News September 14th 2021
xbAutosave now Joomla 4 and 3.9/10 compatible 
News September 10th 2021
NEW COMPONENT xbMaps
xbMaps - OSM maps, markers & tracks
xbMaps is a Joomla component for displaying maps using OpenStreetMaps (OSM) tiles. Version 0.2.0 is a development release for comment and not recommended for use on a live site (although I will)
I have long wanted a non-googleMaps component to display gpx track in Joomla so that I could move my cycling blog from Wordpress to Joomla. Phoca Maps is the best available, but it wasn't able to display gpx tracks on OSM maps. I started by modifying Phoca Maps to display tracks with OSM, and rapidly found myself wanting to rewrite more of it. Jan at Phoca will be working on an update to Phoca Maps that may include more of the features from xbMaps and will be J4 compatible.
The primary intended user is someone needing to display OSM maps on a Joomla 3 site (I will not be developing for J4 for at least 5 years so don't even ask).
It is intended to develop a plugin to allow maps (with tracks and markers) specified in xbMaps to be embedded in a conventional Joomla article. The component provides map (and track) views for the front end with associated descriptive text. Joomla categories and tags may be used.
13th Sept 2021
xbCulture
The xbCulture is a family of closely related Joomla Component Extensions which are designed to keep a record or catalogue of artistic/creative/cultural works,
The primary intended users are individuals, like myself, who wish to keep a record of books, films, plays, gigs, exhibitions and similar events that they have experienced.
There are initially three core components and a common supporting component in the family, although there are ideas for extending it into further areas;
- xbBooks - as the name implies is for a catalogue of books of all sorts.
- xbFilms - not surprisingly is for movies, although it can also handle series, tv shows and box-sets
- xbGigs - is for live music performance, and spoken word and comedy - IN DEVELOPMENT
- xbPeople - a support component bundled in the packages for the above, provides tools for managing a common database of people and characters as well common styles, language and code across the components.
A set Modules to display short information about the datasets is in development. These include:
- Recently added : mod_xbculture_recent
- Filtered lists : mod_xbculture_list
- Random images : mod_xbculture_randimg
Coming dreckly
- Search titles/names across xbCulture items
- Top/bottom rated
- Popular People
- Common Characters
xbFilms - film catalogue
9th May 2021
xbFilms is an xbCulture family component for cataloguing films you have seen and reviews of them. Version 0.9.5 is the current release for inclusion on JED.
It has been developed in parallel with xbBooks to replace an old paper diary and spreadsheet of films seen by myself.
xbFilms is installed as a package containing two components - com_xbfilms and a supporting component, com_xbpeople, for administration of people and characters which are common to all xbCulture components.
The primary intended user is someone wanting to keep a record of films they have seen with a reminder of the plot and what their reaction was.
xbBooks - book catalogue
xbBooks is an xbCulture family component for cataloguing books you have read and reviews of them. Version 0.9.5 is the current release.
It started out as I needed something to replace a local flat-file database I had been using to save details of books I read and short reviews/comments. Previous to that I had been using a simple spreadsheet and originally an paper file.
xbBooks is installed as a package containing two components - com_xbboos and a supporting component, com_xbpeople, for administration of people and characters which are common to all xbCulture components.
The primary intended user is someone wanting to keep a record of books they have read with a reminder of the plot and what their reaction was.
10th May 2021
Edit Hide/Highlight Package
23rd July 2019
xbEdHideLight is a spin-off from xbFootnoteTag which provides the facility to highlight or hide text in the editor (TinyMCE or JCE) WYSIWYG view whilst having no effect on the front end article display.
I find Highlighting is useful for marking sections of text that need revision or updating later, and I use Hiding to conceal long shortcodes that clutter up the edit view once they are working.
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