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Will all of Joomla 4 features be better than Joomla 3?

Recently, Joomla 4 Alpha1 has been released with huge updates as well as core improvements for a better UI user experience, code quality and have greater advances in functionality to limit backward compatibility breaks. Will Joomla 3 be beaten by amazing updates of Joomla 4? Through our blog post today you can somehow find an answer!

1. Bootstrap 2 with Bootstrap 4

It is the fact that Bootstrap is the most popular CSS, HTML, and JS Framework to build websites with mobile-first and responsiveness. Joomla 3 used Bootstrap 2 which doesn’t work well anymore, it is the reason why in this new upgrade, Joomla 4 integrates with the latest version of Bootstrap – Bootstrap 4. This is the major rewrite of the entire project for building website responsiveness simple and quick.

2. LESS with SASS

LESS and SASS are two powerful CSS extensions, they have been programming languages built to help CSS be extendable, maintainable and themeable.

LESS was used to create Joomla 3 by integrating with Bootstrap 2.

Joomla 4 uses SASS with Bootstrap 4.

3. Responsiveness and mobile-first

It is said that backend and frontend templates have not seemed as mobile-first when Joomla 3 responsiveness was created by Bootstrap 2 responsive grid system.  Joomla 4 is going to process well on responsive via using the powerful Bootstrap 4 to build website mobile-first and responsiveness.

Joomla 4 provides a better performance

4. Installation process

Installation process in Joomla 3 included 3 steps which were configuration – database and overview, absolutely simple for begin users.

3 steps installation process of Joomla 3

The installation process of Joomla 4 still includes 3 steps, however, UI will be more friendly, sample data installation and multilingual are provided from “Customize installation” panel. Besides, there are many options will be added, for example:

–  Option to install extensions (at extensions with minimum core supported)

– Rework sample data installation.

Interface improved from Joomla 4

5. Media manager

In Joomla 3, we have been limited to upload with one file upload without file management editor.

Limited features of Joomla 3 Media Manager

From Joomla 4, we will have new media manager which fully rebuilt along with more amazing features and improved working panel, so it will be easier for managing files.

Multiple files upload with drag-drop

Image editor: crop, resize, rotate

Image properties

Many other options: image preview, delete, rename …

6. Default Frontend template

Joomla 3 frontend templates included Protostar – a new template and Beez 3 – update version for compatibility with Joomla 3 because Joomla 3 developed with LESS and Bootstrap 2.

Joomla 3 provided 2 frontend templates

In Joomla 4, there will be only one frontend template provided, it is Cassiopeia, brand new developed on Bootstrap 4, SASS CSS and latest website technologies. This template is promising to bring us a more flexible layout system.

Cassiopeia frontend template based on Bootstrap 4 

7. Default backend template

Backend templates of Joomla 3 also included 2 templates which are Hathor and Isis, they are all based on LESS CSS and Bootstrap 2. In contrast, Joomla 4 provides only one new developed backend template based on SASS, Bootstrap 4 and great advances in improving the user interface and workflow, it is “atum”.

 

Joomla 3 provided 2 backend templates

Joomla 4 new backend template

 

8. With and Without Mootools

There were JQuery and Mootools in Joomla 3 library, but in the next upgrade, Mootools will be removed from Joomla 4 library for making its core work fast and cleaner. Moreover, this improvement helps to shorten process time as well as readability with no conflict.

9. PHP 5.3 and PHP 7

Because of using PHP 7 as required PHP version, Joomla 4 will provide us a brilliant performance with high speed (double in speed compare to Joomla 3), along with many other amazing features, improvements and secure of websites and online apps.

10. Horizontal and vertical collapse menu from backend navigation

Backend navigation of Joomla 3 uses drop-down menu structure horizontally, while Joomla 4 backend navigation has been changed, the left sidebar is going to be vertical. For giving space to users, it will be collapsed. The main menu will be changed to the toolbar along with icon when users click on a submenu.

Horizontal style of Joomla 3 backend navigation

Vertical style of Joomla 4 backend navigation

11. Backend UI responsiveness: compatible with mobile-first

Admin panel of Joomla 4 runs properly on all layouts of tablets and mobile and it is fully responsive, however, performance with some limitations from this version made Joomla 3 not as perfect as it was expected.  These troubles are going to be improved on Joomla 4, with a new admin template integrating Bootstrap 4, advanced backend UI and performance.

Backend user interface of Joomla 3 and Joomla 4

 12. Performance/Loading time

There were considerable improvements in performance from Joomla 3 and it will continue to be concentrated on Joomla 4 with code quality improvement, latest technologies, previous deprecated functionality deleted, replace JFactory with dependency injection containers, new plugin system which has been rewritten, Code Namespacing, using more components for Joomla framework, etc. Therefore, Joomla 4 performance is promised to bring us the best experience!

13. Technologies

Since Joomla 3 released, web technologies have been changed a lot. Therefore, Joomla 4 core is going to be developed with the most modern technologies which are Bootstrap 4, JQuery 3, PHP Mailer 6.0.

14. Coding quality

If the main focus of Joomla 3 is clean code, in Joomla 4, it has been changed to the core codebase which must be cleaner, more well-optimized and build with latest web technologies, in addition, newly written plugin system via following coding standard, deleting previously deprecated functionalities.

•  Orthogonal Component Structure: permit all components to use new capabilities that are going to be used across extensions.
• Improved MVC layer: limit duties of a component to implement its own main functionality. The rest will be pulled out to the system.
• UI components with latest technologies: list of components developed from new W3C standard via using plain and Javascript for providing a cleaner performance and greatly optimized HTML.markup.

15. Security features

To solve security problems, Joomla 3 has provided us many security features which are constantly updated. Joomla 4 will offer many security features like prepared SQL statements support, paying off several project technical debt via retiring deprecated code, as well as rising minimum supported software stack.

Joomla 4 system requirements:

• PHP 7, MySQL 5.5.3
• Dropped SQL Server support
• PostgreSQL 9.2.

Conclusion

That’s all for our article today! Which one is your favorite version? We hope that through this blog post you can make a decision easier. Don’t forget to share with your friends if you think this article is helpful!

Thank you so much for reading! If you have any question, please contact us by leaving a comment below, we will reply as soon as possible!

Image Credit: Joomlart