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Pulsar Changelog

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  • Version 6.2.0

    First Joomla 6 native release. Pulsar has been converted from Joomla 3 and rebuilt for Joomla 6.2.0 + PHP 8 + Bootstrap 5. The previous download is the Joomla 3 package (pulsar_template_package.01.10.2022 3.10.11.zip, template manifest 01.10.2022 3.10.11, first created in 2012), and everything below is measured against it. Every Joomla 3 class call is gone (488 → 0), the template options use Joomla’s own on/off switches and colour pickers, every template setting written into the page is escaped, desktop pages are 1170 px wide instead of a fixed 960 px, 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: 306 → 227, with 11 added, 90 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 and component.php load Joomla 6’s bundled Bootstrap 5 (/media/vendor/bootstrap/css/bootstrap.min.css) in place of the template’s own Bootstrap 2 sheet (css/bootstrap.css, 122 KB).
    • New css/bs2-bs5-bridge.css (canonical revision 2026-11-11.165), linked last in the page head with a file-time version marker. It lets Pulsar’s Bootstrap 2 markup render correctly on Bootstrap 5:
      • Bootstrap 2 grid: .row-fluid / .spanN widths and gutters, nested spans and phone stacking of every column; the Bootstrap 2 responsive utilities (hidden-phone, visible-desktop and the rest).
      • Joomla 4+ icon classes (pagination arrows, the password eye and others) mapped to Font Awesome 6 glyphs; the Smart Search field is the same height as its buttons.
      • Two Pulsar-specific blocks: pulsar-1170-frame-20261111 (the wider page frame, footer, breadcrumb bar, search box and login pop-up) and pulsar-std-20261103 (contrast, phone header, menus, the bottom module band and the phone rules below).
    • New js/cs-jq-compat.js: restores the jQuery 1.x calls that Joomla 6’s jQuery 3.7 removed but the bundled Camera slideshow still uses. Joomla 6 does not load jQuery by itself, so index.php now asks Joomla for it (Jquery::framework()) before the page starts.
    • Font Awesome 6.5.2 (all.min.css + v4-shims.min.css from cdnjs) on the front end; the template had no icon font loader. Its existing fa fa-* class names keep working through the shims.

    New phone layout

    • Phones now get a phone layout. The old page was a fixed-width desktop page that a phone drew and shrank; on phones the content now stacks to the screen width, 16 px in from the edges.
    • New js/cs-mobile-generic.js. On phones (up to 767 px) a menu button in the header opens the top menu as a slide-out panel. It is filled in the template’s blue (rgb(0, 112, 190)) with white bars, like the row of buttons under the logo.
    • A phone button row of 44×44 px buttons in the same blue: Section menu, Log in, Register, Search and Follow us (the social links). Each opens its own panel; tapping outside an open panel closes it.
    • Section menu opens the sidebar’s Main Menu (Home, Site Map, Login, Sample Sites, Example Pages). On phones the sidebar copy of that menu is hidden, so the page does not show the same links a second time further down. Desktop and tablet are unchanged.
    • Opening a phone panel dims the page below the button row only; the logo, menu button and button row stay clear.
    • On phones the logo is scaled to fit the header with the slogan under it, breadcrumbs that run to a second line wrap normally (they used to print every line on top of the first), the titles of the Sample Sites boxes sit centred in their boxes, and blog and category page numbers wrap instead of running off the screen.
    • The login pop-up fits a phone: it opens fully on screen, with Username, Password, Remember Me and a full-width Log in button in that order. Login fields use 16 px text on phones, so iPhones no longer zoom the page in when you tap them.

    Favicon

    • New Favicon tab in the template options (fieldset faviconsettings, fields favicon and favicontool, field class fields/favicontool.php). Pick one image, crop a square from it, and the template builds the icon set (a multi-size .ico and PNG icons from 32 to 512 px, including the 180 px Apple touch icon) and prints the matching tags in the page head (phFaviconSet(), phIcoBytes() in index.php). With thanks to Gianluca, whose favicon question inspired this tool.
    • 10 new language strings (TPL_PULSAR_FAVICON_*, TPL_PULSAR_FAVICONTOOL_*): language/en-GB/en-GB.tpl_pulsar.ini goes from 44 to 54 strings.

    Template Options screen

    • 39 colour settings now use a colour picker (Coloris: fields/colorpicker.php, js/coloris.min.js, css/coloris.min.css). They were plain text boxes with the old jscolor colour changer.
    • 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.
    • The icons in the template description load again: templateDetails.xml pointed at Font Awesome on MaxCDN, which no longer serves it; it now uses Font Awesome 6.5.2 from cdnjs.
    • Template options: 7 → 8 tabs; 20 fields added and 20 retired (below).

    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 (fa-x-twitter). The full set is X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Vimeo, Pinterest, Discord and RSS (13), drawn as Font Awesome 6 glyphs in the same grey as the old icon images (lighter on hover), each with a screen-reader label.

    Module style and module lists

    • New html/layouts/chromes/vmdefault.php: the module style the top, bottom and content rows ask for (style="vmdefault"). Joomla 4+ reads module styles only from html/layouts/chromes/ and ignores the Joomla 3 html/modules.php it used to live in.
    • New html/mod_articles_popular/default.php, and html/mod_articles_latest/default.php rebuilt on the Joomla 6 layout: the Latest Articles and Most Read lists print the module’s class suffix again (latestnews<suffix>, mostread<suffix>), so the template’s list styles such as _menu, _style1 and _style2 apply when you pick them. Article titles in both lists are escaped.

    Changed

    Joomla 6 platform

    • Built for Joomla 6.2.0 (previous download: Joomla 3 only), with no need for Joomla’s Backward Compatibility plugin.
    • templateDetails.xml: version 01.10.2022 3.10.11 → 6.2.0, creation date 29/11/2012 → 2026-11-11, and the version shown in the template description is 6.2.0 (2026-11-11). method="upgrade" is kept, so an existing install updates in place.

    Page width and spacing

    • Desktop pages are 1170 px wide on wide screens, like every current Energize Themes template; the template was a fixed 960 px page.
    • On desktop, content sits 20 px in from the edges of the white page frame (it was 1% of the screen, 14 px at 1400 px), and the search box moves with it so it lines up with the menu bar.
    • The bottom module band (the dark Bottom 1–3 row) now sits inside the page frame, level with the content above it, with the same gap under it as at its sides, its text 10 px from its edges and all four corners rounded. It used to run out to the frame’s edges and sit flush on its bottom.

    J3 → J6 API migration

    • 488 Joomla 3 static class calls in the old template → 0. Each moved to its namespaced Joomla 4+ form (JText → Text, JRoute → Route, JHtml → HTMLHelper, JFactory → Factory, JModuleHelper → ModuleHelper and the rest).
    • Heaviest files: html/com_content/featured/default_item.php (38), html/com_content/category/blog_item.php (36), html/com_content/article/default.php (27), html/com_content/category/default_articles.php (27), html/com_content/archive/default_items.php (25), html/mod_login/default.php (20). In total 24 of the 26 PHP overrides changed.
    • The article overrides build their links with Joomla 4+’s RouteHelper instead of Joomla 3’s ContentHelperRoute (22 → 0), and the menu overrides read item settings through getParams().
    • Joomla 3 JHtml behaviour calls: 31 → 1 (behavior.modal, behavior.tooltip, behavior.caption and the others Joomla 4 removed are gone).

    Template options (administrator)

    • 32 on/off settings that were legacy class="switch" type="checkbox" fields are now Joomla’s radio switcher (for example logoLinked, H1TitleImgText, H2TitleImgText, RSSON, cam_turnOn, cam_autoAdvance). The template has no legacy checkboxes left.

    Defaults for a fresh install

    • The slogan beside the logo links to the home page, like the logo. It looks the same (colour inherited, no underline), and the home link is / on a site installed at the domain root, where it used to be an empty link to the current page.
    • The site name / logo links to the home page and the built-in slideshow is switched on, with autoplay on desktop and phones (logoLinked, cam_turnOn, cam_autoAdvance, cam_mobileAutoAdvance default to on in templateDetails.xml; as checkboxes they had no default, so a fresh install had them off). Existing sites keep their saved settings.

    Search

    • Joomla 5 removed the old Search component and module, so the template’s html/mod_search and html/com_search overrides are gone. The search position now takes Joomla’s Smart Search box in the original grey search field with its magnifier image. Its button reads “Search”.

    Menus, scripts and fonts

    • The desktop drop-down menus are driven by CSS instead of the Superfish / Supersubs / hoverIntent scripts. Drop-downs open 10 px below the menu bar, are 222 px wide like the original, and third-level menus open 6 px clear of their parent list instead of covering it; items with a sub-menu show a ► arrow, and the menu stays open while the pointer crosses the gaps.
    • The slideshow loads jquery.easing.1.3.js and camera.min.js only; jquery.mobile.customized.min.js, which throws under Joomla 6’s jQuery, is no longer loaded.
    • component.php and error.php load their Google web font from a direct stylesheet link with preconnect hints instead of the WebFontConfig loader script (2 → 0).
    • The html5shiv script from Google Code, selectivizr-min.js, modernizr.js and imgSizer.js are no longer loaded, and the 8 Internet Explorer conditional comments in index.php are gone.

    Print view

    • component.php (print views and pop-ups) has a viewport tag so it fits a phone, and loads Bootstrap 5, then the template’s stylesheets, then the compatibility stylesheet, so the template’s own colours and styles apply.

    Look

    • The login pop-up is the template’s own dark 352 px panel, rebuilt for Joomla 6 (Bootstrap 5 had turned it into a wide white dialog with unreadable light-grey links).
    • Text contrast raised where the template’s colours fell short: the headings and text in the dark bottom module band (now 4.5:1), the footer links, and the social icons in the top bar (they had taken the link blue on the dark bar).
    • Photo gallery pages show every photo at one size (300 px, 4:3) on the same left edge, and full width on phones, instead of mixed sizes, some floated and some centred.
    • Latest Articles and Most Read lists sit on the same edge as the rest of the page again (Bootstrap 5 had indented them by 32 px).
    • On the login page the show password eye sits inside the password field, and the “Remember me” box sits clear of its label.

    Fixed

    Pages that failed on Joomla 4+

    • Error pages: error.php used JError and a Joomla 1.5-era configuration call ($config->getValue('config.sitename')). On Joomla 4 and later the error page itself failed, so Joomla could not show any error page and every “page not found” became a 500. “Page not found” and “access denied” pages now show inside the template’s own page, with the site’s header, menus and phone navigation, a viewport tag and the compatibility stylesheet, and the home page’s modules no longer push the message below a phone’s screen. Server errors (5xx) use Joomla’s plain system page.
    • Error pages and server details: an error caused by a missing item no longer prints the server’s file paths and a technical trace, and a missing article answers with the proper 404 page.
    • Article pages on Joomla 6: the “Read more” label called Text::sprintf('COM_CONTENT_READ_MORE_TITLE') with no title, which stops the page on Joomla 6 (2 → 0). The blog, featured and article overrides now use JGLOBAL_READ_MORE / JGLOBAL_READ_MORE_TITLE.

    Page layout

    • Module positions: index.php chose its rows and columns with Joomla 3 expressions such as countModules('top-1 or top-2 or top-3 or top-4 or top-5 or top-6') (22 of them). Joomla 4+ reads each as a single position name, so the test always failed and whole rows of modules did not show. Each position is now checked on its own (22 → 0).
    • Blog and featured rows: the blog and featured overrides counted their rows from Joomla 3’s article numbering. Joomla 4+ numbers the intro articles from 0, so in a multi-column blog an article could start no row and the next row began half-way along, leaving two articles touching. Rows are now counted as they are printed.

    Maintenance pass

    • The two @font-face rules in css/template.css pointing at Joomla 3’s media/jui/fonts/ IcoMoon font, which Joomla 4 removed, are switched off.
    • Pagination arrows: Joomla 4+’s icon-angle-left / -right / -double-left / -double-right buttons had no glyph in the template’s icon CSS; they now show Font Awesome 6 arrows.
    • Featured articles: in a one-column featured (home) view, tall intro articles are no longer clipped to their title by Joomla 6’s featured-view grid.
    • The template version in templateDetails.xml and the version shown in its description now match the release.
    • With thanks to Michael Mullan, whose Expression bug report led to this maintenance pass across our templates.

    Removed

    Files removed (90)

    • Bootstrap 2: css/bootstrap.css and js/bootstrap.min.js. Joomla 6’s Bootstrap 5 and the compatibility stylesheet take their place.
    • Internet Explorer files: css/ie.css, css/ie6.css, css/ie8.css, js/selectivizr-min.js and js/modernizr.js.
    • Old jQuery and MooTools scripts (js/ 13 → 6 files): superfish.js, supersubs.js, hoverIntent.js, jquery.mobile.customized.min.js, imgSizer.js, and the MooTools scripts tipz.js and parallax.js, which nothing loaded.
    • The unused css/responsive.css and css/slideshow.css, which nothing loaded.
    • html/modules.php (Joomla 3 module chrome functions with MooTools; the style the template uses is now html/layouts/chromes/vmdefault.php), the html/mod_search/ override (2 files) and the html/com_search/ overrides (6 files) for the search component and module Joomla 5 removed.
    • 58 switched-off override files that Joomla never read (folders named with a leading underscore): html/_com_contact/ (18), html/_com_users/ (20), html/_com_newsfeeds/ (10) and html/_com_weblinks/ (10), and a stray html/com_content/category/blog_item.zip.
    • utils/admin-js.js (a Joomla 3-era admin script for the old checkbox switches) and the old utils/js_colourchanger/ colour picker (jscolor.js and its four images).

    Retired settings (20 fields)

    • Five social slots removed with their switches: Google+, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Digg and Blogger.
    • The settings that went with the old drop-down menu script (dropheight, dropwidth, dropopacity, dropspeed, dropdownhandler1) and the old colour changer (colours_handlers).
    • Four colour settings that nothing in the template read, so changing them did nothing: buttonbackground, buttontextcolor, defaultmodhbg and defaultmodhtext.
    • The Print and Email icons in articles no longer show: Joomla 4 removed both features.

    Security

    • Output helpers added at the top of index.php, with 127 calls in that file. Every template setting written into the page is escaped or validated for where it lands:
      • phEsc() (30 calls): HTML text and attributes.
      • phRichText() (4): 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.
      • phCssToken() (55), phCssNum() (4), phCssDim() (2) and phCssUrl(), phHexColor(), phCssFont(), phCssSelector() (1 each): colours, sizes, fonts and other values written into the page’s CSS. A setting like red;}body{background:url(//x) can no longer rewrite the page’s styles.
      • phJsStr() and phJsLit() (12 each): values written into the slideshow’s inline JavaScript.
    • Raw echo $this->params->get(…) output in index.php: 92 → 2 occurrences. The two left are on purpose: Header Custom Code (headcode) and Footer Custom Code (footercode) still print exactly what an administrator enters, because they exist to add scripts and HTML to the page.
    • The logo and slogan image alt text is plain escaped text instead of the raw field, the preset stylesheet name is reduced to letters, digits, _ and -, and the menu overrides escape the menu’s link attributes.
    • The social links open with rel="noopener". The error page escapes the message it prints and casts the error code to a number.
    • Every PHP file in the template stops unless Joomla loads it (defined('_JEXEC') or die): 33 of 33 files.

    Quickstart Installer

    Replaces the previous download’s Joomla 3 quickstart (an Akeeba .jpa archive restored with Kickstart): a complete Joomla 6.2.0 site with Pulsar 6.2.0 pre-configured as the active template, set up as on the demo.

    • Bundled extensions: Akeeba Backup Core 10.5.0, StageIt 6.6.4, Web Links 5.2.0 and the en-GB language pack 6.2.0.1.
    • Search is Joomla’s Smart Search (the old Search component and module are gone), and its index is built (155 items), so the site search returns results from the first visit.
    • Search-engine-friendly URLs are on: pages open as index.php/<page> instead of index.php?option=…, as on the other Energize Themes templates.
    • The logo and the slogan link to the home page. The Welcome module’s “Learn more” opens Getting Started; it pointed at a page on another site and gave a “page not found”.
    • The Plugins and Example Pages pages open; on the Joomla 3 demo both gave a server error. The sample article photos are 440 px versions, so they fill a phone’s column.

    Package format

    • Standalone template: now a Joomla package, pkg_pulsar-6.2.0.zip (pkg_pulsar.xml), that installs the Pulsar template (tpl_pulsar.zip) and registers it in the package manager. It declares method="upgrade", so an existing Pulsar updates in place, and <blockChildUninstall>true</blockChildUninstall>, so the template is removed through the package rather than on its own.
    • Quickstart bundle: the complete Joomla 6.2.0 site described above.
    Earlier history and version numbering: the previous download was the Joomla 3 package dated 01.10.2022 (3.10.11). 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.