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News Cast Changelog

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  • Version 6.2.0

    First Joomla 6 native release. News Cast has been rebuilt for Joomla 6.2.0 + PHP 8 + Bootstrap 5. The previous download is the vendor's 5.1.2 package (newscast.zip, version string 26.07.2024 5.1.2, a Joomla 3 template), and every “before” number below is measured against it. Joomla 3 class calls are gone (111 → 0), the template options use Joomla's own on/off switches and colour pickers, every template setting written into the page is escaped, the template's error page works on Joomla 6 again, and there is a new phone layout with a slide-out menu and a row of fingertip-sized buttons. Joomla 6's Bootstrap 5 replaces the template's Bootstrap 2; the template's own markup keeps its Bootstrap 2 classes and renders through a compatibility stylesheet. The Camera slideshow stays. Template files: 271 → 230, with 17 added, 58 removed and 33 modified. The template version is now 6.2.0, matching the Joomla version it ships with.

    Added

    Bootstrap 5 rendering through a compatibility stylesheet

    • index.php loads Joomla 6's bundled Bootstrap 5 (/media/vendor/bootstrap/css/bootstrap.min.css, plus the RTL sheet on right-to-left sites) in place of the template's own Bootstrap 2 sheets (css/bootstrap.css, css/bootstrap/bootstrap.min.css, bootstrap-responsive.min.css, bootstrap-extended.css). component.php (print and pop-up views) loads it too.
    • New css/bs2-bs5-bridge.css, revision 2026-10-24.163, linked after the template's own sheets. It lets News Cast's Bootstrap 2 markup (row-fluid / spanN columns, the hidden-phone family of responsive classes, tab panes, .well, .page-header) render correctly on Bootstrap 5 and maps Joomla 4+ icon classes (pagination arrows, the password eye) to Font Awesome 6 glyphs. News Cast's own additions to it are kept as marked blocks: the desktop header centre line (newscast-desktop-header-midline), the one-line top bar (newscast-top-bar-one-line), menu carets (newscast-menu-carets), the tablet search opener (newscast-tablet-search-opener-live), the phone menu bar and slideshow width (newscast-phone-empty-menu-bar, newscast-phone-slideshow-width), the phone side inset (newscast-phone-inset-20261031), the share panel chips (newscast-phone-social-chips-20261020), the account-form field widths (newscast-users-fields-20261020), Read more buttons (newscast-readmore-btn-20261020), the Hits badge (newscast-hits-badge-20261020), the contact page's definition lists (newscast-dl-horizontal-20261020), the gap between social icons and their labels (newscast-social-icon-gap-20261020) and the template's finishing block (newscast-std-20261103).
    • New css/bs2-donor-base.css, linked right after Bootstrap 5 where the old Bootstrap 2 sheets used to load: the 212 form and base-typography rules the template relied on, taken from the removed Bootstrap 2 sheets. It keeps the horizontal log-in and contact forms, with their labels on the left.
    • New css/legacy-extras.css: the few rules of the removed Bootstrap 2 and Internet Explorer sheets that the template still relied on. New js/cs-jq-compat.js, which restores the jQuery 1.x calls that Joomla 6's jQuery 3.7 removed but the bundled Camera slideshow still makes.
    • Font Awesome 6.5.2 (all.min.css + v4-shims.min.css from cdnjs) on the front end. The template's fa fa-* class names keep working through the shims. The old Font Awesome 4 link pointed at MaxCDN, which no longer serves it, so the icons on the template's Options screen were missing; they load again.

    New phone layout

    • New js/cs-mobile.js. On phones (up to 767 px) a menu button in the header, filled in the template's green with dark bars, opens the main menu as a slide-out panel. Submenus open in place, one branch at a time, behind visible “+” buttons. This replaces the old selectnav drop-down and jquery.mobile.customized.min.js.
    • A row of 44×44 px buttons under the header in the same green, for the log-in, Register, search and social panels. Opening a panel dims the page below the button row only, so the logo and menu button stay clear, and tapping outside an open panel closes it. In the share panel the buttons show the network's icon only; the name stays as the button's title.
    • New module position cs-secondary (declared in templateDetails.xml, output in a hidden holder in index.php). Any menu module published there is what the second phone menu button opens.
    • Headings, the breadcrumb and footer titles start at the same 20 px inset as the page text on phones (two paddings had stacked).
    • component.php (print and pop-up views) and error.php now carry a phone viewport tag.

    Favicon

    • New Favicon tab in the template options (fieldset faviconsettings, fields favicon, faviconspacer and favicontool, field class fields/favicontool.php). Pick one image and the template outputs the icon set (phFaviconSet(), phIcoBytes() in index.php); the template's own favicon.ico remains the fallback. With thanks to Gianluca, whose favicon question inspired this tool.
    • 10 new language strings (TPL_NEWSCAST_FAVICON_*, TPL_NEWSCAST_FAVICONTOOL_*). The language file goes from 68 to 76 strings (the two Blogger strings went with the retired slot).

    Modern social network support

    • Eight new social services, each with its own URL field and show/hide switch: Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest and Discord.
    • The Twitter slot is now X (formerly Twitter) with the X logo. The full set in the “Find Us / Follow Us” list is X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Vimeo, Pinterest, Discord and RSS. The icons are Font Awesome 6 glyphs with the network name kept beside them, and the links open with rel="noopener".

    Template options (administrator)

    • Custom CSS field (customcss), and support for a css/custom.css file. Both load after the compatibility stylesheet, so your rules win. The file is deliberately not listed in templateDetails.xml, so a template update can never overwrite or remove it, and the field is stored in the database.
    • New fields/colorpicker.php with the Coloris picker (js/coloris.min.js, css/coloris.min.css, js/coloris.LICENSE.txt) for the template's colour settings: 53 colour fields now use it.
    • New fields/adminui.php: help rows in the options run the full width of the form, and the template's Details panel follows Joomla's light or dark admin theme.
    • Template options: 142 → 146 fields, 7 → 8 tabs.

    Sample-data images

    • images/legacy-bluestork/: five icons (icon-48-component.png, -language, -module, -plugin, -themes) for the sample-data “Extensions” categories.

    Changed

    Joomla 6 platform

    • Built for Joomla 6.2.0 (previous download: Joomla 3.10), with no need for Joomla's Backward Compatibility plugin.
    • templateDetails.xml version 26.07.2024 5.1.2 → 6.2.0, creation date 2026-11-06, extension version 3.10 → 6.1. method="upgrade" is declared, so an existing install updates in place.

    J3 → J6 API migration

    • 111 Joomla 3 static class calls → 0. Each moved to its namespaced Joomla 4+ form (JText → Text, JFactory → Factory, JHtml → HTMLHelper, JRoute → Route, JModuleHelper → ModuleHelper and the rest). The calls were in html/mod_login/default.php, error.php, index.php, component.php, html/mod_menu/default.php, html/mod_search/default.php and html/mod_breadcrumbs/default.php; more than half were in the K2 overrides that are now gone.
    • The search, breadcrumbs and custom-module overrides no longer use the Joomla 3 $moduleclass_sfx variable (the search and breadcrumbs overrides read the suffix from the module's parameters). 17 of the 28 PHP overrides changed.

    Template options (administrator)

    • The on/off settings that were legacy type="checkbox" fields are now Joomla's radio switcher (for example H1TitleImgText, H2TitleImgText, RSSON, cam_autoAdvance, cam_navigation); 31 radio switchers in all. The template has no legacy checkboxes left.
    • Colour settings changed from plain text boxes to the colour picker (for example cam_loaderColor, cam_loaderBgColor).
    • Four colour options were relabelled to say what they colour: color24 “Slideshow Caption Text Color”, color25 “Slideshow Caption Background”, color29 “Carousel Pagination Dots Color” and color36 “Default Modules/Tables Separators and Borders Color”.
    • Defaults for a fresh install: the site name / logo links to the home page (logoLinked), and the built-in slideshow is switched on with autoplay on desktop and phones (cam_turnOn, cam_autoAdvance, cam_mobileAutoAdvance). Before, they were off. Existing sites keep their saved settings.

    Menus and scripts

    • The desktop drop-down menus are driven by CSS and a small built-in hover script in js/cs-mobile.js (with a short delay before closing) instead of the Superfish / Supersubs scripts. The “ON/OFF drop down menu” option (usedropdown) is retired with them. Drop-downs no longer close before you can reach them: moving the mouse from a menu heading down to its drop-down crossed a gap where neither was hovered. The whole path is now hoverable; the menu's spacing and appearance are unchanged.
    • The log-in pop-up opens through Bootstrap 5 (data-bs-toggle / data-bs-target / data-bs-dismiss), as a centred dialog.
    • The page-top background photo and the select-box styling no longer use the backstretch and dropkick plug-ins. The Google font (Open Sans) is linked directly in the page head instead of loaded by the WebFontConfig script.
    • js/: 27 → 9 files. Scripts no longer loaded: html5.js, jquery.backstretch.min.js, jquery.mobile.customized.min.js, modernizr.js, selectivizr-min.js, selectnav.min.js, superfish.js, supersubs.js and webfont.js. Scripts newly loaded: cs-jq-compat.js and cs-mobile.js. Note that jQuery itself is still used on the page (Joomla's copy) by the Camera slideshow, and the print / pop-up view (component.php) still loads the template's jquery-1.8.1.min.js when Joomla has not loaded jQuery.

    Look

    • Phone menu button and button row use the template's own green (rgb(121, 163, 31)) with dark bars.
    • The icon on the header search button is a Font Awesome 6 glyph (it was a bitmap).

    Fixed

    Footer custom code

    • Footer custom code. The “Insert code into template footer” box (footercode) was declared in the options but nothing printed it. Code entered there is now added just before the closing </body> tag, the same way the header box works.

    Logo and slogan

    • The logo and the slogan both link to the home page. The slogan had no link at all, and the logo's link setting did nothing unless the template style had been saved once. The link is now on unless you switch the logo link off (logoLinked).
    • On a site installed at the domain root, the logo link pointed at the current page; it now always goes to the site's home page.

    Pages that failed on Joomla 4+

    • Error pages: error.php used JError and JText, which Joomla 6 no longer provides (and 4.x and 5.x only with the Backward Compatibility plugin). With them gone Joomla could not render any error page, so every “page not found” became a 500. It is rewritten on the namespaced API, so “Page not found” and “access denied” pages show inside the template and fit a phone screen (css/presets/style-error.css: 1,052 → 2,402 bytes).
    • Error pages and server details: an error caused by a missing item (a news feed, for example) no longer prints the server's file paths and a technical trace, and a missing article or contact answers with the proper 404 page instead of a 500.
    • Print and pop-up views: component.php called the Joomla 3 JFactory class, which Joomla 6 no longer provides, so print and e-mail views could stop with a fatal error. It now uses the namespaced class.
    • Script errors on every page: index.php called jQuery(window).load(…), which jQuery 3 no longer supports as an event alias; it is replaced. The Camera slideshow calls jQuery 1.x functions that jQuery 3.7 removed; js/cs-jq-compat.js restores them.
    • PHP warnings on every page: the html/mod_custom/default.php override echoed the Joomla 3 variable $moduleclass_sfx (six “Undefined variable” warnings per page; the module chrome already carries the suffix), and index.php passed a possibly empty value to strip_tags() in three places (a PHP 8.1 deprecation). Both are fixed; the page output is unchanged.

    Page layout and content

    • Sample-data category pages: a category page that holds a Bootstrap 2 column beside a Bootstrap 5 one (<div class="row">…col-md-3…span9</div>) wrapped its main content below the sidebar. The compatibility stylesheet now lays out .row > .spanN as well as .row-fluid > .spanN.
    • Sample-data icons: five category descriptions pointed at icons from Joomla 2.5's admin template, which no longer exists, so they showed as broken images. They load from images/legacy-bluestork/.
    • Button labels were hard to read. In the template's default colour style (css/presets/style1.css), Read more links, the expand and collapse toggles on category pages, the search button and the Advanced Search link drew their text in white on the light green brand colour. The label is now dark, which leaves the green untouched and brings it past the WCAG AA contrast standard. The other preset stylesheets are unchanged.

    Maintenance pass

    • The @font-face in css/template.css pointing at Joomla 3's media/jui/fonts/ IcoMoon font, which Joomla 4 removed, is switched off (commented out), which ends four failed requests on every page.
    • Pagination arrows: Joomla 4+'s icon-angle-left / -right / -double-left / -double-right buttons had no mapping in the template's icon CSS, so they showed no arrow. They now show Font Awesome 6 arrows. The password eye (icon-eye, icon-eye-slash) is mapped the same way.
    • Featured articles: in a one-column featured (home) view, tall intro articles were clipped to their title. They now show in full.
    • Search button: the global button margin could pull a search button away from its box; search buttons now have margin:0.
    • With thanks to Michael Mullan, whose Expression bug report led to this maintenance pass across our templates.

    Removed

    Files removed (58)

    • Bootstrap 2: css/bootstrap.css, the css/bootstrap/ folder (bootstrap.css, bootstrap.min.css, bootstrap-extended.css, bootstrap-responsive.css, bootstrap-responsive.min.css, bootstrap-rtl.css, bootstrap-tooltip-extended.css) and js/bootstrap.min.js. Joomla 6's Bootstrap 5 and the compatibility stylesheet take their place.
    • Internet Explorer and old-browser files: css/ie.css, css/ie6.css, css/ie9-10.css, css/reset.css, js/selectivizr-min.js, js/modernizr.js, js/flexibility.js, js/imgSizer.js.
    • jQuery plug-ins and old copies (js/ 27 → 9 files): jquery-1.7.1.js, dropkick.js, jquery.dropkick-1.0.0.js, jquery.selectric.js, jquery.backstretch.min.js, jquery.mobile.customized.min.js, jquery.nicescroll.min.js, jquery.elevateZoom-3.0.8.min.js, jquery.equalHeights.js, jquery.plusanchor.js, jquery-eu-cookie-law-popup.js, easypaginate.js, owl.carousel.min.js, scrollReveal.min.js, selectnav.min.js, superfish.js, supersubs.js.
    • K2 leftovers (K2 is not part of the template or of this release): css/k2.css, css/k2.print.css, the html/com_k2/ override (4 files), the html/mod_k2_content/ slider and tiny overrides (5 files) and images/system/k2CalendarLoader.gif, plus the K2 selectors in index.php and the css/template.css block for the K2 items slider.
    • html/modules.php: Joomla 3-style module chrome functions; Joomla 4+ uses the layout chromes in html/layouts/chromes/. Also two zip archives of old overrides that sat in the tree, html/com_content.zip and html/mod_menu.zip.
    • The whole utils/ folder (9 files): admin-js.js (a Joomla 3-era admin script for the old checkbox switches), bss_fontchanger.php (nothing referenced it), the old js_colourchanger/ colour picker (jscolor.js and its four images) and images/switch-background.png and switch-mask.png.

    Stylesheets no longer loaded

    • bootstrap.css, bootstrap-responsive.min.css, bootstrap-extended.css, font-awesome.min.css (Font Awesome 4 from MaxCDN), ie.css, ie6.css, ie9-10.css, k2.css and reset.css. Newly loaded: all.min.css, v4-shims.min.css, bootstrap.rtl.min.css (right-to-left sites), bs2-bs5-bridge.css, bs2-donor-base.css, legacy-extras.css and, when present, custom.css.

    Retired settings

    • Five social slots removed with their switches: Google+, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Digg and Blogger.
    • The settings that went with the old drop-down menu script: usedropdown, dropheight, dropwidth, dropopacity, dropspeed.
    • The K2 colour option color28 (K2 Slider Items Handlers Background), only read by a K2 rule that is gone.
    • colours_handlers, the setting block that fed the old colour picker.

    Security

    • Output helpers added in index.php: 190 calls to the ph* helpers across the template. Every template setting written into the page is escaped for where it lands:
      • phEsc(): HTML text and attributes (also defined in component.php).
      • phRichText(): the site-name and slogan fields, which may contain simple markup. Joomla's input filter keeps the markup but strips scripts, styles, iframes and on* event handlers.
      • phHexColor(), phCssToken(), phCssNum(), phCssDim(), phCssFont(), phCssSelector(), phCssUrl(): colours, sizes, fonts, selectors and image URLs written into the page's CSS.
      • phJsStr(), phJsLit(): values written into the slideshow's inline JavaScript.
    • Raw echo $this->params->get(…) output in index.php: 140 lines → 2, the Header and Footer Custom Code fields (headcode, footercode), which are administrator-only by design.
    • Module titles, menu items and module content written into attributes are escaped in the module chromes and in mod_menu, mod_login and mod_search; the category, featured and archive article overrides escape their output too. htmlspecialchars / escape calls in the template: 37 → 73.
    • The social links open with rel="noopener".
    • On server errors the error page no longer prints a message that contains the server's file path or a stack trace; it shows Joomla's generic error text instead. The status code is unchanged.

    Quickstart

    The quickstart is now a complete Joomla 6.2.0 site with News Cast pre-configured as the active template. It replaces the previous quickstart, an Akeeba Backup archive (.jpa) restored with Kickstart.

    • Bundled extensions: Akeeba Backup Core 10.5.0, StageIt 6.6.2, Web Links 5.2.0 and the en-GB language pack 6.2.0.1.
    • The demo content comes to 44 published modules, 114 published menu items and 80 published articles.
    • The Smart Search index is built (167 indexed links), so the site search returns results from the first visit.
    • User registration is switched on (Users › Options › Allow User Registration), so the Register link shows in the desktop header and as a button in the phone button row. It was off.
    • A menu module (“Phone Second Menu (Main Menu)”) is published at cs-secondary, so the phone's second menu button opens the full main menu.
    • The five sample-data “Extensions” categories show their icons from images/legacy-bluestork/.
    • The logo link is saved on in the template style (logoLinked).
    • VirtueMart and K2 are not installed; News Cast is not a shop.

    Package

    • Standalone template: now a Joomla package, pkg_newscast-6.2.0.zip (pkg_newscast.xml), that installs the News Cast template (tpl_newscast.zip) and registers it in the package manager. It declares method="upgrade", so an existing News Cast updates in place, and <blockChildUninstall>true</blockChildUninstall>, so the template is removed through the package rather than on its own.
    • Quickstart bundle: a complete Joomla 6.2.0 install with News Cast pre-loaded as the active template, replacing the Akeeba .jpa quickstart.
    Earlier history and version numbering: the previous download was the vendor's Joomla 3-era package, version 26.07.2024 5.1.2. From 6.2.0 the first three digits of the template version match the Joomla release it is built for; a later fix on the same Joomla release adds a fourth digit (6.2.0.1).

Changelog entries prior to this release are not available.