I have seen some news extension which may be of interest for some. First could be YO Search (made by www.yophp.com) this is a new module which box reveals a drop down menu after the user clicks into the input field. The menu is meant to act as a filter with several checkbox options that allow the user to select specific categories for his search. When the user hovers out of the input or the filter box, the drop down will disappear.
YO Search load elements like Joomla Search Component with plugin search as content, category, section, weblink, etc. For me looks very cool, this is very useful when you don’t have many place on your layout but you want to show more search options. Some ideas from this solution should be included in AceSearch module, as well.
Show Me a New Dress, Joomla!
Another interesting finding is Jentla Flexile (jentla.com) is a new vision for Joomla Administration. It is designed to provide to both Joomla! versions a modern, intuitive administration system usable from micro businesses to enterprises. Of course for Joomla! 1.6 this template works and looks a little bit better.
The most significant change made with Flexile is the removal of horizontal menus and almost all icons. To save screen real estate and reduce clutter, the actions for a page have been moved to a dropdown menu accessed via a spanner icon. A left menu is more productive for an application than a series of horizontal menus. Left menus can remain open to the level of the page in use, making navigation considerably easier than horizontal menus. Jentla Flexile is freely available and licensed as GPL3. Certainly, you will enjoy minimalism presented in the template.Such seemingly simple modifications can significantly change the usability of the CMS.
Nice Google Map in My Items
DM Digital released a new extensions which will be our first step into trying to make the Joomla experience even more simple for those who use Joomla and aren’t technician or professionals.
The extension is called DM Map (joomlaextensions.dmdigital.it), and tries to address the difficulties that sometimes user find while trying to embed Google Maps into Joomla articles: we wanted to create an automated way for them to just input the address and see their map in the frontend, without having to input hand-made plugin codes. I’ve been using this extension for a few days and I still think it is very useful. Daniele Grassi great job!