Maintenance release — fixes for four issues found in real-world use of the Joomla 6-native Expression on a live production site. With thanks to Michael Mullan for reporting the issues that led to these fixes.

Fixed

• Search icon rendered as a stray "S"/"$" character. The search button relied on the Joomla 3 jui icon font, removed from Joomla core in Joomla 4 — the font 404'd on every page and the glyph fell back to a literal character. The dead font reference is gone and the search icon is now a self-contained SVG.
• Featured/blog articles on the home page showed only their title. Tall single-column intro articles were clipped by the blog layout CSS on Joomla 6's featured-view grid; they now render at their natural height.
• Pagination arrows rendered as empty squares. Joomla 4+ pagination uses newer icon class names the template never mapped; the first/previous/next/last arrows are now mapped to the bundled Font Awesome 6 icons.
• Template version shown after install displayed a legacy 2024 date. Extensions → Manage now shows the real release version.

Removed

• Legacy MooTools tipz.js tooltip script. MooTools was removed from Joomla core in Joomla 4, so the script threw a JavaScript error on every page load and did nothing. The script reference and file are gone.

Improved

• The search button now sits snug against the search input (removed the stray button margin inside the search input group).

Notes

• No template-parameter or database changes — installs as a straight overwrite over 6.1.0.
• If your top menu renders vertically after moving a site onto Expression: assign your main menu module to position position-1 and set its Menu Tag ID to nav and Menu Class Suffix to -nav.

Added

Joomla 6 native API

• Full Joomla 6 namespace compliance across the template entry-point, helpers, and parameter-echo paths — JFactory → Factory, JText → Text, JRoute → Route, JUri → Uri, JHtml → HTMLHelper, JModuleHelper → ModuleHelper, and the rest of the deprecated J* static-class family.
• templateDetails.xml rewritten to the J6 manifest schema with method="upgrade" declared so existing customers can install in place without uninstall-first. <targetplatform name="joomla" version="6.1"/> declared. Extension-version declaration bumped to 6.1.0.
• Native Joomla 6 jQuery (loaded via the CMS) used in place of the previously-bundled jQuery — one shared instance across the page, current security patches included.
• Toolbar / parse-error fix on html/layouts/chromes/toggleModule.php — pre-existing PHP-tag corruption that was latent on Joomla 5 but surfaced as a fatal parse error under Joomla 6's stricter parser. Resolved before the package zip was built.

Mobile-responsive overhaul (new in 6.1.0)

• Hamburger toggle auto-injected on viewports under 768px — replaces the desktop horizontal nav with a touch-friendly mobile menu panel. aria-expanded + aria-label attributes carry the accessibility metadata.
• Single-branch-open progressive disclosure — tapping a parent expands its children; tapping a sibling-parent at the same depth collapses the previously-open branch so only one chain is open at a time. Submenus are hidden by default; visible only when the LI carries the .expanded state class.
• Expand/collapse indicators — collapsable parent rows show a + glyph; the deepest currently-expanded row shows a − glyph (Unicode math minus U+2212). Intermediate-ancestor open rows in the chain are visually distinguished via a brand-teal left-edge accent + a light-tint row background instead of carrying their own indicator — the result is exactly one expand/collapse indicator on screen at any time, with the open path clearly readable at a glance.
• WCAG-AA light-theme menu with dark #2f2f2f body text on a white background, brand-teal #3d718a accent on the open chain, and accessible contrast on every indicator. Replaces the desktop nav's dark-bar styling, which doesn't translate to the mobile menu panel.
• Tap-target sizing — every mobile menu row is full-row-width with comfortable padding (44px+ tap targets), the indicator is locked to flex: 0 0 auto so it doesn't stretch alongside the text label, and the search field has its own breathing room before the menu's bottom border.
• Footer wrap on mobile — the legacy BS2-grid .span6 columns (footer-left menu + footer-right copyright) now stack vertically full-width below 768px with flex-wrap on the menu list and natural word-wrap on the copyright line. Replaces the previous horizontal single-line cramming.

Swiper 11 slideshow

• The legacy Camera slideshow plugin has been replaced with Swiper 11 — CDN-loaded (swiper-bundle.min.{css,js}), touch-friendly, accessible, and actively maintained. Same visual look and feel as the prior slideshow; modern engine underneath.
• Slideshow markup updated to Swiper's expected DOM shape at runtime via inline JS that rewrites the #ph-camera-slideshow structure on DOMContentLoaded, honouring donor cam_time + slide-transition params.
• Slideshow navigation arrows recoloured to brand-teal #3d718a (with a soft white text-shadow halo) so they're readable against every slide background — the previous Swiper default was a faint white that disappeared on light slides.

Modern social-network support (13-network parity + real ET brand data)

• Social-media set parity — added Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, TikTok, Discord, Pinterest, Vimeo, LinkedIn alongside the existing X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, RSS.
• X (the Twitter rebrand) replaces the legacy Twitter icon with the current logo (fa-x-twitter).
• Per-network icon glyphs delivered via FontAwesome 6 brand iconography (fa-brands set), retiring the legacy socicon-* iconfont entirely.
• Brand-data layer: live ET account URLs wired in for the active networks; inactive networks are toggled OFF at the template-style level so the rendered output only shows real working icons.
• Social-block parameter set extended: each network now has its own *ON visibility toggle plus URL field, all wired into the Template Style admin form's Community fieldset.

Security helpers (XSS hardening)

• New output-escape helpers added to index.php:
  • phEsc() — HTML attribute escaping for href, src, alt, title, and Swiper caption output.
  • phHexColor() — color parameter validation (regex ^#?[0-9a-fA-F]{3}([0-9a-fA-F]{3})?$) with fallback to #000000 on bad input.
  • phCssDim() — dimension parameter validation accepting px / em / rem / % / vh / vw / pt / ex / ch / cm / mm / in.
• Admin-controlled echoes across the template tree wrapped with these helpers — 113 raw-echo sites hardened in the Phase 3d security sweep, covering social-block hrefs, preset color values, slideshow caption text, header-block dimension vars, and the moduleclass_sfx fallback in html/mod_breadcrumbs/default.php.

Changed

Visual fidelity matched to product-page canonical

• Footer card-wrap — the previous design left the footer floating disconnected from the white content card. The white card wrapper now extends through the footer with rounded bottom corners and a soft shadow on the footer element itself, presenting the whole content+footer as a single card on the teal/blue page background.
• Footer copyright alignment — copyright text right-aligned on desktop (left-aligned menu on the other half); on mobile both halves stack vertically and centre-align.
• Dropdown column widths — the "Joomla Page Layouts" mega-style menu item now opens to a wider columns-3 layout matching the canonical product-page screenshot, with the underlying menu-anchor_css param carrying the column class so customers can reproduce the layout on their own menu items.

Admin form modernization — J5/J6-native switchers

• Every legacy class="switch" type="checkbox" field declaration in templateDetails.xml converted to J-native type="radio" layout="joomla.form.field.radio.switcher" with explicit <option value="0">JNO</option><option value="1">JYES</option> pairs — 32 fields across every fieldset.
• Scope covers every fieldset, not just the Community-tab social ON toggles: sliderON, cookielaw, jumpToTop, all the Camera-era FX toggles, and the rest of the legacy boolean-input set.
• Customers opening the Template Style edit screen now see Joomla 6's native pill-switcher UI instead of the 2014-era checkbox controls.

Bootstrap migration

• Template now renders against Joomla 6's bundled Bootstrap 5 natively — the bundled Bootstrap 2 archive (css/bootstrap.zip) and the on-page BS2 stylesheet have been dropped.
• BS2 toggle attributes across the template tree converted to Bootstrap 5's data-bs-* API — LoginForm modal converted to BS5 markup with data-bs-toggle / data-bs-target / data-bs-dismiss attributes; jQuery .toggle("fast") race-condition handler removed (BS5 manages show/hide via the data-bs-toggle attribute system).
• Layout markup updated where BS2-era grid syntax remained; existing column structure preserved, class names modernized.

Superfish menu → vanilla CSS hover-delay

• Removed the Superfish / Supersubs menu init — menu hovers are now CSS :hover plus a vanilla JS hover-delay handler that adds .sfHover on mouseenter and removes it after 500ms on mouseleave, preserving the megamenu hover-gap pattern from the legacy implementation.

IE-era polyfills retired

• Removed Modernizr, Selectivizr, Flexibility.js, html5shiv, and imgSizer — all target legacy IE which Joomla 5 dropped and Joomla 6 explicitly does not support.
• Removed ie.css, ie6.css, ie8.css, and ieall.css from the template's CSS load list.
• Removed the mixed-content http://html5shiv.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js reference that was triggering browser warnings on HTTPS sites.

Bundled extensions refreshed

• Akeeba Backup Core updated to 10.3.4 — current stable release.
• Weblinks Extension Package updated to 5.1.0 — current Joomla 6-compatible release.
• pkg_search + its 7 child extensions removed entirely as part of the Joomla 6 upgrade — Joomla 6 ships Smart Search (com_finder) as the only search subsystem.
• Customers installing the 6.1.0 quickstart land on a clean Extensions Update screen with zero pending updates.

Fixed

• Mobile menu indicator double-glyph rendering — the legacy hover rules on .menu-nav li li:hover / .sfHover applied text-decoration: underline at the LI level, which CSS visually propagates to every descendant text node including the ::after pseudo-element carrying the expand/collapse glyph. The result was + rendering as ± and minus rendering as =. Resolved by switching from CSS pseudo-element content to a JS-injected <span class="mobile-menu-indicator"> child whose text content is set explicitly per toggle state, combined with a wide-scope text-decoration override on every descendant of ul.menu-nav in every pseudo-state.
• Header slogan duplication — when the template was configured in text-mode (vs image-mode) the slogan rendered twice: once from the native H2Title parameter and again from the Phase 3b CSS fallback that was meant to cover the image-mode slogan.png 404. The fallback is now scoped to #sn-position h2:has(img) so it only fires when the donor template is actually in image-mode, and steps silently out of the way in text-mode.
• PHP 8 dispatcher-removed-variable warnings — null-coalesce fallbacks added for parameters Joomla 6's dispatcher no longer passes to the template's index.php directly.
• Dead 13-network #TYPE-URL-HERE placeholders in the rendered social block — brand-data wire-up step now sets real ET URLs on the active networks and toggles inactive networks OFF, so the rendered output shows only real working icons.
• Footer copyright year rolled forward from © 2023 to © 2026 on the footer custom-html module.

Quickstart database hardening

• Customer-facing aggregate counters reset to 0. Donor-site preview / dev hits no longer leak into a customer's fresh install. Counters now zeroed at quickstart build time on #__content.hits, #__categories.hits, #__contact_details.hits, #__newsfeeds.hits, #__tags.hits, #__weblinks.hits, and the supporting #__core_log_searches / #__finder_logging / #__redirect_links log tables.
• 15 unchecked template overrides re-marked as state=1 so they show up correctly in the Templates Manager Overrides view.
• J6 driver-bypass install compatibility — the J5 quickstart pattern of splicing a TRUNCATE + ALTER TABLE preamble onto custom.sql is incompatible with Joomla 6's installer (which no longer auto-loads base.sql before custom.sql). The Expression 6.1.0 build pipeline relies on the mysqldump-provided DROP TABLE IF EXISTS + CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS pairs for clean-state guarantees, dropping both the TRUNCATE preamble and the J5-era column-relaxation ALTER preamble entirely.
• Install wizard verified clean on PHP 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3.

Removed

• Camera slideshow library (superseded by Swiper 11): camera.css, camera.min.js, camera.js, jquery.mobile.customized.min.js, jquery.easing.1.3.js.
• Superfish / Supersubs menu init scripts (replaced with CSS :hover + vanilla JS hover-delay).
• Modernizr, Selectivizr, Flexibility, html5shiv, imgSizer — IE-era polyfills retired.
• ie.css, ie6.css, ie8.css, ieall.css — IE-only stylesheets retired.
• IE conditional comment block in index.php's <head> — html5shiv + selectivizr + Modernizr + imgSizer conditional loaders plus 4 IE-only CSS conditional links all stripped together.
• Joomla 3 + Joomla 4 compatibility shims.
• Bootstrap 2 archive (css/bootstrap.zip) and BS2 fallback assets.
• Legacy file_fof30 Akeeba framework remnant — deprecated since Akeeba moved to FOF 4.x, unreferenced after the modernization pass.
• pkg_search + 7 child extensions (com_search, mod_search, plg_search_* × 5) — Joomla 6 ships Smart Search (com_finder) as the only search subsystem.
• Dead social networks: Google+, StumbleUpon, Digg, Blogger, MySpace — params + icons + admin fields all stripped.
• 3 unused template variants (_energy, alphard, energy) — vestigial from earlier Expression releases, none referenced by any current template style.
• 7 orphan menu refs pointing at a removed template_style_id=114 — reassigned to the live default style.
• Pre-modernization error_log, stray .bak files, and the legacy expression.zip archive shipped inside templates/ from an earlier handover.

Package format

• Standalone template: expression.zip — Joomla package wrapper that installs the tpl_expression template extension and registers it under the package manager.
• Quickstart bundle: Expression-J6.1.1-Quickstart-20260619-v1-expression-6.1.0.zip — complete Joomla 6.1.1 install with Expression pre-loaded as the active template, all customer-facing aggregate counters zeroed on first install, and the J6 driver-bypass installer compatibility patches in place.