Who's looking forward to vB4?

And I agree this doesn't sound so bad - unless you own multiple licenses. Then, suddenly, the expenses start mounting again.

This seems to be one of the more inane decisions they are considering. The allegedly leaked information suggested that support dropped off dramatically after the first 30 days. So if it drops off, how is it suddenly this big issue they need to charge an additional (and exorbitant) fee for it?

Perhaps we should pool some funds and purchase support for a couple dozen admins and have them each submit a couple dozen support tickets per day? Every day.

The aspect that we all need to keep in mind that the initial and most important reason to start a business is profit. Once you are in business, if you are smart, you will start looking for new ways to increase that profit. I am sure IB is not looking to give up any profit points. Indeed, they are doubtless looking to become more profitable. (And it is nothing we wouldn't or aren't doing, so no blame assigned here) Any hope, dream or idea we might get more for less is ludicrous.

 

I'm looking forward to it in general, but I am NOT looking forward to converting my templates to the new template system.

 

New system isn't that bad really. Instead of:

Code:

$header
$navbar

with:

Code:

{vb:raw $header}
{vb:raw $navbar}

Yep its a tease... chew it over.

 

It will still require going in and changing things line-by-line if we intend to keep our custom styles or even custom implementations.

 

I just hope that vB4 does a significantly better job of separating code from data than vB3 does.

I am completely sick of the constant template changes required after vBulletin upgrades.

 

This shouldn't be anywhere near as much of a hassle with 4.0 as it is now. 4.0's system will have what I consider to be an amazing template merge system.

vB 4.0: Template Merging and 3-Way Comparison - vBulletin Community Forum

 

I hope it's as good as it sounds.

I also wish I could wait to see the new CMS component, but my new Joomla site with Agora Forum is almost ready to launch!

 

I hadn't heard about this template converter before; I'm glad there will at least be something to help get the job done, even if it isn't 100 percent.

 

The Diff/Merge system will not make the changes to your 3.X templates to upgrade them to 4.0. Any attempted changes will most likely fail. It will compare your templates when you upgrade to 4.1 and higher.

Here is the big difference between 3.X templates and 4.0 templates:

When the style for 3.0 was developed, we had to support a wide variety of browsers including Netscape 4 and Internet Explorer 5.5. As any developer knows this is very difficult because they support proprietary extensions and very little CSS. As such it was decided to limit CSS to font and color styling and proceed with a table based layout.

This not only required very bulky code but made it difficult to change the layout. With the advent of the current crop of modern browsers like Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera and Internet Explorer 8.0, we don't need to make as many concessions. All of these browsers support CSS 2.1 fairly completely and they are starting to integrate CSS 3 support. This means that fewer workarounds and "hacks" are needed to display the page using CSS. One would still need workarounds to support IE 6 and to a lessor extent IE7 but they aren't as complicated as it was in building a cross-browser standards compliant site back in 2003.

The benefit to this is that the HTML code can be a lot lighter and use better structuring along with semantic tools. We started introducing more semantic code with 3.6.0 and the Blog Addon. We expanded that with the social networking features in 3.7.0 and further refined it in 3.8.0. However the basic table layout defined in templates stayed. Older structures were not rewritten.

With 4.0, all templates are being written to be more semantic. The use of tables will be drastically reduced (I think they are still used for the Member's List and a few other things). All of the layout, color, styling and font changes are being offloaded to CSS. This means you can actually drastically change what shows on the page and where it shows simply by editing the CSS of the style. This means that for most styles, you probably won't even touch the templates or make very few changes to them.

That is where the ultimate benefit will come in. Have a style in 15 colors? Change the CSS. Use a gradient? Than use a 24-bit Alpha Transparent PNG and just change the background color. Want to hide some information than hide the class using display:none; in the CSS. Change the color of the buttons in a style? Update their CSS. Want square buttons instead of rounded ones? Change the CSS. Etc...

 

I don't really give it a second thought. It's released when it's ready and when it's released it will be atleast a year or 2 if ever before I purchase it and install it.

 

You don't even want to play with it, Shelley? :unhunh:

 

Not in the slightest. I'm at my forum for about 30 seconds to a minute each day (if that) vb4 will only be extra work which I'm not prepared to take on. For the resources I provide it won't make a difference at all me using the 3.8 series.

Maybe a few extra graphics will be included though I'm sure I'll get any additional info I need passed onto me.

I suppose I'm not as excited about it than most people. photoshop is my software and vbulletin (in all it's formats is merley a housing application) for me. 3.8 is fine and good enough for me and more than capable for what I'm wanting it for.

 

I really like what vB 4 looks like. I am hoping that they will have better features though

 

I found this to be a very interesting look on vB from a designer's perspective, Shelley. Thanks.

 

I know i am but i have a sneak peak alpha version atm from a friend who works there. Tis quite amazing.

 

That's interesting because none of the staff have download access to the software yet. Even then, vBulletin 4 doesn't even look like vBulletin 4 yet. The new style and templates haven't been added yet.

Also allowing others to view it this time would violate their terms of employment.

 

That's what I thought. Kier said that it hadn't all been put together yet, so how can anyone have a "sneek peek" at an alpha version that doesn't even exist yet.

 

I was wondering the same thing and was awaiting Wayne's input on this matter. Thanks for clarifying, Wayne.

 

Not interested. The concept seems good in some areas, but having to edit my style-wait, no, having to pay MSJac (who made it) because I don't understand all of it doesn't appeal to me particularly much. Add to that ticket support dropping (admittedly, it sucks hard sometimes, like the time my DB decided to go screw itself and Steve was about as much help as a random member from my board, but I used it multiple times post-install because of bugs, errors, and problems I couldn't figure out)... If they pull vBulletin.org support or do crap like that, I am switching to MyBB.

 

@wayne appears he just changed the version number on me :'( will have to play with him then