Mad Blanks for Joomla! 1.5 Native!

Upgrade instructions are included in this article. 

I have released Mad Blanks 1.4.0 Beta 1.

This release adds support for Joomla! 1.5 Native, which has been long overdue.

The enhanced Score Scripting capabilities introduced in version 1.3.0 Beta 1, including the ability to display aggregate statistics such as averages, a count of how many records have been submitted, the standard deviation of the dataset, bar graphs and pie charts are all present in 1.4.0 Beta 1. See the release announcement for version 1.3.0 Beta 1 for more information.

Please share your comments and your suggestions for improvements on the forum.

The following features have been added or modified in Mad Blanks 1.4.0 Beta 1:

• Support for Joomla! 1.5 Native
• The most commonly adjusted parameters in the Create Single Record module are now highlighted
• Added "true" option to logical tag
• Process logdata before aggregate tags so the just-submitted data can be used in statistics and graphs etc. 
• Google charts terms of service (TOS) acceptance is now a Mad Blanks configuration variable; see the mbAcceptGoogleChartTOS configuration variable
  
• The "ID of pre-selected category" parameter of the Create Single Record module can now be used in mode A; this means that the module can allow more than one category to be loaded, but will load this one by default if specified
• Added automatic cleanup of records in the jos_madblanks_timeout table; see the mbTimeoutDataTimeToLive configuration variable.
  
• Numerous other small bug fixes and enhancements
  

How to upgrade the Mad Blanks component and modules to version 1.4.0 Beta 1

Before making any changes to your Joomla! website, it is always wise to back up your Joomla! directory tree and your website's database.

If you have custom configuration settings in <Joomla! root directory>/administrator/components/com_madblanks/madblanksconfig.php or custom CSS in <Joomla! root directory>/components/com_madblanks/madblanks.css, be sure to save a copy of those files in particular. 

Once you have backed up your data, you can simply uninstall the previously installed version of the component and then install com_madblanks-1.4.0-Beta1.zip in the Installers->Components section of your Joomla! administrator interface. No data is removed from the Mad Blanks database tables when uninstalling the Mad Blanks component.

When installing the new version of the component, the installer will attempt to update the existing Mad Blanks database tables, if necessary. In most cases this should succeed without a problem. In the event that the installer is unable to apply the needed updates, the post-installation screen will provide you with an SQL query or queries that you should run on your database using your database manager.

There are no changes to the structures of the existing Mad Blanks database tables in this (version 1.4.0 Beta 1) release. However, unless you are upgrading from version 1.3.0 Beta 1, a new data table named jos_madblanks_timeout will be added when installing the new version.

How to upgrade the modules to version 1.4.0 Beta 1

To upgrade the modules, you can uninstall them and install the new ones using the Installers->Modules section of your Joomla! administrator interface. The disadvantage of this is that any module parameters you have saved will be lost. If you wish to preserve the parameters you have saved in your older-version Mad Blanks modules, in a temporary directory manually unzip the Mad Blanks 1.4.0 Beta 1 modules you will be installing and then manually copy those files to the <Joomla! root directory>/modules directory, overwriting the existing Mad Blanks module files. Note that each module consists of two files: a PHP and an XML file.

Once you have copied the module files, edit each Mad Blanks module on your website and resave the module parameters in order to be sure all the new parameters as well as the original parameters have values saved in the database. In general, failure to (re)save the parameters of any newly installed or upgraded module or plugin in Joomla! can cause strange behavior.