Magento 1.4 release breaking templates
Published by on February 15th, 2010 5 Comments »
With the release of Magento CE 1.4, TemplatesMaster is reporting that templates previously compatible with Magento 1.3 are not working under 1.4 and are advising users of their templates to hold back upgrading to Magento 1.4 "due to changes to html structure and css class names".
Right now we are working on upgrading all our themes to new Magento release. The good news is that all upgraded templates will be based on our new improved Magento template framework with new improved seo code. Most popular themes will be available till the end of the week. We are planning to finish upgrading all themes within 3 weeks.
Good to see they are on the case, and a three week wait is not unreasonable considering the number of templates they have made available.
Magento templates are not independent
Template providers for Magento tend to create their products using parts of the default Magento template to supplement their own code. Magento therefore uses parts of the default template, combined with the custom template, to build the site.
This method of easing template creation by not having to reproduce every last element from the default template is a cost-effective means of developing, and consequently brings the cost of each template down. But inevitably leaves developers at the mercy of the Magento developers. If they change the default template structure, it could easily break the third party templates.
This is no criticism of TemplatesMaster, this method of template creation is commonplace and quite acceptable, particularly for complex template structures such as Magento’s. But it does demonstrate how we remain at the mercy of core product developers of large, commercial products such as Magento. Their product development is commercially motivated (as it should be), but this can lead to the broader community of developers having to hop around when things change.
5 Responses to “Magento 1.4 release breaking templates”
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agreed; hop(p)ing around day and night since upgrade..
Ditto. All that I ask is that when a module or solution is in stable mode, it should just work, as advertised without breaking a default install.
This method of easing template creation by not having to reproduce every last element from the default template is a cost-effective means of developing, and consequently brings the cost of each template down.
It doesn’t really bother me, the new html/css structure seems to be a nice advancement from 1.3.x. I love that they now have a Base default package to work off of and include the blank theme.
This is a problem that is faced even with Joomla. Which makes it very hard for me to use it without having to wait for templates to be upgrades before we can upgrade to the latest version of Magento.
What do you think of TemplateMonster Magento templates? Do those break too when upgrading versions or are those templates truly coded in such a way that they dont rely on the default template files? Please advise, thank you!