Backlight 1.0.3 and Client Response Add-on 7.0.1 updates are now available.
Backlight 1.0.3 includes support for the upcoming Cart Add-on, making this update mandatory for anyone planning to use our shopping cart. The update also includes a variety of improvements and new features for all users, though.
A new UI Styling control group appears in the page template designer, replacing the existing Off-canvas Triggers group, and a variety of controls scattered about the designer. This new control group offers a set of unified customizations for Backlight’s toolbars, including the off-canvas triggers that allow tray access on mobile, as well as the floating UI for client response and cart galleries.
Important: Because of this change in the framework, users upgrading an existing site should make it a point to visit the new UI Styling control group to update the default settings in accordance with their site design.
Backlight now has Magnific Popup baked into its core, and popups — such as those used by the client response and cart add-ons — now inherit styling properties from the page, including colors, typography, etc. Such popups will now match the aesthetic of your site without any additional oversight. This addition to the framework also allows users to create popups of their own design, from just about any place that allows user code-injection (page and album copy areas, PHPlugins, etc.). This is a very cool addition, and I will create a tutorial how to do this sometime in the next couple of weeks.
Image download support has been completely revisited, and now offers a more consistent experience across all web-browsers. Downloadable image renditions can now be defined within album templates and created via the publisher plugin. If adding such renditions to your albums, you will need to re-publish the albums from Lightroom to see the new renditions uploaded for use.
Speaking of albums, image captions have now been separated from the HTML img elements’ alt property. The alt property will now always fill the image file name, rather than the image’s defined caption. In the large image view, captions will display as before; if an image does not have a caption, however, the caption area will now appear blank, and will not be auto-filled by the image file name.
The template modules now also include a Text Localization section, where we will allow replacement of some labels within templates that were previously hard-coded in English. Should you find text within your page or album template that you are unable to change, please let us know so that we can add localization options.
In addition to these changes, other smaller changes have been made, including fixes and improvements website rendering, to Backlight’s admin, and overall performance.
The Client Response Add-on benefits from some of the changes discussed above, including popup support, reworked downloads, etc.
In addition, a new Gallery Help popup can be created from within the album template designer, and is an ideal place to include your gallery legend, explaining the icons, how to download images, etc.
In the back end, feedback is now sorted based on image file names, making it easier to process feedback received by clients.
Upgrade instructions and full release details are available in our Changelog.