Weaver Xtreme 4.4 Beta Available

[Weaver]

Weaver Xtreme 4.4 Beta Release Version Available for Download

Weaver Xtreme 4.4 is an important update and upgrade of the theme. It has significant code revisions, and important new options for building full and wide width sites. It also will serve as a bridge for Weaver Xtreme 5, which will have very significant new features.

The download is available at https://weavertheme.com/beta-versions/

The beta versions will be numbered as 4.3.100 so that when the final 4.4 is released, it will update with the normal WP updates. With the advent of WP 5.5, you will no longer need the Easy Theme and Plugin Upgrades plugin as that is now a part of WP. If you do need to downgrade to Weaver Xtreme 3.4.9, you will need to temporarily switch to an alternate theme, delete the beta version, and redownload the 4.3.9 from WP.

Important! Download both the theme and the theme support plugins on the download page.

The most significant upgrade is the addition of the Alignment option to the #wrapper region, which makes it very simple to design wide or full width sites. And to make that even easier, a new percent based Left/Right padding option has been added to the Wrapper, Container, Header, and Footer areas. This new option coupled with Align Wide and Align Full makes it easy to design attractive full or wide width sites with responsive padding. This new method is now the recommended method to do that over the old Full Width options.

The initial beta version of Weaver Xtreme 4.4 seems stable even with the many revisions. We’re using it on this forum site. We’ve even changed the look of the fourm to use the new Absolutely sub-theme, based on Align Full and responsive L/R padding – with only a couple of tweaks to the sidebar layout.

Here’s the summary of changes:

= Version 4.4 =
* Updated: Major refactoring of Customizer Interface Code
* Tweak: Improved menu locations of some Customizer Options
* Added: Some transition features for version 5.0
* Added: alignment option to #wrapper
* Added: L/R % Padding to Wrapper, Container, Header, Footer
* Updated: Gallery Post Format code
* Tweak: Fixed issues with Site Title on Primary Menu: color wasn’t inherit by default, double instance on default menu
* Added: New “Absolutely” subtheme – uses Align Full + L/R % padding to get full width layout

 

[Weaver]

Just a note – I updated the original post to include the note to upload and install both the theme and the theme support plugin.

The updated theme support version includes the new Alignment option for the Wrapper, plus the new % L/R padding for the Wrapper, Container, Header, and Footer.

If you use the old version of the Theme Support, and then save options, you will lose any of the new settings.

[scrambler]

First quick observation on the v4 beta

It appears the wrapper is always full width. I have a wrapper set as 1200px center, and the 1200px is only applied to the container, the wrapper itself is full browser width. And Align left / center / or right do the same.

Can you let me know if it is intentional or a bug?

Because if intentional, it will have a number of ripple effects I will get into, but no need if it is just a bug.

 

[scrambler]

I think, when installing the beta, it changed the One step layout to full width which caused the above problem.

You may want to check that out as it should probably leave the one step layout on traditional by default.

You may want to consider a warning in the Wrapper width setting that says this is being overridden by the one step layout

[scrambler]

@weaver, I will send beta reports to you directly by Email (the weavertheme gmail one), unless you prefer for me to post them here.

Let me know if you do

 

[MrWheeler]

I am very pleased to hear of these new versions coming – more of an already great thing!

If it would be out of place for me to request certain features here, please delete this. I would request the option to have breakpoints to distinguish, if possible (and be integrable somehow with Elementor) tablet-landscape and phone-landscape from their portrait modes, and large desktop screens (1920×1080+?) from smaller; and more social icon options (I would be very glad to be able to use genericon-book, genericon-quote, genericon-chat, genericon-comment, and genericon-handset as social icons without having to make 32×32 graphics that get substituted through CSS).

Anyway, wishing you all great success with the updates!

[Weaver]

Is there support now in Elementor that can display differently on phone and tablet landscape?

There is an @media feature called aspect-ratio that might serve for this purpose, but of course, it would also work on short desktop browser views.

A landscape tablet isn’t really any different than a cheap laptop screen, so I can’t think of much of a difference.

And even a landscape phone is likely to have an aspect ratio not much different than a desktop browser window.

But could you be more specific about how you would like this feature to work? One case I can think of is with a header, which can sometimes end up totally filling a viewport on a short window. But that is true for short desktop views as well.

If you have any examples of any theme or plugin (Elementor?) that does something with this issue, that could help.

And regarding the icons – the version of Genericons used by Weaver Xtreme is the older one, and has a very limited set of social icons. The new version, Genericons Neue has no social icons, but has new ones like chat. It would be possible to switch to the new set, but at a cost of compatibility with existing sites. This is a giant problem. I’m not sure exactly how to deal with this problem and maintain compatibility.

[MrWheeler]

Hi Weaver,

Thanks, the old Genericons has all the icons I would use, and they’re very good. I just meant to request that more of them would be put in the Weaver Xtreme Plus social icons list next time to be so conveniently available. (In my case, I needed an icon in the set for donations, since I made and manage the website for a registered charity, so I used the envelope icon. That meant I had to choose something else for email, and genericon-quote, genericon-chat, or genericon-comment would have worked, but they weren’t in the Social Icons list, so I followed Scrambler’s instructions and used his CSS from 2016, but my 32×32 icons don’t look too good next to the rest of the icons, no matter what I do, it seems.)

Regarding responsive modes/breakpoints, Elementor still has just the three modes. You are right, surely, about phone/tablet landscape modes being useful not just for them but for many laptop screens and small desktop screens. Because of the way my site’s home page was designed, I struggled a bit to fit some content in in a way that looked good in my phone and tablet’s landscape mode. Other people look for these extra breakpoints for other reasons; some descriptions of different needs, plugins and ways to approach this are at https://isotropic.co/how-to-add-custom-breakpoints-to-elementor/. I thought, with Weaver Xtreme’s excellent Elementor integration, and way of maximizing design power and flexibility, maybe the new version or new Plus might do something like what the plugins at that page describe.

I will look into the media aspect feature. There is still a lot in Weaver Xtreme that I haven’t learned yet.

All the best!

[scrambler]

I think the Landscape vs portrait need to differentiate (aspect ratio) is limited to very specific things, like a parallax image for example.

In most case, what matters most is the width of the display as content can always be scrolled vertically, and that is covered by desktop (768+), small tablet (580 – 768) and phones (580-)

So what you need to do, is to be more specific on what are the layout design options where you feel the need to differentiate by aspect ratio is really needed.

[MrWheeler]

Sorry for not replying sooner. I’ve had a rough few days. I want to be careful not to overstate the need, and not turn this thread into a support request for something to do with my own website. My intent was just to offer a couple of ideas that I thought might be of general interest. I read one person say something like, on phones and tablets header graphics can be too small in portrait mode or too big in landscape mode (filling the screen). For me it was about keeping a balance of white space around an irregularly shaped graphic; on my phone in portrait mode, there were white space areas of 0.5″x1.5″ to have a few words put in maybe, and in landscape mode, about 3″x2″ on both sides, which would look better with more text. The issue was the same but a bit more pronounced on my tablet, but not a big deal. I’ve been able to compensate well enough for present purposes. Someone else voiced a desire for an extra breakpoint for large (1920px+) desktop screens, because he thought adding an extra column of content there would look better. These again were in Elementor discussions. Not necessarily something Weaver Xtreme would have to fix. Thanks for considering.

[scrambler]

It does look like these would fall more into the occasional customization, rather than a large amount of things all sharing the exact same ratio threshold need.

Remember, I am happy to work with you on custom CSS to accommodate these. a While back, I shoed someone how to make a full width header image that crops the edges on large browsers, and only scales down under a certain width. This was to avoid a header image becoming too high on very large browsers.

So always feel free to bring up specific cases for customization, just provide full details of desired behavior an a link

[Author]

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