After a fair amount of wrangling (and delay) v1.3 of the Zentools module is now available.

This is a major update and one that I almost considered releasing as version 2. It comes with some great new features including the ability to apply presets and defaults as well as a new pagination layout.

Members can download Zentools from the Zentools download page.

Introducing Presets and defaults

While Zentools is mostly easy to configure, we have added preset and default options to make it even easier to get up and running. Now it's simply a matter of clicking a few buttons and you can replicate any of the default layouts we showcase on the Zentools demo site.

Nine default options

The new red button in the admin (yes we borrowed the styling from bootstrap) can be used to set default options for the various layouts available in Zentools.

Applying these default options affect the items shown in the available tag area as well as set any of the basic default options for that specific layout.

The default options do not configure the content source for the module.

To implement the defaults for a specific layout you need to:

1. Select from the layouts available in the layout drop down.

2. Click set default options.

1. Now any relevant panels for that layout will be displayed below the templating area and the default template tags will be populated in the template options.

7 New preset options

In addition to being able to set default items we have added the option to select from seven preset configurations that can be applied to your layout. These presets include:

• Filtered grid
• Two column grid
• Captify content grid
• Two column list
• Three column list
• Overlay Slideshow
• Flat Slideshow

Applying these presets will overwrite any of your existing settings and implement any of the settings required to display the layout selected.

1. Select the desired preset from the layout source.

1. Hit the "Click here to apply preset button"

1. After clicking the "Click here to apply preset option" the preset is automatically configured and new layout items are now present in the content template options.

Please note:

• After the preset has been applied the layout source will revert back to the base layout.
• Also if a preset is selected as the base layout and you do not hit the apply preset button then this instance of the module will not display content on the front end. Instead you will get an error noting that you have not hit the apply preset button yet.
• That hitting either the apply preset or apply default button will undo any changes you have made to the module configuration.

Pagination layout

One of the requests we received after the release of v1.1 of the module was for a dedicated pagination layout, and so here it is. Pagination is not quite a slider and not quite a carousel. It's essentially a grid based layout that allows the user to display a set number of items within the module but provide pagination links which allow the user to click through the items on display.

This layout uses the basics from the grid layout so it allows you to specify the number of items to display per row, as well as the number of pagination links to display.

Some other new additions:

• Ability to apply a static overlay when applying grid and carousel overlay effects.
• New accordion options to hide all panels on page load.
• Added ability to display specific Joomla or K2 items
• Set start filter for category filter view
• Added some new simple default slideshow styling for navigation and play pause buttons
• Reorganised some of the parameters in the admin.
• Bootstrapified some of the buttons.
• Show All button can now be translated.
• Added random content for J2.5
• Spruced up the drag and drop interface with some nice new css3 styling.

What's next?

I'll be posting about the status of our next template in the next hour or so but for now let us know what you think of the new features and anything you want to see in the next version.

I have in the todo the following new features for 1.4:

• Multi-sort for category filter.
• A paginated slideshow layout
• More layout themes
• Possible Zoo integration.

What would you like to see?

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