Cobalt 8 - first impression

Hi Sackgesicht,

Could you share your experience in setting up C8?,

I've setup J30 & C8, E8, etc. but I cannot find cobat component, only Emerald.

This is normal or the setup has not completed?

I just started a clean new J3.02 installation.

Then installed the packages (forgot the exact order). It was working immediately.

Actually to get some data, i exported all Cobalt7 tables from my existing Cobalt7 solution and imported them into the Cobalt8 installation.

Then i used the SQL update script from administrator/components/com_cobalt/sql/updates/8.0-2012-06-17.sql ...

i will describe it later more in detail. Will also try to install it later by the traditional update method and report it here.

Another awesome "hidden" feature in Cobalt 8 is the bootstrap popover and even more the "clickover" implementation.

I used to use Nonumbers "Tooltips" before, but always had an issue with its behaviour. I could only use the Tooltip content as a link if i do the tooltip "sticky" and activated by "hover". Since my layout takes heavy use of it, it always opens the tooltip of different functions while navigating to the tooltip i wanted to open. This was a little disturbing from time to time.

Now with the "clickover" support in Cobalt8, i can exactly get what i always wanted.

To implement this, just follow this:

Use following code to include it on your page:

JHtml::_('loader.clickover', 'clickoverrel', array('width' => 120) ) ;

where in the optional array, you can add the options you want. See upper clickover link for options.

then create your "clickover" link like this:

<div href="#" id="example" rel="clickoverrel" data-content="<?php echo $tip; ?>" data-original-title="<?php echo $this->record->title?>">

where $tip is your HTML content of the pop/clickover and $this->record->title is your title.

See the result here:

@Nenda B S

Yes it installed as expected ... maybe you have a similar problem as some users had with the installation of Cobalt 7.

Sack that seems great, does that mean that we can include everything inside that "tooltip" ? Like a module for example?

Yes, but there might be a problem with " and ' ...

If you use this syntax:

<div href="#" id="example" rel="clickoverrel" data-content="<?php echo $tip; ?>" 

a double-quote " inside your HTML will brake it. --> $tip

I tried to load the login module into the "pop/clickover".

In this example i replaced the double quotes with single quotes and used NoNumbers "Modules Anywhere".

<div href="#" id="example" rel="clickoverrel" data-content='{module Login Form}' data-original-title="<?php echo $this->record->title." ".$this->label?>"> 

See result:

wow nice. That means it can include php code for something like:

if user is logged in -> download file or whatever action

if not logged in -> show the login module

I will be using Cobalt with Emerald, but since Emerald is not J3.0 compatible i can't use C8 as well.. a shame! Will have to wait until Emerald gets J3.0 but it's nice to know that.

Another cool new feature is the way Cobalt 8 handles templates. Parameters will be stored with the section/type and not with the template anymore.

Under Cobalt 7 i used to copy the default template for every section and updated all of them, when changes to the template happened. It became quite some task with the increasing number of sections and types. Now i can use 1 template for almost all sections.

Speaking of templates, the new advanced list template "table" became something like a swiss army knife.

We now have control over individual fields, headers and icons regardless of the field settings. Fields can be excluded, even if they are set for display (intro view = yes).

They can be arranged under the title, a leading column can be defined and also the vertical control within the columns can be set without altering the template code. Digit fields can be displayed right aligned, and table styles allow the automatic "zebra stripes".

A small, but very nice addition is the inclusion of a "Totals-Display".

See here:

A small issue might be the "Table-in-Table" display, like the display of a child/parent content within the list template. The relation table seems to inherit the Table-Style from the list table. This seems to be a bootstrap issue, but can be addressed easily with a different display template (or some adjustments within the table template?). Maybe the field display under the title need still some cosmetic corrections, but i consider this also a minor issue.

Overall using templates became a real joy and is just another reason to start new projects with Cobalt 8 in the future. :D

@Sackgesicht A ton of great info here. Thanks for that. I am very lost on how to get search and filters going. I picked up the Module Filters and have no idea where it is in the back end. Can you provide any info on where to get started with building a search with some drop downs?