Announcing the start of SMF 3.0 development

[Sesquipedalian]

No, not for a while yet. We're still working on Alpha 1.

[Oldiesmann]

You can download the code from GitHub (the "release-3.0" branch), but there aren't any frontend changes right now - it looks exactly the same as 2.1 (and features/functionality are the same as well - though not everything is working yet due to the code changes).

[ColinJM]

Great Job Guys, love that 3.0 includes recurring Calendar events!

[Thomas057]

Please don't forget to make it SEO Responsive with Indexing thanks     

[Kindred]

"SEO responsive"?   that's a stupid buzzword that means nothing.


SMF is already pretty SEO friendly (and uses canonical to assist with that)  but **NO** forum is ever going to be SEO "great" because it's user written content - not curated content.

SMF 2.1.x (and even 2.0.x) already responsive design (as long as the custom theme or mods don't break it)

[landyvlad]

This is encouraging news.

A big thank you to @shawnb61 for all your work to date and to @Sesquipedalian for stepping up.


Given the whole world is moving that way - though I'm NOT suggesting it be integrated as core functionality or anything - but the potential use of AI should be contemplated as a design consideration.
That is, making it so that AI tools can be integrated into SMF in future.

I know very little about it or protocols etc (is there a version of 'hooks' for AI? )but I think it's a potential opportunity which if missed may make SMF less attractive as an option,. if other forum software does take it into account.

Ok I've even lost myself now

Anyway keep up all the good work ladies, gentlemen and well, everyone.

[asmith]

@Sesquipedalian What's your take on jQuery? Do you think 3.0 is a good opportunity to drop it in favor of vanilla JS? (I know we're heavily relying on it. caret/atwho/scrollbar/datepicker etc...)

[Sesquipedalian]

@Sesquipedalian What's your take on jQuery? Do you think 3.0 is a good opportunity to drop it in favor of vanilla JS? (I know we're heavily relying on it. caret/atwho/scrollbar/datepicker etc...)

Personally, I'm indifferent. However, I'm pretty sure @live627 wants to remove it. If he (or anyone else) wants to make that happen by the time 3.0 is ready for beta testing, I won't object one bit.

[StarredSkies]

This is amazing to hear! Great work guys.

[m4z]

Hello, Great Announcement!!
 Do you have any estimate on the possible dates of these implementations?
 .. or when can there be a working version of SMF 3.0 for production?

aprox.

I'm willing to bet my nonexistent third nipple that it will be done before the year 2030.

[KensonPlays]

I haven't used SMF since 2.0. I'm looking forward to seeing what 3.0 is like!

[asmith]

SMF coding style was always to use a separate line for curly braces.

Code Select Expand

if (condition)
{

}

However in 3.0, I'm seeing the opening curly braces on the same line.

Code Select Expand

if (condition) {

}

Why this change? I myself was pretty much used to it. Was there a discussion?

[Sesquipedalian]

We've decided to change our coding standard to more closely align with PSR-12. It was a decision reached unanimously in discussion by the dev team.

[asmith]

Yep that also explains why single rule inside if statements are also wrapped in curly braces.   

Anyway, the bigger picture is that SMF is still going strong and that's what matters *thumbs up*

[thepoorman]

Not sure if I'm in the correct place, but can you place the "ADD A BOARD" BUTTON on the top of the category list. Instead of having to scroll down to the add a button. Would be nice if the 2 was updated.

[Arantor]

Not sure if I'm in the correct place, but can you place the "ADD A BOARD" BUTTON on the top of the category list. Instead of having to scroll down to the add a button. Would be nice if the 2 was updated.

If memory serves its at the bottom of each category, so it's tied to that category rather than a generic "add board" button.

Adding the button at the top would make it generic and mean you just have to spend the same effort in a different time/place, namely selecting which category it goes in...

[Julius_2000]

Oh, I somehow missed this announcement. Sounds wonderful. Thanks to @shawnb61 for your contribution!

I am wondering, for css, are you going to implement "&" nesting to make things a bit more lean and clear, now that almost all browsers support it?

Will it be necessary for custom themes to be adapted like it was for the transition from 2.0.x to 2.1.x ?

Anyways, I am pretty excited!

[Diego Andrés]

Support for it is not ideal yet so it's not currently in the scope. Could still change during the next year, but for now the CSS still getting a cleanup regardless.

And yes, themes likely need to be adapted. However currently there is a 90% chance they work but it's only going to get worse (probably), so I'd advise to adapt them to avoid issues.

[live627]

I am wondering, for css, are you going to implement "&" nesting to make things a bit more lean and clear, now that almost all browsers support it?

no plans for a preprocessor like sass which enables such nesting

[SleePy]

CSS now has native support for &, no preprocessor.  But it's 2023 new, so fairly new support in browsers. https://caniuse.com/css-nesting https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Nesting_selector