Good morning Joomlers! Today we’ve got some incredibly exciting news for you all. After the recent update to Helix Ultimate 2.0 Alpha 1, for a few months, we’ve been working relentlessly. This time we want to bring you another sneak peek into what we envision as the most feature-rich and complete template framework on Joomla. Helix Ultimate 2.0 Alpha 2 is released as of today, and you can play around with it to figure out what’s new right now!
These changes will make your Joomla experience so much better while also improving compatibility and future-proof your websites. Please be sure to check out the alpha 1 release notes so that you can catch up on the previous changes as well.
For now, let’s take a look at the newest changes:
[HOT] Joomla 4 Support
As you may already know, Joomla 4 is right around the corner, and it’s a huge upgrade to the CMS. Apart from numerous other changes, it also comes with a completely new admin interface and a reworked user experience. As Joomla 4 Beta 5 was just released on 27 October 2020, we’ve also been working to make our products compatible with them.
We’ve seen the fancy new tricks up its sleeves, but we also have to be ready for them, right? That’s why we’ve made Helix Ultimate 2.0 fully compatible with newer versions of Joomla 4. You can try Helix Ultimate 2.0’s Alpha 2 with any Joomla 4 build to test out all the new stuff that this CMS brings to you.
Support for Newer Versions of Joomla 3
We will also continue to support newer versions of Joomla 3 so that the dedicated Joomla 3 users don’t feel left out. Obviously, when Joomla 4 comes out, not all users will adapt to it immediately. That’s why we felt like it’s a good idea to keep connected with Joomla 3 users as well.
So in this release, we’ve added compatibility for Joomla versions 3.9.x and 3.10.x-alpha.
Improved Template Caching
We’ve improved the caching system for templates that you may end up using on your Joomla website. In previous versions, when you duplicate template styles from Extensions > Templates > Styles, the caching system would not deliver cached styles as it only caches the latest ones.
With this version, we have added a fix to this issue. From now, each and every Helix Ultimate style is cached separately and delivers corresponding information from the cache to the user.
Enhanced Settings Toolbar
The settings toolbar on Helix Ultimate has been upgraded to remember its last position. If you change its position while configuring the Helix settings, it will stay in the same position on your screen so that you can pick up exactly where you left off.
New Alt Text Option For Site Logo
To further improve SEO on an already optimized template framework, Helix Ultimate 2.0 will allow you to add alt text to your website’s logo. As you may know, an alt text is the text associated with the image helpful when a search engine crawls your website. So, adding a relevant, specific, and detailed Alt Text to your website’s logo will help create a much more optimized website and boost rankings.
Wrapping Up
With the newest alpha version of Helix Ultimate 2.0, we want to refine all the features that we first introduced in Alpha 1. This version comes with an improved core, an enhanced codebase with future-proof development practices, and some new features as well.
Keep your eyes on our blog and our newsletters for more updates on Helix Ultimate 2.0 and releases. We’re super excited for you to try it out and see what we’ve built! Please refer back to us with as much feedback as you can, because that’s what keeps us going.
