News November 27th 2023
Major update to all xbArticleMan component v2.1.0 - new views, new features see changelog J3
xbMaps - OSM maps, markers & tracks
xbMaps is a Joomla component for displaying maps using OpenStreetMaps (OSM) tiles. Version 1.3.0 is the current release. Help links to documentation pages here are not complete.
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.
28th February 2023 J3
xbMaps Content Plugin
26th December 2021 J3
Truncate String Plugin
23rd June 2019 J3
Joomla JHtml::string.truncate() function has a couple of minor but annoying bugs. See previous article TruncString Bugs and blog post for details. The new System Plugin xbTruncString provides an override for only this function rather than having to override the entire string.php library code (eg by using the mvcoverride plugin) and then maintain it when any part is updated in the core.
Function declaration:
public static function truncate($text, $length = 0, $noSplit = true, $allowHtml = true)xbAutoSave Plugin
21st November 2021 J3
4th December 2023 J4 J5
The Joomla content plugin xbAutosave allows for timed automatic saving of work whilst editing an article or triggering a save with Ctrl+s or Cmd+s keystroke.
The autosave interval can be set in seconds (minimum 30sec) and timed save and keystroke save can be enabled separately.
Autosave only works on the backend (admin) site and only when editing an article (com_content). It is disabled on a new article until you have saved manually to give you a chance to set category, status, access etc before your work-in-progress gets automatically revealed to the world!
xbArticle Manager
27th November 2023 J3
xbArticleMan is a component to provide some additional tools for backend administration of Joomla content. It provides views for finding Images, Links, Shortcodes and Tags in, or associated with, com_content articles.