Tools for ZOO 2.0 – We converted the YOOtools for ZOO

Steffan
May 20, 2010
ZOO

Today we are pretty excited to share some great news on ZOO 2.0. While the ZOO download statistics are still steeply rising (they surpassed 20.000 downloads) we finished the first minor update: ZOO 2.0.1! Besides several bugfixes we have a big surprise: All YOOtools are now converted to work with ZOO 2.0! We also developed a new Category Module that lets you easily create linked lists to ZOO categories. Read on to learn more about all the great features...

Tools for ZOO

In addition to our current YOOtools extensions we created a new series of tools which work with ZOO 2.0. The main difference between them is that for the old YOOtools you would have to create Joomla articles which were then loaded as content items. The new tools for ZOO 2.0 instead have layout positions and load content from ZOO! They are working the same way the ZOO item module does. Thus, you don't have to create duplicated content anymore. The new tools load the content you've already created for the ZOO items. Isn't this awesome? Especially the image resizing and caching feature from ZOO 2.0 comes in handy when assigning the content to the module layouts. We converted following tools this way: YOOcarousel, YOOaccordion, YOOscroller, YOOslider and YOOdrawer. As a bonus we also converted the YOOmaps module which displays ZOO items on a single map now. You don't need to create any new markers, they are loaded directly from ZOO. If you need to display a map of all your points of interest or all companies in your business directory, the YOOmaps module will take care of that. All YOOtools are exclusively available for ZOO members who purchased the app bundle. Check out the demos of all tools for ZOO.

New Category Module

There is a new module in town. The category module will render a nicely styled, nested list of your categories. Try to use it in your blog. Your users will be able to easily navigate through your blog, without you having to build a custom menu. Take a look here to see the new category module.

Google Maps Element

We revisited the Google Maps element. In the 2.0.0 release you had to create some custom HTML for the marker popup. We felt that this is a little annoying. Wouldn't it be great if you can place existing content of your item in the marker popup? Thus, the googlemaps element renders now by default the item name. But in addition you can also select a layout which should be rendered in the marker popup. This way you can assign any content to the layout positions, and it will automatically show up in the marker popup without creating any new content or custom HTML. Isn't this great? Of course, we added the layout rendering also the new Maps module for ZOO. See it in action here.