Elegant Energize Themes Templates Changelog

Added

Bootstrap 2 layout on Joomla 6

• New css/bs2-bs5-bridge.css, loaded on every page with a version marker, after camera.css and before the template’s inline colour styles. It takes over what the bundled Bootstrap 2 stylesheets did for Elegant’s markup: .row-fluid rows with .spanN columns, standalone .spanN, offsets, pull-left / pull-right, the hidden-phone / visible-phone utilities, the Bootstrap 2 button and form classes, the modal shell, and stacking of multi-column rows (including the footer columns) on phones.
• The bridge maps Joomla’s own icon-* classes (e.g. icon-eye, icon-eye-slash, icon-angle-left, icon-angle-double-right) onto Font Awesome 6, so the icons Joomla prints in forms and pagination show up (see Fixed).
• index.php now loads Joomla’s Bootstrap 5 stylesheet (/media/vendor/bootstrap/css/bootstrap.min.css), and its own grid markup uses Bootstrap 5 classes: the 12 .row-fluid wrappers became .row (12 → 0), and the 42 .spanN column classes became .col-md-N (42 → 0), including the header, top/bottom module rows, the content and sidebar columns, the breadcrumb, newsflash, bottom-long and footer columns.
• New js/cs-jq-compat.js, loaded straight after Joomla’s head scripts. It restores three jQuery 1.x calls that the jQuery 3.7 in Joomla 6 removed but the bundled scripts still use: .live() (camera.js binds its play/stop controls with it), .offset() on the window, and .load(fn) as a load-event shortcut.
• New js/cs-bs2-modal-shim.js: Elegant’s login dialog is written the Bootstrap 2 way (.modal straight to .modal-header). The shim adds the .modal-dialog > .modal-content wrapper Bootstrap 5 needs before the dialog is opened, so it opens, closes and dismisses correctly.

Phone header and menu

• New js/cs-mobile.js. On screens up to 767 px Elegant gets a menu button (#cs-menu-toggle) at the right of the header bar. It opens the site’s main menu as a slide-out panel; menu items with sub-pages get a control that opens the sub-menu in place.
• A row of touch buttons under the header (#cs-utility-row): Section menu, Log in, Register, Search and Follow us, all in one white style with dark icons. Section menu opens the page’s sidebar menu; Log in opens the login dialog; Register goes to the registration page; Search opens a full-width search panel with a Search button; Follow us opens the social links.
• The phone header bar runs the full width of the screen, with the site name and slogan stacked at the left and the menu button at the right. The sidebar menu module is hidden on phones, since Section menu carries it. All of this chrome is hidden above 767 px.
• Open panels close when you tap the same button again, tap outside them or on the dimmed background, or press Escape, and close when the window is widened to desktop size. The menu button is hidden while the login dialog is open.
• The page cannot be pushed sideways on a phone.

Password show/hide

• New js/cs-password-reveal.js: the password field in the header’s login dialog gets an eye button that shows or hides what you typed. It is a type="button" (it does not submit the form), carries aria-pressed and a Show/Hide label, and masks the password again when the form is submitted.
• Joomla already puts its own eye button on its Login and Registration pages, so the script skips any field Joomla has handled; no field shows two.

Favicon tool

• New Favicon tab (fieldset faviconsettings, first in the template options) with a media field (favicon) and a crop tool (favicontool, field class fields/favicontool.php): load the chosen image, drag or resize a square over the part you want, and the cropped image is saved. With thanks to Gianluca, whose favicon question inspired this tool.
• On the front end, index.php builds the full icon set from that one image with two new helpers, phFaviconSet() and phIcoBytes(): a real favicon.ico (16, 32 and 48 px), 32, 192 and 512 px PNGs and a 180 px Apple touch icon, written to images/favicon-generated/. The .ico is also copied to the site root, where browsers look for it.
• The generated file names change whenever the image changes, so browsers pick up a new icon instead of holding on to the old one. With no image chosen, the template’s own favicon.ico is used, with a version marker.
• New fields/adminui.php: a hidden field that styles the template’s Options screen only, so the Favicon tab’s help text runs across the full width of the page.
• 10 new language strings in en-GB.tpl_elegant.ini (66 → 76), e.g. TPL_ELEGANT_FAVICON_TAB, TPL_ELEGANT_FAVICON_HELP, TPL_ELEGANT_FAVICONTOOL_CREATE.

Colour picker

• New custom field fields/colorpicker.php with the bundled Coloris picker (js/coloris.min.js, css/coloris.min.css). All 45 colour settings are now type="colorpicker", with a swatch in the field and keyboard support. Nothing is loaded from an outside site, and the picker follows Joomla’s light or dark admin theme.
• Colours are still stored as hex codes, so every colour you had set carries over unchanged.

Modern social networks

• Eight new social services, each with a URL field and an on/off switch: Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Discord (fields instagram/instagramON … discord/discordON).
• Twitter is now X (“X (formerly Twitter)”, same twitter / twitterON fields, so a saved URL carries over). Facebook, LinkedIn, Vimeo and RSS stay: 13 networks in all.
• New URL fields default to #TYPE-URL-HERE, so an unfilled link is easy to spot.

Security helpers

• New helpers in index.php, each declared only if not already defined: phEsc() (HTML escaping) and phCssDim() (a number with a CSS unit). Details under Security.

Changed

Joomla 6 platform

• Built for Joomla 6.1; the template runs with Joomla’s Behaviour – Backward Compatibility plugin switched off.
• templateDetails.xml version 16.12.2024 5.1.2 → 6.1.3; the version shown in the template’s Details panel reads 6.1.3 (2026-08-25), and index.php carries the same @version. method="upgrade" is kept, so an existing install updates in place.

J3 → Joomla 6 API migration

• All 55 Joomla 3 class calls removed (JFactory → Factory, JText → Text, JHtml → HTMLHelper, JRoute → Route, JComponentHelper → ComponentHelper, JModuleHelper → ModuleHelper, JPluginHelper → PluginHelper, JDocumentHTML → HtmlDocument, JRegistry → Registry, JError::raiseWarning() → new \Exception()). These old names exist only while the backward-compatibility plugin provides them, and JError not at all. Calls before → after:
  • html/mod_login/default.php 20 → 0; error.php 13 → 0; index.php 7 → 0 (its jimport() call is gone too).
  • html/mod_search/default.php 4 → 0; html/pagination.php 3 → 0; html/mod_menu/default.php 2 → 0; html/mod_breadcrumbs/default.php 1 → 0.
  • The unused override copies html/mod_menu_/, html/mod_menu__/ (2 each) and html/_mod_search/ (1) were converted as well.
• html/mod_login/default.php defaults $type to 'login' and html/mod_breadcrumbs/default.php defaults $moduleclass_sfx, because Joomla 4+ no longer passes them to an override (they logged “undefined variable” warnings).
• In all, 8 of the 39 PHP overrides under html/ were modified.

Template Options screen

• The 32 legacy on/off checkboxes (class="switch" type="checkbox") are gone; settings such as logoLinked, H1TitleImgText, usedropdown, usetheme, cam_turnOn, cam_autoAdvance, cam_hover and cam_navigation now use Joomla’s native switchers (35 in all, counting the new social switches).
• 72 field type changes in all (45 colour settings text → colorpicker, 27 checkboxes → switchers). Fields 131 → 140, tabs 7 → 8.
• Tab names are shorter: Favicon / Basic / Site Name & Slogan / Community Links / Drop Down Menu / Header & Footer Custom Code / Built-in Slideshow / Theme (before: Basic Settings, Site Name And Slogan Settings, Drop Down Menu Settings, Template Header And Footer Custom Code, Built-in Slideshow Settings, Theme Settings).

Fonts and icons

• The front end loads Font Awesome 6.5.2 from cdnjs (all.min.css + v4-shims.min.css) instead of Font Awesome 4.6.3 from MaxCDN, so the template’s fa fa-* class names keep working.
• The social links in the header are drawn as Font Awesome 6 brand icons instead of an image sprite, each with a hidden text label for screen readers.
• The print and pop-up view (component.php) no longer runs the script-based Google web-font loader (WebFontConfig + webfont.js).

Menus

• Desktop drop-down menus open on hover with CSS (nav.css + the bridge) instead of the Superfish/Supersubs plug-ins. Each drop-down is attached to its menu item, so the menu stays open while the pointer moves down into it.
• The drop-down animation settings (dropopacity, dropheight, dropwidth, dropspeed) and the minimum width (dropdownhandler1) no longer have an effect. The column widths (dropdownhandler2…5) still apply.

Login dialog

• The header’s Login Form link opens the dialog with Bootstrap 5’s data-bs-toggle / data-bs-target, and its close button uses data-bs-dismiss (data-bs-* in index.php 0 → 3). The jQuery .toggle("fast") call on the link is gone.
• On desktop the dialog’s Username and Password fields are 32 px tall and fill the width of the dialog, matching the fields on the account pages (they were 16 px tall at 65% width). The dialog draws one border, centred, with the page dimmed behind it on phones as well as desktop.
• “Remember Me” and its checkbox sit on one line.

Slideshow

• The built-in slideshow is still camera.js. jquery.mobile.customized.min.js is no longer loaded (it failed under Joomla 6’s jQuery and nothing used it), and cs-jq-compat.js keeps camera.js’s play/stop controls working.
• camera.js’s round slide-timer indicator (the “pie” loader) in the corner of the slideshow is hidden.

Stylesheets and scripts

• The compatibility stylesheet, the four new scripts and the fallback favicon carry a version marker taken from the file’s modification time, so changes show straight after an update instead of waiting for visitors’ browser caches to expire.
• css/template.css: both copies of its IcoMoon @font-face are commented out (see Fixed).

Fixed

• Error pages could not be shown on Joomla 6. error.php used JText (13 calls) and JError::raiseWarning(), neither of which exists with the backward-compatibility plugin off, so a “page not found” turned into a server error. It now uses Text and new \Exception().
• The template’s Google font did not load on secure sites. The inline @import of Open Sans in index.php used http://, which browsers block on an https page; it now uses https://.
• The colour settings were plain text boxes. The jscolor picker did not run, so a colour could only be changed by typing its hex code. All 45 now have the colour picker.
• The login dialog’s fields had no visible labels: template.css hid the Username and Password labels (display: none), leaving two blank boxes. The labels show again.
• On phones the login dialog opened 350 px down the screen (a fixed top: 350px meant for the desktop header), below the fold on smaller phones. It now opens near the top of the screen and fits its width.
• Phones zoomed in on the login fields and did not zoom back out: the fields used 11 px text, below iOS Safari’s 16 px threshold. Form fields on phones now use 16 px.
• The login dialog sat against the left edge on desktop, 15 px clear of the right (padding: 0 15px 0 0 on #LoginForm). It is centred.
• The slideshow’s previous/next arrows could not be seen on touch screens. camera.js keeps them at opacity: 0 until hovered, and a touch screen never hovers. On touch devices they now show as 44×44 px buttons.
• Print and pop-up views requested two stylesheets that are not in the template (vm-flexi.css, grid.css in component.php), logging two errors on every such view. Both links are removed.
• Fixes from a maintenance pass across our templates:
  • The IcoMoon @font-face pointed at media/jui/fonts/, which Joomla 4 removed, so every page requested missing font files. template.css declares it twice; both are disabled.
  • The password show/hide button on Joomla’s Login and Registration pages was an empty box, and the Previous / Next / First / Last pagination buttons were blank. Joomla prints its own icon-* classes there, and nothing mapped them to an icon font; the bridge now does, and the eye is drawn in the button’s own text colour.
  • Featured-article intro text in a one-column layout is no longer clipped to its title (.blog-featured).
  • selectnav.min.js and its selectnav() call in html/mod_menu/default.php are gone. It was called three times per page (twice with an empty id), built no phone menu, and left two hidden copies of the main menu in every page.
  With thanks to Michael Mullan, whose Expression bug report led to this maintenance pass across our templates.

Removed

Legacy scripts and stylesheets no longer loaded

• Scripts: superfish.js, supersubs.js and their inline supersubs().superfish() start-up code, the inline jQuery.browser shim, selectnav.min.js, jquery.mobile.customized.min.js, webfont.js (print view), and the Internet Explorer scripts modernizr.js, selectivizr-min.js, imgSizer.js (with its addLoadEvent() helper) and the html5shiv from Google Code. The files that came with the template remain in js/ but nothing loads them.
• Stylesheets: the bundled Bootstrap 2 files css/bootstrap/bootstrap.min.css, bootstrap-responsive.min.css, bootstrap-extended.css, plus css/bootstrap.css and css/responsive.css (all remain in css/), Font Awesome 4.6.3 from MaxCDN, and the Internet Explorer files ie6.css and ie.css.
• The Internet Explorer conditional blocks in index.php, including an IE-only inline style for the slideshow.

Old colour picker

• utils/js_colourchanger/ (jscolor.js, arrow.gif, cross.gif, hs.png, hv.png) and the colours_handlers field that started it.

Retired social services

• Five social slots removed with their switches: Google+ (gplus), MySpace, StumbleUpon, Digg and Blogger.

Security

• 104 places in index.php where a template setting is written into the page now go through phEsc() (HTML escaping): the colour, size, position and font-size settings in the page’s inline CSS, the site name and slogan text, images and alt text, the 13 social link URLs, the colour preset name (choosetheme), the slideshow’s minimum height and caption position/width, and the favicon links.
• phCssDim() accepts the header height setting (topheight) only as a number with an optional CSS unit.
• The site name and slogan text fields (H1Title / H2Title) are escaped, so HTML typed into them now shows as text.
• Social links that open in a new tab carry rel="noopener".

Quickstart Installer

The Quickstart is a complete Joomla 6.1.3 site with Elegant installed as the active template and the demo content. It is now a standard Joomla installation package; the previous Quickstart was an Akeeba backup archive (.jpa) that needed Kickstart.

• Bundled extensions: Akeeba Backup 10.4.0, MCP For J 2.6.0, StageIt 5.7.3, Weblinks 5.1.0. VirtueMart 4.8.0 is also installed from the demo site; Elegant does not use it.
• Joomla’s Behaviour – Backward Compatibility plugin is off and Backward Compatibility 6 is on, as on a new Joomla 6 site.
• The site templates are cassiopeia, cassiopeia_extended, elegant and system; VirtueMart’s demo site template vmbasic, which nothing used, is gone.
• The sample contact’s photo pointed at a file that is not in the install; the field is cleared.
• The template overrides are marked as reviewed (no “changes found” warning), and Joomla’s Statistics plugin is switched off.

Package format

• Standalone template: pkg_elegant-6.1.3.zip, a Joomla package (pkg_elegant.xml) that installs the elegant template and registers it in the package manager. Before, the download was a bare template zip (elegant.zip). It declares method="upgrade", so an existing Elegant updates in place, and <blockChildUninstall>true</blockChildUninstall>, so the template is removed through the package rather than on its own.
• Quickstart bundle: Elegant-6.1.3-Quickstart.zip, a complete Joomla 6.1.3 install with Elegant pre-loaded as the active template.