofjoomla.com

Simple Review now installs and functions on Joomla 1.5! I will be releasing an Alpha version this week for testing purposes.

Been a bit busy with my “real” work. All the back end is currently done bar configuration. So things are still getting closer and closer.

Progress is going well. I considered trying to finish a beta version this long Easter weekend. I have gotten close to a releasable version but it was time for me to take a break and have decided to spend the remainder of my holiday doing something more important/fun

I am still working on the administration screens, so far you can create Awards, Categories and Templates. Reviews are also nearing completion, so the end it definitely insight.

Currently working on the administration screens. There is a decent about of work removing references to the old Joomla 1.0 HTML helpers, luckily most of this was already wrapper up so it is not as painful as it could of been.