YOOtheme Pro 1.9 – A lightbox and improved child themes

This YOOtheme Pro release is another massive one! In the latest UIkit Beta 26 release we introduced the new Lightbox component. We are happy to tell you that this powerful feature is now also available in YOOtheme Pro for the Grid and Gallery elements. The 1.9 release brings other great improvements like a Modal mode for image and button elements, advanced child theme features and more.

Lightbox for Gallery and Grid element

The new lightbox option brings great image and video galleries to your sites. It allows you to open links, images or videos inside a lightbox by clicking an item from a gallery or grid and even to navigate between items from within the lightbox. There are three basic effects available to create smooth transitions: Slide, Fade and Scale. It doesn’t matter what device you use, the lightbox is fully responsive.

Modal for Image and Button element

You can now set the link target to Modal mode for any link inside a Button or Image element. Linked media files are displayed inside a modal without leaving the page. Regular links will show in an iframe inside the modal.

Enhanced link picker

The link picker has received an update. Apart from system links you can now also pick files, like a PDF for example. Both options can be found side by side as icons inside the link field in the element’s content tab.

Section Title

We have added the new title setting to sections within the Page Builder. Align the title to different positions on the right and left sides of your sections and rotate it 90 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise. This new option is great for pages with many content sections – for example one pager websites.

Vertical alignment option

This new option aligns the section content vertically, if the section height is larger than the content itself. To use this option, make sure to actually set a section height, otherwise it will be exactly as high as its content.

Mixed image orientation mode

Photographers in particular will be happy about this feature. It ensures that photo galleries with portrait as well as landscape format look good. Just enter width and height values. YOOtheme Pro automatically detects the format and aligns the images accordingly while preserving image proportions.

Enhanced overlay and gallery options

The Overlay and Gallery elements have been extended with more advanced options. You can now set a min height for images. This prevents images from becoming too small on mobile devices.The image will be cropped automatically, if necessary. Another addition is the option to choose only a hover image for gallery or overlay items. This means that no primary picture needs to be picked. So basically the gallery looks like the section background and only reveals its image content on hover. This produces a nice effect that we used in our latest theme release Jack Baker.

Center option for toolbar

We've added a center option for the toolbar. All content inside that position will be centered when you activate it.

Child Theme

Here is another big thing that is particularly interesting for all developers. A child theme allows storing custom code (like JavaScript, CSS, Less or layout files) in a separate theme folder so that they are preserved during YOOtheme Pro updates. Child themes have been supported for a while already. With the 1.9 release, you can now do even more:

Add custom elements

You can now add custom Builder elements using child themes. Add a /builder directory inside the child theme and every subfolder will be available as a new Builder element inside the browser. You can copy the default Builder elements in here as a starter or create completely new content elements.

Overwrite index.php

Along with existing layout files you could overwrite, you can now also place an index.php in your child theme to overwrite the main layout file of the theme.

Register custom modules

For the really advanced developers out there, we have added support to place a config.php inside your child theme. This allows you to register custom modules and therefore extend the theme with any kind of custom PHP code you want.

For detailed explanations of these advanced features, check out the new child theme developers documentation.

Wrapping up

This was the third huge update for YOOtheme Pro in a row. With the lightbox and advanced child theme features we have addressed some of the most frequent requests. We want to thank you for your feedback and ideas that we have been receiving. Obviously, we are constantly working on YOOtheme Pro. Stay tuned and give us your feedback in the comments below.