If you are on Joomla! 1.5, grab the zip file from the link above and install it on top of your existing K2 version. If you are on Joomla! 2.5 or 3.0, go to the Joomla! update manager, purge the update cache, re-check and you'll see the new release available to instantly update. If you are on Joomla! 1.6 or 1.7 then someone probably cut off your internet connection a year ago: upgrade to 2.5 now!
So what's changed or been updated in this new release? As mentioned earlier, we have improved K2's performance with less or better optimized SQL queries. Additionally we fixed a very slow SQL query in the backend "K2 Status" module (sorry for that folks!).
K2 is now compatible with the latest release of jQuery, version 1.9. If you tried to load jQuery 1.9 manually in your site (while disabling K2's older jQuery copies), then K2's main JS file would simply not work.
If you didn't know already, Joom!Fish is now available for Joomla! 2.5 or newer (good news!) and we've adapted K2 to be fully compatible with this new release.
K2 will now respect the setting in Joomla! Global Configuration (v2.5 or newer) for URL alias creation (unicode or transliteration). Previously K2 would enforce unicode URLs even if "transliteration" was enabled in Joomla! 2.5 or newer. There's a catch here however. You see, Joomla!'s transliteration operation is flawed. Take this example: you have a site with 2 or 3 different frontend languages, but you only want to manage the site using the default English backend. Joomla! will fail to detect any frontend language because it always defines the transliteration process based on the backend language with which you are managing a site. Kinda stupid if you ask us...
So in the above example, URL alias transliteration would switch to English. That means if your site has Cyrillic or Greek in the frontend, but you prefer an English admin UI, all your URLs will be converted to stupid number sequences. Joomla! should be able to detect the frontend language, regardless of the backend language setting and use some logic based on what language is assigned to a menu item, article etc. to determine how to transliterate URLs. It doesn't.
So with K2 v.2.6.3 we have addressed this issue the smart way: if the default frontend language is not English and no language is specifically assigned in K2's items, categories etc., K2 will use the frontend language's transliteration file to properly convert URLs based on that language. So in the case of a site with Greek as frontend language, urls will be properly transliterated to latin characters. If there are more than 3 languages installed on your site's frontend, then we check if you set the language on a K2 item or category before saving it and then determine which language's transliteration operations to pick up. If you don't select a specific language in that case, we'll simply use your site's frontend language.
Please note that although K2 can smartly detect the right transliteration operation for its content, it does not have any effect on menu items. That's Joomla! calling the transliteration operation there and as stated before, it's flawed.
Additionally, we have added a switch in K2's parameters for Joomla! 2.5+ to enforce your own character replacements in URL aliases.
Among other minor fixes, we have fixed a nasty ordering bug for Joomla! 1.5 specifically. If you ordered a bunch of items in the backend and one of those items happened to have a video assigned to it, K2 would falsely "duplicate" this same video on all items below itself in the order set. It's half K2's and half Joomla! fault here as the table object created was not properly "initialized". Phil, you've lost the bet man ;)
A cryptic changelog summary follows:
- Fixed custom menu link rendering in mod_k2_content (SEF router related)
- Fixed SEF router issue when detecting K2 menu links pointing to all K2 categories
- Modified itemlist view to use one less query when no items are available for that view (aka menu link to a blank K2 category - handy for making your site's frontpage have an "empty" component view)
- Fixed Facebook image meta tag issues
- Added a check to load the system jQuery copy under Joomla! 3.0, but only if a user has set K2 to load jQuery in the first place. In other words, K2 will not enforce jQuery in Joomla! 3.0.
- Added WYSIWYG editor save events under Joomla! 3.0
- Improved Joomla!'s Varnish-friendliness via K2, if you use this setup for Varnish
If you notice a bug, please take a moment to report it here: http://code.google.com/p/getk2/issues/list - we check this list more than email :)
We have also updated the K2 template overrides page, but just to include the package for K2 v2.6.3. There are no template override changes between K2 v2.6.2 and 2.6.3.
