Posts from "2023"

What does the new year hold in store for Exponent? Hard to say but implementations and usage has dropped off. There will be a patch or version release near the beginning of 2024. In addition to updating many 3rd party libraries, it will include:

• add multi-column form controls for BS 4/5
• add meta_fb to events so they offer the attached event image when pasted to Facebook
• better date sorting forms showall view
• add mutlti-select option for dropdown controls in form design
• regression fix (v271p2) site crash on older php versions due to forms coding error
• regression fix (v271p2) upgrade could sometimes automatically be triggered
• fatal error forms view with order dropdown all
• regression fix old file manager image editor

It should be noted all PHP versions prior to v8.1 are considered obsolete though many servers are still running them. The biggest issue is recent 3rd party libraries will only support newer versions of PHP (v8+). That being said, v2.7.2 will be the last Exponent version to support PHP v5 & v7. Though Exponent v3.0.2 will have deprecated support for PHP v7.4 & v8.0, they will likely be dropped in the future. There are NO planned patches or updates to the 2.x branch after the next release 

PHP Version

Exponent

5.2

5.3

5.4

5.5

5.6

7.0

7.1

7.2

7.3

7.4

8.0

8.1

8.2

8.3

3.0.2

x

x

x

x

x

3.0.1

x

x

x

x

2.7.2

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

2.7.1

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

2.7.0

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

2.6.0

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

2.5.1p1

x

x

x

x

x

x

2.5.0

x

x

x

x

x

2.4.2

x

x

x

x

x

2.3.7

x

x

x

x

x

x

2.3.3

x

x

x

x

2.3.1

x

x

x

x

x

2.2.1

x

x

x

x

2.0.7

x

x

x

2.0.0

x

x

x

- Deprecated or Support not fully tested

Giving you a summer forecast...the main things we'll be working on this summer should include the following of  which several will manifest itself as a patch #3:

• Multi-column form controls - this will only be available for Bootstrap 4 & 5 and then only with standard labels (not side labels). This feature is mostly completed, but needs some testing in all scenarios before release.
• Cleaner checkbox and radio controls - again only for Bootstrap 4 & 5, but should benefit Bootstrap 3 and maybe Traditional or YUI controls. This will include an attempt to correctly display the label on the requested side of the control. We will also attempt to implement organic 'inline' controls instead of using tables and columns. Additionally an attempt to implement a 'required' option for a radio group. P.S. we added a 'required' checkbox option in v2.7.1/v3.0.1 patch #2.
• TinyMCE v6 - perhaps we'll upgrade our v5 support with the latest v6 release. Though it doesn't have as many features as v5. A reminder we added the TinyMCE v5 option in the last version.
• CKEditor v5 - now that CKEditor v4 is 'End or Life' we should do the heavy lifting required to implement v5? Though it's a different paradigm with seemingly fewer features, it is the future. Must come up with a method to include our custom 'Insert Field' plugin!
• Bootstrap v5.3 - though just released as final and working locally, our swatches haven't been updated to add the new 'dark' mode feature yet.