Joomla 1.5 and Our Components - Compatibility Statement

Now that the release of Joomla 1.5 has happend we thought it would be the right time to publish information on the way forward for our components and business model.

Joomla 1.5 is not just another Joomla version. You cannot upgrade to Joomla 1.5 from an earlier version, you need to migrate your content/data. Also under the surface the Joomla 1.5 code is almost 100% different code with a different architecture. Although the core Joomla developers have aimed for backward compatibility, as a company we do not want to use the legacy code for our components moving forward.

For this reason, along with many other reasons, we have chosen NOT to make our existing components compatible with Joomla! 1.5. We have decided to make a clean break from our existing code (some of which was written before the first public release of Mambo over 3 years ago!) and write new, much cleaner, code.

None of our current components are designed for, or even work with Joomla 1.5
and they never will !

This means that from now on our current components will have no new features added and only upgrades will be security releases if needed.

For Joomla 1.5 we will write from scratch (and have already made significant progress) new components that use the Joomla 1.5 methodology, using our own bfFramework, and the Joomla framework without legacy Joomla/Mambo code or architecture. These components will not be upgrades to existing components but will be brand new components with brand new code.

Because these new components for Joomla 1.5 will require significant investment of time and man hours we will continue charging for these new components. Customers that have purchased Joomla 1.0.x components will not be eligible for free copies of these new components. (Our current life time upgrades policy allows existing customers to get the next upgrade version of a component for free, not a brand new different component that just happens to do something simular). We have to make the break sometime from old legacy code – Joomla will do this in Joomla 2.0 but we want to do it now to save our customers and us the headache of carrying forward old (sometimes broke) code.

We are hoping to release a new type of Forms component, Directory component and Tags component, Although the code, feature list and foundational structure will be totally different (Better!) than any component we currently have for sale – we think you are going to love them!

We are aiming for Full PHP5 Compatibility, xHTML/CSS Tableless Output, full language support, UTF-8, and much more in these new components – this support will be written from the ground up and utilizing the new features of Joomla 1.5 (Instead of the inconsistant approach in Joomla 1.0.x)

There are no set release dates for our Joomla 1.5 Components – don't ask us! Just let us get on programming them and we will release them when they are ready :-)

Joomla 1.5 is a dream come true for developers – we are loving it and once we have our new range of components released, so will you!