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Hi -

I am having difficulties enabling the required fields functionality on my form(s).

All I am looking to do is make it neccessary for the user to fill in the required fields (fairly standard practice on web forms as far as I know).

Validation is enabled, Mootools chosen.

I ticked off the box next to required in the form wizard and "applied" it.

On the validation tab, as I said, I have it enabled. The bottom of that page however I have not filled out anything - where it starts with: "1 - required (not blank)" and ends with "13- validate-confirmation".
Could this be a source of my problem?

I am using a template from Joomlajunkie (Morph template) and I believe it makes use of jQuery. I'm wondering if that may also be a potential cause of my problem.

I'll add a link in case it is helpful for anyone who has the time and energy to have a look.

http://www.helpinghand.za.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=55&Itemid=65

Thank you very much in advance.

Carl

Hi carlymyman,

The JQuery in the morph template certainly looks to be the main source of your problem.

Unfortunately the template is sufficiently broken that it even loads the JQuery library when you load the form without the template.

I suggest that you debug the form using a proper Joomla template, then see if you can switch the JQuery to no-conflict mode. (And also protest loudly to Joomla Junkie about the script junk.)

Bob

Hi GreyFace

I work for JoomlaJunkie.
As with most any template and extension, there is potential for conflicts and issues. We actively work with developers when issues pop up.

While I understand this is your forum, your comments are far from professional. Can you please explain what you mean by "script junk"?

Morph has been in heavy development for over a year now, and has some very advanced tech in it. If you need us to explain how some of it works we would be more then happy to.

We are working with CarlyMyMan on our forum to see if there is a configuration issue. We have a setting in Morph to disable the default MooTools Joomla loads. I am sure you would agree, loading multiple JavaScript libraries is poor form. When this was re-enabled your extension worked. So, as you can see, the issue was caused by MooTools simply being turned off.

JoomlaJunkie has been in business for as long as you, possibly longer. I am not sure what we have done to make you so angry about our products. We have never disparaged your work. Why do you feel the need to smash ours?

Hi ColumbusGeek,

Sorry to have upset you - but I think that you post speaks for itself.

In my opinion - which you may well disagree with - a robust Joomla template should not disable core Joomla functionality at all and certainly ot without a clear and comprehensible warning to all users that it may well break otehr extensions. The MooTools library is core Joomla functionality. I understand it is entirely possible to set JQuery into no-conflict mode so that it will co-exist with MooTools.

And using the tmpl=component parameter should, I believe, disable the template entirely. That doesn't happen on CarlyMyMan's site.

I haven't spent any more time with Morph than the few minutes it took me to see what was not working for CarlyMyMan so I can't speak for the product as a whole and I'm sure that a lot of hard work has gone into it; nor do my comments* apply to any other Joomla Junkie product.

I'm delighted to hear that you have identified the Morph feature that is causing the problem and hope that you will have the site back up and working with MyCarlyMan's forms as soon as possible.

Bob

* Just for clarity they were personal views and not those of Max, the ChronoForms developer, or of the ChronoEngine site.

I will agree to disagree on our views about how MooTools is handled. Sure, noconflict mode is available, and we have used it use it since jQuery added it. The point is why would one want to load 2 javascript libraries and affect page load times? I have one motor in my car, not two. We want Morph to have as many features as the end user wants, but also to be able to scale it back and be as lean and fast as others want. This is why this option is available. I do admit, maybe making the explanation a bit louder about what disabling this setting does would be advantageous.
I will submit this to the developers for consideration. Thank you for the suggestion.

If you would like like to test drive Morph and possibly write a review on your experience with our script junk, we would be more then happy to share a copy with you. Just let me know.

Hi Columbusgeek,

I broadly agree with you about the two frameworks. It's just that the 'powers that be' at Joomla decided that MooTools is the framework to use. So, if a developer requires something else - like JQuery - for their extension or template then they have to deal with the consequences. To stay with your car metaphor - it's a bit like taking it in for a paint job and finding on return that the trunk is full of a second engine.

I'd be delighted to look at Morph - but not for a little while, I'm on my own here at the moment trying to keep up with the support and writing a ChronoForms book all im my 'free time'.

Bob

GreyFace,
thank you very much for your quick reply and your accurate advice. I contacted Joomlajunkie and they in turn gave me spot-on advice to resolve the issue. It's now working.

Again, thank you.


Carl

Hi Bob,

I have read over this post and I must say, I am bemused that anyone can say something about a product when they know so little about it and the team behind it. Telling someone a product is/ has code junk without knowing so is BAD practice in any persons eyes.

I understand that you may not have intended to come across as being super objective in your reference to Morph. To be honest, I’m not too bothered, however I did feel the urge to clarify this matter as we are passionate about our work and product. People reading this out of context may not understand the reference and even after reading Matt’s comments, may still be left wondering.

So, I'd like to take a moment and explain a few things about Morph that you or others reading this post may not know. Particularly in terms of its code management.

Firstly, I'd like to say that Morph is by no means perfect, there is always room for improvement😉

However, when we started developing Morph more than 16 months ago one of our main goals was to build an ultra light and intelligent framework. We knew that frameworks in general are bloated and with so many features this is bound to happen. Every feature that gets added, in theory adds bloat to the page, even if the user is not asking for it and this is something we are very passionate about avoiding and has been at the forefront of the development.

Mootools is not our library of choice and we use jquery (in no conflict mode for sure) extensively for all Morph’s features. We feel jquery is better for what we want and have no need for Mootools by default in Morph, so why have it turned on unless its needed? We dont just simply remove or unset it, its far more intelligent than that. If for any reason a user needs it based on a dependance on Joomla (such as from end editing) it will turn it on automatically. The only thing we havent done is make it load when ALL joomla components that rely on it are used… but how could we, there are too many?

We do work very closely with dozens of extension developers and build support into Morph for their components. Because Morph is a framework, we add it once and it will always work on any and every website from then on. In this situation, we can add a check for Chronoforms so that mootools loads when the user needs it. A much cleaner solution than the user having to enable it manually, but it’s just a flip of the switch anyway. We would love to add support for your product if you like, as it will now fix this issue for other users.

This intelligent code management, as I explain with the Mootools, is done throughout Morph and it will only ever load the JS that is needed for what the user requires. There are hundreds of featured in Morph and if a user turns everything on, the risk is Morph will get bloated, but we have some serious code compression going on anyway so things are always highly optimized. On the other hand though, a user that uses very few features will have much less code loading, there is even a javascript free version for those who need it.

Morph only ever loads one javascript and one css file, and they are treated to some special care to make them as lightweight and compressed as possible. The total size of the framework, with around 2 thirds of the features loaded on a vanilla themelet, is lighter than nearly all templates out there that are built for optimization, such as Bolt and the likes.

Most of all, we won’t stop until we have it as optimized as much as humanly and technically possible as our aim is to make it and keep it the most lightweight framework. We have a lot planned for the near future in terms of even more enhancements to the code management that will seal Morph as the fastest and most optimized framework out there.. At least that’s our mission😀

Now everyone knows how it works.😉 Any comments and feedback are always appreciated and we can be reached on our forum as well as Twitter (@prothemer / @jMorph). Feel free to contact us at any point for clarification or just a chat.

Hi andyneale,

Thanks for the long post, it is helpful to know more about Morph and I will try to find the time to take a better look. I know nothing more about it than looking at one broken site and a quick look at the Morph site.

From my perspective - I'm a volunteer here trying to help people use ChronoForms on their Joomla sites. Answering each question takes me from a minute or so to an hour or so. Questions that involve looking at a users site and diagnosing the interaction with another extension or template always take more than a minute or so - five to fifteen would be typical.

ChronoForms too has some faults and bugs - Max, the developer, is aware of most of those. It is a complex extension capable of helping Joomla jump through some advanced hoops that ae not always easy with other extensions.

To do that it relies on some basic Joomla functionality - including the availability of the MooTools 1.1 library. Morph breaks that . . . it's not the only extension or template that does so but it is one of a small minority.

One of the diagnostic tools that is really helpful in Joomla is the ability to isolate the behaviour of a component from the behaviour of the template and from other extensions by using &tmpl=component - Morph breaks that too.

So, from my particular and personal perspective Morph today is a seriously flawed Joomla extension - I understand that you have chosen to go down that road for good reasons of your own and I recongise that it may perform marvellously well in other contexts.

Bob

Hi Bob,

I'm a new member to the morph team. But my area of profession before I started @ProThemer, is not templates.
Since I still work @NinjaForge, my main profession is extensions.

So first, I must say that you got every point made on &tmpl=component far off. &tmpl=component is for one a template feature, secondly meant for use with iframes in modal popups and thirdly not to separate/isolate the component from the template at all.
It sounds to me like Chronoforms is trying to use &tmpl=component as if it's &format=raw, and IMO personal and professional opinion that makes Chronoforms seriously flawed, not Morph or any other jquery based template for that matter.

Secondly, Morph is one of the very few templates around that use JDocument for adding its scripts, unlike almost every single other joomla template out there who hardcode it in. Meaning you can override it if you want to.

So don't call Morph or any other template or extension in general, if you don't know what're talking about.

-Stian

Hi,

Thanks for your honest reply, though you do it again.. make reference to Morph being "seriously flawed" without knowing the whole truth.

So, from my particular and personal perspective Morph today is a seriously flawed Joomla extension - I understand that you have chosen to go down that road for good reasons of your own and I recongise that it may perform marvellously well in other contexts.

and

&tmpl=component - Morph breaks that too.

Morph does not break it, it just disables it for security precautions, this was a user requested feature because many people don't want it enabled if they dont use it. Users can set Morph in a mode where it is hard for hackers to see it is Joomla as all traces of it can be removed.

The idea is to give users as many options as possible to control all aspects of their website. We have tried to include options that cover a broad spectrum of common tasks Joomla developers/ website builders do most often. Much of our options are from user feedback over a 6 months beta period and our users love the flexibility.

Saying its flawed because a feature you would need as a developer is turned off... especially a feature 90% of other users wont even use or need or even consider. So why not turn it off? The defaults in Morph are set to the most commonly used setting, and in this case, it is disabled because most users wont need it. Me thinks you are looking through "developer covered glasses"

You can see Morph's debug and performance options here. These cover a wide variety of options and choices for users.

In my opinion - which you may well disagree with - a robust Joomla template should not disable core Joomla functionality at all and certainly ot without a clear and comprehensible warning to all users that it may well break otehr extensions. The MooTools library is core Joomla functionality. I understand it is entirely possible to set JQuery into no-conflict mode so that it will co-exist with MooTools.

Yes, I disagree... you are assuming all extensions use mootools... but they dont. In fact, many many use jquery and I did say that we can check if a component is loading and needs mootools. We can include this for Chronoforms, so users in future will not need to enable it, it will do so automatically.. we just need to add it once and that's it. I also said jquery is in no conflict mode so it wont conflict, but that's not why we disable mootools, its about the performance.

The point is... why load a 65kb file when its not always needed? 65kb... that's a lot when you look at really optimizing everything and more so when its not used... just sitting there. Many of our users keep it disabled as they don't need it, but many do, the key is they have the option to do so... ie the flexibility without having to dig in any code.

Our entire JS with everything together is only 23kb for ALL Morph's features. So I ask, why on earth would we push that to up by another 65kb unless its required.. and to say it is.. is again assuming that every Joomla website uses components that rely on mootools.

We do have on our roadmap to include an equivalent mootools option for all our features, so the user can essentially choose between jquery and mootools with Morph.

ChronoForms too has some faults and bugs - Max, the developer, is aware of most of those. It is a complex extension capable of helping Joomla jump through some advanced hoops that ae not always easy with other extensions.

Yes, I agree, it is a great component and I have used it before (not in a while) and if the bugs I had last time I used it are fixed, I will certainly be using it again in the future.

Hi andyneale,

I said that Morph is seriously flawed from my perspective - which is that of someone trying to support ChronoForms. Making it behave in a completely different way from Joomla is evidently what your users want. It absolutely is not what I want to see when I try to help ChronoForms users find out why their site is behaving oddly.

I understand that your point of view is different. We can debate this until we are long in the tooth without any likelihood of agreeing.

Now I know that Morph behaves in this 'non-standard' way I will happily keep an eye out for it and forward any queries to your forums for resolution.

Bob

PS Just to repeat for clarity, I'm not the developer of ChronoForms (just a couple of the plugins).

Hi Stian,

Sorry I missed your post until after I'd replied to andyneale.

Great to see the whole of the Morph team piling in over here. Makes me feel very warm.

I see that you understand &tmpl=component and how it is supposed to work - I'm sure that you will soon be able to find the time to make sure that it works correctly with Morph too. Or maybe the design of Morph makes that impossible.

You will be greatly relieved to know that your assumption about the way ChronoForms uses &tmpl=component is completely wrong. In that dimension at least, ChronoForms is the epitomy of flawless perfection.

Bob

ChronoForms is the epitomy of flawless perfection.

You sure are a interesting person. 🙄

I see that you understand &tmpl=component and how it is supposed to work - I'm sure that you will soon be able to find the time to make sure that it works correctly with Morph too. Or maybe the design of Morph makes that impossible.

Another stab.....this time with a subtle hint of sarcasm to top it off, you just don't give up do you? I suggest you learn what you are talking about before you shoot your mouth off. You are making accusations and assumptions that come across as beyond your level of coherence and its making you look incompetent and just plain old grumpy. How so would the design make it impossible? I am super curious how you came up with that one.

It DOES work properly in Morph... it is just disabled for security reasons... a simple flip of the switch and its all good. How many ways can I explain this so you will understand? If something is turned off, does it mean it's non standard?? how so??? or is it just that the default configuration is not how YOU want it or feel it should be.

PS Just to repeat for clarity, I'm not the developer of ChronoForms (just a couple of the plugins).

Yes, this is obvious... but you still represent them, rather badly in my opinion. It comes across that you know very little about modern website development and performance optimization because if you did, you would see value in these options given to the user. JS and CSS optimization are at the very core of modern website building and a hot topic for many reasons. Even Joomla is considering changing / adding jquery to the core which in many peoples opinions should have been the way to go from the beginning like WP and drupal figured out back then already. This is why there is a big move from template clubs to focus on this part of their templates, customers are starting to demand the best in performance.

Yes this is debatable and can go on forever, but the difference here is that you are blaming, accusing and down right objective to an offensive tone. This is not debating, it is belittling.. a big difference IMHO.

I said that Morph is seriously flawed from my perspective - which is that of someone trying to support ChronoForms. Making it behave in a completely different way from Joomla is evidently what your users want. It absolutely is not what I want to see when I try to help ChronoForms users find out why their site is behaving oddly.

To finalize this issue, if you like, we can add a check in Morph that will look for the Chronoforms component and will activate mootools when the user loads a website/page with chronoforms. This should solve all your issues with our "non standard" product and it will now behave exactly the same vs completely different.... its as simple as that.

Sure, send them in our way.
I believe that the user should always get the best possible support,
with an solution oriented staff that got the users in their best interest.

I'm flattered that you think sending Morph related requests to our forum.
I didn't know you felt that good about our support service 8)

We'll make sure that we live up to your expectations😉

Hi there,

@Stian: Thank you, we are absolutely agreed on that.

@andyneale: Did you read the post by the Morph Team member that I was replying to?

I am very sorry that you and your colleagues find it necessary to spend your valuable time posting here in defense of Morph. Especially as you confirm that the behaviours of Morph in the two very specific and narrow areas that I have commented on are deliberately 'non-standard'; albeit for good reasons.

Bob