Gantry v3.0

Gantry v3.0 is the latest release of the Gantry Framework and Somaxiom is the first theme to be based on it, all others updated in due course however. There are several major features in this release, ranging from iPhone support, to Google web fonts, to version checking and much more. Several bug fixes also accompany this release, as listed in the changelog below:

Two key features, iPhone Support and Google Web Fonts, will be discussed in detail below, further details of the changes in Gantry 3.0 will be listed on Gantry Documentation site in due course.

iPhone Support

The iPhone is one, if not the, most popular smartphone on the market to date, and sports a powerful rendering engine based on Webkit. This version of Gantry expands its browser portfolio to that of iPhone's Safari, producing a specific, mobile version of the Somaxiom template for all iPhone visitors, similar to when you visit Amazon or eBay. You can see a preview of how the template will look in the below screenshots:

Key Features

• iPhone Platform Theme: A separate sub layout has been created for the iPhone so the structure is more suited for the mobile platform. It has set positions: mobile-drawer, mobile-top, mobile-header, mobile-navigation, mobile-showcase, mobile-footer and mobile-copyright, which appear in a stacked fashion to avoid unnecessary horizontal scrolling; as well as specific style controls in the administrator. The theme calls for elements from the template itself, such as font CSS and styling for the content area.
• Position Aliases: You can keep the regular and mobile positions in sync by using aliases which links a mobile position with a regular one such as mobile-header → header-a, which would load the header-a position when viewed in the iPhone browser. Or, you can choose to keep all or some of the mobile positions separate such as mobile-header → mobile-header.
• Image Resizer: Several options are available for this, you can configure which image width will trigger the image resize such as 80px, and configure how much it will resize in terms of percentage, such as 33%. All images bigger than the viewport of the iPhone will be automatically resized down. This avoids unnecessary horizontal scrolling and greater compatibility with the mobile interface.

Google Web Fonts

Google have launched their new font directory service, which offers a Font API for web developers to load custom fonts straight from the Google servers. This is an extension of the current custom fonts element of Gantry and its associate templates. When you activate the setting in Admin → Extensions → Template Manager → rt_somaxiom_j15 → Settings → Google Web Fonts → Yes, the current inventory from Google will then become available in the ~ → Settings → Font Family dropdown for you to choose. If you are not going to use a custom font, please ensure it is disabled for performance reasons.

Smart Loading

Smart Loading selectively loads images based on whether they are in view or not. For example, if your screen / window height is 800px, all content images that are not display within that initial window will only load when you scroll to them. This saves loading time and general performance on your site, by simply loading images that are in view.

Changelog

• Added Aliases element
• Added Gradient & Gradient Preview element
• Added Google Web Font support
• Added Version Check element
• Added iPhone support
• Added per platform template page support
• Added support for dynamic css and js files with query string
• Added support for mootools 1.1.2 in older joomla versions (<= 1.5.14)
• Added Smart Loading
• Fix for php4 with gangtryurl.class and gantry.class
• Fix for Multiple copies of template showing up in uninstaller
• Fix for getParams not pulling cookie/session/menuitem/url modified params
• Fix for multiple includes of FlatFile
• Fix for caching dynamic params
• Fix for disabled fields do not reset to defaults
• Fix for default font stacks
• Fix for delete icon of presets for early templates
• Fix for splitmenu layout

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