Beta Busting

To say that things have changed from Beta 1 through 7 would be an understatement! Thanks to great help in the support forums from those of you who’ve been actively testing the betas we’re approaching Beta 8, a release that will see the addition of skins, a series of mods to the default appearance of WPtouch (the above image shows ‘Lavender’ and ‘Frog’). Skins can be easily selected in the admin, and will add more colorful branding to WPtouch. Skins will be great for those that like the default theme’s layout but are looking for a stronger color branding that resembles their site’s theme. We’ll add other skins too.

Bug Squish

We’ve killed several bugs over the beta releases, and added a slew of features both visible and under the hood. We hope that with each successive release there are fewer issues as a whole, and the beta program will help immensely with that.

WordPress Version Support

Due to father time, we’ll be dropping support for WordPress 2.3, 2.5 and 2.6.1 – 2.6.4. We’d prefer to stick with support for secure versions of WordPress, and given that as of WordPress 2.7 you can stay up to date with the latest WordPress version simply by clicking a button- there’s no excuse not to stay current. We’ll be incorporating all the latest and greatest features, and won’t be held back from including things like nested & paginated comments, features which are harder to implement when you’re supporting versions of WordPress over 18 months old.

What’s Been Done

Here’s a rough list of what’s been accomplished so far:

• Changed default theme styles for images (now load as background images)
• Made sprites for small theme images to load quicker
• Added all-new variations on the default theme as style selections (Frog, Sea, Lavender, Sunkissed)
• Added jQuery color picker in the admin hex areas for easier style selections
• Fix for Categories, Tags & Login links not working in some mobile browsers (Android, etc)
• Combined CSS files and minified javascript files
• Updated Ajax Upload script to 3.2
• Moved adsense.php to include folder
• Updated screenshots for new designs
• Fixed an issue where excerpts could contain too much spacing
• New admin styling, plugin support for WordPress 2.6.5 sites
• Revised header area styling
• Search now floats overtop the headerbar
• Refined drop down button
• Footer switch link now a part of Core
• No longer using the_content_rss() for excerpts, created a custom function which handles it nicely
• Home link in menu drop down now respects the logo/bookmark icon choice
• Fixed the way javascript is called for a elements, should work better in other mobile browsers
• Moved several images into the core images folder, building more dependency on CoreTheme
• Fix for custom page icons not showing up on pages
• Added link to online icon generator in admin
• Fixed device-width mobileSafari bug
• Added style declaration for images in comments
• More theme changes/enhancements, particularly in the header, footer
• Added ‘My Account’ button in the sub-header for logged in users replacing ‘Logout’
• Fixed issue where chosen pages and icons did not appear in the drop down
• Removed 404 image with English text in it, replaced it with localized 404 text
• Updated fancybox to compressed v1.2.1
• Fixed a few areas that had text not yet localized, improperly coded
• Removed depreciated or unused functions from previous releases
• Removed ability to disable jQuery; WPtouch Exclusive mode should fix JS issues
• Added native select for Tags
• Updated compatibility code (Various WordPress install scenarios) ~ thanks to Will Norris for the suggestions
• Modified AJAX calls
• Made it so administration CSS/JS only loads on WPtouch page
• Fixed a variety of scenarios where paths to files and images were broken
• Updated social bookmarking icons
• More preparation for WPtouch 1.9 and 5 languages
• Preparation for WPtouch 2.0 and themes support (based on CoreTheme)
• Fixed switch link issue where regular theme switch link was broken
• Major re-writes of theme files, css for simplicity, CoreTheme
• Updates to default theme style

What’s To Come

We’ve still got a couple more skins to do, and then the plugin will be shipped off for localization. We’re looking into a couple methods for easy localization, so stay tuned if you offered to help and we’ll soon deliver to you the information on how to get started- we want to make sure the English text is settled so that it doesn’t have to be changed often and require revision from translators.

Beta 8 should be available this week, and will include the new skins for testing.

The update is recommended for all users.

Here’s the short list of the updates/changes for 1.8.5:

• Fixed new switch link to work under different WordPress install scenarios
• Fixed switch link CSS style-sheet loading issues in some situations
• Added screenshot of new switch link appearance

Support

If you have an issue with WPtouch (or any of our plugins) please visit our new Support Forums. Search for your issue, and if there’s nothing currently being discussed about the problem, start a thread and we’ll try and address it.

We originally planned to release the update today, but have not as of yet found the solution to the issue. As soon as we do we’ll release the update, which also bundles other refinements, and the addition of enabling login from the header (offers a new dropdown).

Stay tuned.

We hope that everything is shored up now with 1.3.2, so please upgrade and let us know. Most of the issues discussed in e-mails and on the WPtouch homepage seem to have been resolved from our end of testing.

Bug Squishing

The particular fix we’re talking about affected sites veiwed in Safari- WPtouch was being shown in it as well, instead of just the website’s theme. No other browsers were affected.

Switch Code

Please also bear in mind if you’re upgrading from 1.2.1 or earlier that you’ll have to manually remove the switch code from your website’s theme. We no longer require your manual editing of the theme, and instead inject the code into your footer automatically.

Upgrade Reminder

For those of you with custom icons, please bear with us until WPtouch 2.0 is released. When it is, you’ll no longer have to keep replacing the images you place into icon-pool- there will be a separate directory created which won’t be overwritten that you can put both custom icons and themes into.

For now, backup those icons when you update WPtouch, and replace them afterwards.

It’s All You

Thanks again to everyone who writes in and provides us with excellent feedback and help sorting through various issues. It’s because of you that WPtouch is the success that it is.