YOOtheme Pro 4.2 - Speedy Customizer Preview and New Pages Panel

Today we are thrilled to introduce YOOtheme Pro 4.2. This time, it's all about the YOOtheme Pro customizer. We made the preview so fast that it feels almost instant, hugely improved the workflow of editing builder pages and templates, and gave the WordPress customizer a complete makeover. This update will really boost your productivity, and we love it! Let's get right in.

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Speedy Customizer Preview

First up is the customizer preview. Previously, any minor change in the customizer resulted in a complete page refresh, which could be quite frustrating especially when writing text. Now, we still fetch the page in the background, but instead of rendering the whole page, we compare the new markup with the old one and inject only the modified part, which in most cases is just a tiny bit of code anyway. This saves so much time because the browser only needs to render the changes and not the entire page. We even removed the annoying white overlay of the page during the loading time. The result is amazing. The changes feel almost instant!

Pages Panel

The next big news is that the Builder is gone from the customizer navigation. Bye, bye Builder Panel! But don't worry, we have a new Pages panel, which is even better as it will greatly speed up your workflow. When you open the panel, you'll find a list of all pages. In Joomla these are uncategorized articles, and in WordPress, well, pages. Clicking on a page will open its layout in the page builder, and… the page itself in the preview. This means you no longer need to navigate the preview to find the right page if you want to edit it in the page builder. Simply click your way through the list of pages and make your edits. It's incredibly convenient, isn't it?

But not only pages can have individual layouts, posts too. In Joomla these are categorized articles, and in WordPress, other post types. They are not in the pages list, but that's what the search is for! It also searches through posts and will show them grouped by their main category or their post type.

By the way, if you want to edit a page that you browsed in the preview, there is no need to look for it in the pages list. Simply click the builder button at the top and start editing the current page right away. And now that the page builder is open, you can navigate to a different page in the preview, and the builder layout will update as usual.

Templates Panel

But that's not all! The same works for the templates! You can now edit the layout of any template with just a click. The layout will open in the page builder and matching post will be shown in the preview. This is so awesome. Once you try it, there is no way back. It's a real time-saver, because you no longer need to remember where was that page you assigned the template to in the preview. For example, if you have posts which need different layouts, like if some blog posts have more text, others have an image gallery, you would assign them different templates. You can now just click a template, and the right post will open in the preview. It almost feels like magic! To open the template assignment, just click the icon on the right.

WordPress Customizer

Next up is WordPress. Today we say goodbye to the WordPress customizer, which is basically dead in WordPress anyway. Finally, WordPress users can enjoy the YOOtheme Pro customizer with all its features. Just like you know from Joomla, you can modify theme settings, customize styles, build page layouts and manage your menus and widgets. Of course, you will benefit from all the features we introduced today like the speedy customizer preview and the new pages and templates workflow.

User Interface Improvements (Joomla)

Now that clicking an item in the pages and templates panels opens the page builder, we wanted to bring the same experience to modules. So clicking builder modules will open the page builder, and all other modules will open the settings to control the appearance and style of the module. This is similar to the menu items and their settings. Before, module settings were found in the Templates tab when editing a module in Joomla, which we have now removed. One of the perks is that you can see the changes right away in the preview, without having to save them first in the module. Just like with templates, to edit a module, click the icon on the right.

The same icon is now available for pages as well. Here you can edit the page in Joomla right from the YOOtheme Pro customizer. But of course you can still do it from within the page builder as well. This feature is so cool because you can edit custom fields of an article while working on a template layout in the page builder.

But that's not all for the Pages panel. You can now create a new article right from the YOOtheme Pro customizer.

That's all for our customizer update! Next up are some general improvements.

Joomla 5 Support

If you missed our YOOtheme Pro 4.1 release, we want to highlight that YOOtheme Pro is ready for Joomla 5. You can upgrade with just a click, and everything will work like a charm. As always with major versions, make sure to backup your site and check if all your plugins and extensions are ready for Joomla 5. Better safe than sorry, right? 😉

Translation

Last but not least, we've updated our translation platform. Before we used OneSky, and now we moved to Weblate – an open-source web-based platform to manage localization. Simply visit translate.yootheme.com to contribute translations to your language. You can suggest a quick translation without an account, or sign up to contribute translations regularly. Check out our updated documentation to get started.

If you want to review and maintain a language, please contact us and become part of our reviewer team. Any contribution is much appreciated. Thank you!

Next Steps

Working in YOOtheme Pro 4.2 is faster and more efficient than ever. We have an almost instant customizer preview, a hugely improved workflow of editing builder pages and templates, and a whole new user interface for WordPress. All this will really boost your productivity!

Next up are more theme package releases. We have a couple of them in the works, and they will come bundled with smaller YOOtheme Pro releases including all the needed features.

Now go ahead and take YOOtheme Pro 4.2 for a test drive. As always, we are looking forward to your feedback, so let us know what you think in the comments below.