Moving discussion out of UI refresh thread to not have too many topics there.
Also, this is outside of scope of this thread, but such a big visual refresh kind of requires a major release. So i was thinking about 3.0.0 maybe. But we also spoke about removing bundled Java at some point and i was also thinking about 3.0.0 for such impactful in a sense change. But i was not thinking on releasing such version this soon. So now i’m not sure how to go about this. Also, if we go with this new single skin/theme, we should remove other parts that are not required now (jtattoo, littleluck, substance). Which is probably as easy as removing them in pom.xml. And for 3.0.0 we surely want the latest Smack version, which will require some work to adjust Spark to.
What you’re saying all makes sense to me. Maybe it is worth to have an ‘alpha’ or ‘beta’ release for 3.0.0 though, so that we can get some more feedback on the UI?
Unless you finally quit slacking and start programming We might wait a few years if we want to put everything in.
Yes, we can have a beta and do a blog post and maybe some admins will notice this on a feed in admin console or by visiting the site. But i don’t have high hopes that many will try it. I will move this to a separate thread.
3.0.0 Beta - New UI (remove JTattoo, Substance and LittleLuck along the way), Pade Meetings, Latest Smack, possibly Carbons support and JCEF (depends on how much work is required, but maybe move to later)
3.0.0 Final after 2-4 weeks
3.0.x Bug fixes and small improvements
3.0.5 Carbons and JCEF (if not completed for 3.0.0)
3.1.0 no JRE bundling, maybe move away from Java 8 and support Java 11/15 only? (also Beta?)
So, GUI refresh is mostly completed. There are a few minor issues that can be filed in the tracker and left to fix later. I have also just removed JTattoo, Substance and LittleLuck from pom.xml. Installer weights whopping 3.5 MB less now
Nobody has volunteered to work on latest Smack support. So can leave it for 3.0.5/3.1.0 or such. Same for Carbons, JCEF.
Emoticons… i don’t like free ones i have found and they require us to add another contribution links to readme, etc. Also there is a bug that causes new icons not to overwrite old ones. So most users won’t see new icons anyway. Maybe after this bug is fixed we can get back to this and work on a new bigger emoticons pack.
So, i think GUI refresh and Pade Meetings integration is enough for 3.0.0. Should we now prepare the Beta release? @k33ptoo@ilyaHlevnoy do you feel we need to polish something before the beta? @R87A maybe you are back from your break and want to work on something?
I would like this problem to be resolved before release https://igniterealtime.atlassian.net/browse/SPARK-2219
If none of the developers solves this problem, then I propose to rename the plugins and offer my PR(I sent you in a personal message) to block some plugins, since I and my users will not use Pade yet.
Excellent work everybody! It’s been great watching everyone’s progress and how fast this has been moving along.
I’m going to roll this out to a number of my power users over the next few days and see if I can drum up any additional hiccups.
Thanks for the great work!
Our company just updated to Spark 3.0.0, the only issue we’ve noticed is the chat window when multiple windows are open. We’ve had many requests to downgrade back to 2.9.4 just to get this feature back.
Please add an option to allow stacked rows to see all open chats instead of only a scrolling horizontal with a red number and a dropdown arrow. In my department, I’ve sometimes got 15 or so open at once and the scrolling or the drop arrow can be tedious. Heard the same complains in the group chat as well.
I think I will be able to make choices about how tabs are displayed in the next release, so that users can choose what kind of tabs they prefer. Thanks for the suggestion.
We might wait a few years if we want to put everything in.
