Motion Changelog

Added

Bootstrap 5 compatibility layer

• New css/bs2-bs5-bridge.css: maps Motion’s Bootstrap 2 grid (.row-fluid, .spanN, including a .spanN placed inside a Bootstrap 5 .row), the hidden-phone / visible-phone utilities, button and form classes and the dialog shell onto Joomla’s bundled Bootstrap 5. It is loaded as the last stylesheet in the head, with a file-time version marker, so it sits in the right place in the cascade.
• The bridge maps Joomla’s own icon-* classes onto Font Awesome 6, so the password show/hide eye on the login and registration forms and the Previous / Next / First / Last pagination arrows draw real glyphs instead of empty squares.
• New js/cs-jq-compat.js: restores three jQuery 1.x calls that Joomla’s jQuery 3.7 removed but the bundled camera.min.js slideshow still uses (.live(), .offset() on the window, and .load(fn) as a load-event shortcut). The minified slideshow file itself is unchanged.

Phone layout

• New js/cs-mobile.js: on phones (up to 767 px) Motion gets a compact header with a menu button that opens a slide-out menu built from the site’s main menu, with arrows that open each submenu. It replaces the old selectnav drop-down menu.
• A phone toolbar under the header with five 44×44 px buttons: Section menu, Log in, Register, Search and Follow us (the social links). The buttons take the template’s accent colour, the same on every page.
• The phone search box and the login and registration form fields use a 16 px font and a 44 px height, so iPhones do not zoom the page when you tap into them.
• Slideshow text now shows on phones, as a compact full-width bar across the bottom of the slide (12 px text). Before, Motion hid the slideshow caption on phones.
• On account pages (login, registration, password reset), phones show the page content first, with only the breadcrumbs above it.
• The page cannot be pushed sideways on a phone, and the menu drawer and search and social panels are sized to the screen.

Colour picker

• New custom field fields/colorpicker.php with the bundled Coloris picker (js/coloris.min.js, css/coloris.min.css, js/coloris.LICENSE.txt). All 77 colour settings are now type="colorpicker", with a live swatch and a picker that ships with the template.
• New fields/adminui.php: a hidden field that styles the template’s Options screen, so help banners such as the Favicon introduction run across the top of the tab instead of being squeezed into the narrow label column.

Favicon tool

• New Favicon tab (fieldset faviconsettings) with a media field (favicon) and a favicon tool (fields/favicontool.php) that builds the favicon set from one image. Without a chosen image, the template’s own favicon.ico is used. With thanks to Gianluca, whose favicon question inspired this tool.
• index.php outputs the favicon links (a 32×32 tab icon and a 180×180 Apple touch icon) through two new helpers, phFaviconSet() and phIcoBytes().
• 10 new language strings in en-GB.tpl_motion.ini (71 → 81), e.g. TPL_MOTION_FAVICON_TAB, TPL_MOTION_FAVICON_LABEL, TPL_MOTION_FAVICONTOOL_CREATE.

Custom CSS that survives updates

• New Custom CSS setting (customcss) on the Header & Footer Custom Code tab. It is stored in the database and added straight after the template’s own stylesheets, so it overrides them and a template update never touches it.
• For larger stylesheets, index.php also loads css/custom.css when that file exists. The file is not part of the package, so an update cannot overwrite or remove it.

Modern social network support

• Eight new social services, each with an on/off switch and a URL field: Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Threads, TikTok, Bluesky, Mastodon, Discord (fields instagram/instagramON … discord/discordON). With Facebook, LinkedIn, Vimeo, X and RSS that makes 13.
• The social links now draw Font Awesome 6 brand icons (fa-brands fa-*, fa-solid fa-rss) with a screen-reader label for each, and external links open with rel="noopener". Twitter is now X (“X (formerly Twitter)”, fa-x-twitter); its setting keeps the field name twitter, so an existing URL carries over.

Sample-content images

• New images/legacy-bluestork/ with the five Joomla 2.5 header icons (icon-48-component.png, icon-48-module.png, icon-48-plugin.png, icon-48-language.png, icon-48-themes.png) used by the sample-data category descriptions. See Fixed.

Security helpers

• 13 new helper functions in index.php: phEsc(), phHexColor(), phCssDim(), phCssNum(), phCssFont(), phCssSelector(), phCssToken(), phCssUrl(), phJsStr(), phJsLit(), phRichText(), phFaviconSet(), phIcoBytes(). Each is declared inside function_exists(); component.php and error.php carry the ones they need. Details under Security.

Changed

Joomla 6 platform

• Built for Joomla 6.1.4.
• The front end renders on Joomla’s bundled Bootstrap 5 (/media/vendor/bootstrap/css/bootstrap.min.css, plus bootstrap.rtl.min.css for right-to-left sites) and loads Joomla’s Bootstrap 5 scripts, through css/bs2-bs5-bridge.css. Motion’s own css/bootstrap.css and css/responsive.css still load before it.
• The login dialog is a Bootstrap 5 modal: data-bs-toggle / data-bs-target to open it, .modal-dialog-centered, a .btn-close button and data-bs-dismiss="modal" on the Close button (before: the Bootstrap 2 b-modal hide fade markup with data-toggle / data-dismiss). The close button on system messages uses data-bs-dismiss="alert".
• templateDetails.xml version 03.07.2024 5.1.1 → 6.1.4, with the Template Version shown in the Details panel set to 6.1.4 (2026-10-05); method="upgrade" kept, so an existing install updates in place.

J3 → J5/J6 API migration

• All 234 Joomla 3 static calls removed (JText → Text, JHtml → HTMLHelper, JRoute → Route, JFactory → Factory, JModuleHelper → ModuleHelper, JComponentHelper → ComponentHelper, JPluginHelper → PluginHelper, JError::raiseWarning(404, …) → new \Exception(…, 404)). These aliases exist only while Joomla’s Behaviour – Backward Compatibility plugin is enabled, and not at all in Joomla 6.
• Template overrides converted (calls before → after):
  • html/mod_login/default.php 22 → 0; html/mod_menu/default.php 2 → 0; html/mod_breadcrumbs/default.php and html/mod_search/default.php 1 → 0 each.
  • The spare html/com_content_/ article override set (not used by Joomla while the folder name ends in an underscore, kept so it can be switched on): featured/_default_item.php 38, category/blog_item.php 36, article/default.php 27, category/default_articles.php 27, archive/default_items.php 25, archive/default.php 6, category/blog.php, blog_children.php, blog_links.php, default_children.php, categories/default.php and featured/_default_links.php 4 each, category/default.php 3, featured/default.php 2 → 0. The removed behavior.tooltip call in category/default_articles.php is gone too.
  • Plus index.php and error.php.
• The menu overrides html/mod_menu/default_component.php, default_separator.php and default_url.php read the menu item’s settings through $item->getParams() instead of $item->params. See Fixed.
• In all, 32 of the 44 PHP overrides under html/ were modified.

Template Options screen

• 104 field type changes in templateDetails.xml. The 33 legacy class="switch" checkboxes are gone; settings such as RSSON, H1TitleImgText, H2TitleImgText and cam_autoAdvance now use Joomla’s native on/off switchers (36 in all, counting the eight new social switches). The 77 colour settings (e.g. bodybackground, bodytextcolor, buttons_bg, article_info_link_color) changed from text to colorpicker.
• Fields 164 → 174, fieldsets 7 → 8. Tab names no longer end in “Settings” (Drop Down Menu, Built-in Slideshow, Theme, Header & Footer Custom Code).

Fonts and icons

• The Google Fonts WebFontConfig JavaScript loader (webfont.js from ajax.googleapis.com) is replaced by a direct Open Sans stylesheet link with preconnect hints and display=swap (WebFontConfig 1 → 0).
• The front end loads Font Awesome 6.5.2 (all.min.css) with v4-shims.min.css, so fa fa-* markup keeps working alongside the new icons.

Menus and background without old jQuery plug-ins

• Drop-down menus open on hover through a small built-in script (mouseenter/mouseleave with a 500 ms grace period, keyed off the template’s existing .sfHover styles) instead of the Superfish/Supersubs plug-ins.
• The page background image is set with CSS background-size: cover instead of Backstretch.
• The selectnav() call in html/mod_menu/default.php is gone; the phone drawer replaces it.
• jQuery itself still loads, for the slideshow and the side-panel menu.

Layout

• On phones the page has no 20 px side gutter: the header, slideshow and footer use the full screen width, and content blocks keep their own inset.
• Joomla’s page numbers wrap onto a second line on phones instead of running off the screen.
• Breadcrumb text (“You are here:”, the separator and the current page) is lighter on its dark bar: #d4d4d4 instead of #2d2d2d on #4b4b4b (contrast 1.58:1 → 5.89:1).
• New stylesheets and scripts (bs2-bs5-bridge.css, cs-jq-compat.js, cs-mobile.js, custom.css) carry a file-time version marker, so changes to them show straight after an update.

Fixed

• The built-in slideshow did not load on Joomla 5 and 6: it sat on its loading spinner, because camera.min.js calls .live(), which Joomla’s jQuery 3.7 no longer has. js/cs-jq-compat.js restores it, and the slideshow and its controls run again.
• Error pages. The Joomla 5 download’s error.php used JError::raiseWarning() and JText, so with the backward-compatibility plugin off (and always on Joomla 6) every “page not found” became a server error. (The Joomla 6.0.0 download switched the template’s error page off by renaming it error_.php.) error.php is back and uses the Joomla 4+ API, has a viewport tag, and css/presets/style-error.css lets the error box fit a phone screen with a 20 px margin instead of a fixed 960 px page. It no longer requests css/template_rtl.css, which does not exist.
• Pages could fail with a server error on Joomla 6 when a menu contained an external link, separator or alias item (the logged-in User Menu has them): the menu overrides read $item->params, which Joomla 6 no longer allows. They now use $item->getParams().
• JavaScript errors on every page load are gone: jquery.mobile.customized.min.js threw under Joomla’s jQuery 3.7, and the selectnav() call in the menu override threw once that script was retired. Neither is loaded any more.
• Drop-down menus closed before the mouse reached them. Moving from a menu heading down to its drop-down crossed a gap where nothing was hovered. The whole path is now hoverable; the menu’s spacing and appearance are unchanged.
• The login dialog could open invisible (page dimmed, nothing to see) because Motion’s Bootstrap 2 CSS hides any .fade element that is not marked .in, while Bootstrap 5 marks an open dialog .show. The bridge now shows it, and the dialog closes and reopens cleanly.
• Category pages in the sample content showed broken images: five category descriptions (Components, Modules, Templates, Languages, Plugins) pointed at administrator/templates/bluestork/images/header/, an admin template removed in Joomla 3. They now point at the copies in templates/motion/images/legacy-bluestork/.
• The colour settings were plain text boxes on Joomla 5 and 6: the jscolor loader never ran, so a colour could only be changed by typing its hex code. All 77 now have the colour picker.
• PHP 8 “undefined variable” warnings in html/mod_login/default.php ($type) and html/mod_breadcrumbs/default.php ($moduleclass_sfx), which Joomla’s module dispatcher no longer passes, now have fallbacks.
• Fixes from a maintenance pass across our templates:
  • Pagination arrows were empty squares (Joomla’s icon-angle-left / -right / -double-left / -double-right had no glyph); they now draw.
  • Featured-article intro text is no longer clipped to its title in a one-column featured layout (.blog-featured .blog-items.columns-1).
  With thanks to Michael Mullan, whose Expression bug report led to this maintenance pass across our templates.

Removed

Bootstrap 2 copies

• The bundled Bootstrap 2 files in css/bootstrap/ are deleted (bootstrap.css, bootstrap.min.css, bootstrap-responsive.css, bootstrap-responsive.min.css, bootstrap-extended.css, bootstrap-rtl.css, bootstrap-tooltip-extended.css), along with the css/bootstrap.zip archive.

Legacy scripts and stylesheets no longer loaded

• Scripts: superfish.js, supersubs.js, jquery.backstretch.min.js, jquery.mobile.customized.min.js, selectnav.min.js, modernizr.js, selectivizr-min.js, plus the remote html5.js (googlecode) and webfont.js. The local files remain in js/ but nothing loads them.
• The main layout’s Internet Explorer support: the conditional <html> classes, the lt IE 9 script block, and ie.css, ie6.css and ie9-10.css.

Old colour picker and switch images

• utils/js_colourchanger/ (jscolor.js, arrow.gif, cross.gif, hs.png, hv.png) and the colours_handlers field that loaded it.
• utils/admin-js.js (a Joomla 3 admin script with a MooTools addEvent call) and the old switch images utils/images/switch-background.png and switch-mask.png.
• utils/bss_fontchanger.php.

Archives left in the overrides

• html/com_content.zip, html/com_content/category/blog_item.zip and html/com_content_/category/blog_item.zip.

Retired social services

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

Security

• Every template setting written into the page is escaped for where it appears. 164 places where the template printed a setting raw now go through the new helpers (176 call sites):
  • phEsc() for HTML text and attributes, including every social link href and the login-dialog title.
  • phCssToken(), phCssNum(), phCssDim(), phCssFont(), phCssSelector(), phCssUrl() and phHexColor() for values inside inline <style>, including the colour settings and the colours passed to hex2rgb().
  • phJsStr() and phJsLit() for values inside inline JavaScript (the slideshow options and the background image).
• Site-name and slogan fields go through phRichText(): formatting markup is kept, but scripts, styles, iframes and on* event handlers are stripped. The login module’s pre-text is filtered the same way.
• The error page escapes the error message and page title it prints, and prints the error code as a number.
• Module titles, module class suffixes and the menu tag id are escaped in html/modules.php, the slides, vmdefault and vmdefaultBOLD module chromes, html/mod_custom/default.php (including its background-image URL), html/mod_menu/default.php and html/mod_breadcrumbs/default.php, and in the com_content archive, blog, featured and category overrides. htmlspecialchars/escape calls across the template rose from 81 to 127.
• The theme preset name in component.php is restricted to a plain CSS token before it is used in a stylesheet path.

Quickstart Installer

The Quickstart is a complete Joomla 6.1.4 site with Motion installed as the active template, with the demo content. Motion is not a VirtueMart template.

• Bundled extensions: Joomla 6.1.4, Akeeba Backup 10.4.0, MCP For J 2.7.5, StageIt 5.7.3.
• Only the templates the site uses are included: the templates/ folder holds cassiopeia, cassiopeia_extended, motion and system. The four Joomla 2.5 template styles that were not on disk (atomic, beez_20 twice, beez5) are gone, and the 18 menu items that pointed at them use the site’s default style.
• Extension records for components and plug-ins whose files are not in the Quickstart (com_search, com_weblinks, mod_search, mod_weblinks, search/finder plug-ins, FOF, PHPMailer and SimplePie) were dropped, so they no longer appear in the Extensions manager.
• The demo’s template style shows X and Facebook links and carries no settings for the retired networks. The footer copyright reads 2026.
• Joomla’s Statistics plugin is off and set to never send data.
• A clean starting state: the action log is empty, and of Joomla’s 13 post-installation messages only four stay switched on (privacy, multi-factor authentication, action logging and automatic updates). None of the guided tours, including Joomla 6’s “What’s New” tours, starts by itself.

Package format

• Standalone template: Motion now installs as a Joomla package (pkg_motion-6.1.4.zip, manifest pkg_motion.xml) that installs and registers the motion template extension. It declares method="upgrade", so an existing Motion updates in place, and <blockChildUninstall>true</blockChildUninstall>, so the template is removed through the package rather than on its own. The previous download was the bare template zip.
• Quickstart bundle: motion-quickstart-J6.1.4.zip, a complete Joomla 6.1.4 install with Motion pre-loaded as the active template.