In addition to the existing “Awesome” icons, over 1500 additional high-quality icons from the Bootstrap project are now available. These can be used anywhere where icons can be specified by name.
Since version 5, Bootstrap has offered a comprehensive set of over 1,500 icons, which is actively being developed further. With milestone 23-03, the Bootstrap icons are now fully integrated into the Mercury template.
The Fork (Font) Awesome icons used previously are still available. It is possible to combine icons from different sets on a single website without any problems.
The content elements Organization and Person will replace the element Contact Information in the future. It is recommended that only these elements be used for new websites.
By separating the content into two different elements, the input mask can be better tailored to the respective element. In addition, specialized functions can be offered. For example, the organization can refer to a higher-level organization, and individuals can be assigned to an organization. This allows hierarchical structures between different departments or institutions to be mapped.
Bootstrap 5 ensures that future developments of the template can benefit from the latest CSS features. The change automatically affects all existing websites that use the Mercury template.
Bootstrap 5 offers various new features, including:
XXL screen size added
With XXL, Bootstrap 5 supports an additional screen size. This allows more content to be displayed on large desktop screens. This additional screen size is automatically available on all web pages.
Using CSS Custom Properties
Bootstrap 5 utilizes modern web design techniques such as CSS custom properties. Often referred to as CSS variables, these make designing with CSS much easier for agencies.
No more support for Internet Explorer
Bootstrap 5 no longer supports Internet Explorer. This browser is now obsolete and is no longer being developed by Microsoft due to various security vulnerabilities—in favor of Edge.
Careful attention has been paid to ensuring that existing Mercury sites are displayed in exactly the same way as before the conversion. There may be minimal differences in details, but these should be improvements. If, after the conversion, the display of a Mercury site has changed significantly for the worse, please inform Alkacon Software or your OpenCms administration.
Captchas are often used in forms to ensure that entries are made by humans.
Milestone 16 enables the use of external captchas for forms. Either Friendly Captcha or Google reCAPTCHA are supported. If an external provider is configured, the captchas in all forms are automatically replaced by the configured provider.
The Mercury template previously used a self-generated captcha. This is no longer up to date, as “form bots” are now able to overcome it. In the recent past, there have been incidents where forms using the old captcha were “flooded” with meaningless requests.
For the display of blogs, Milestone 15 provides additional formatters that can be used for list and detail views.
The display of list headers for a blog differs greatly from other header types, such as detailed headers. In headers for blogs, for example, all formatting such as bold or italics is displayed. Line breaks, paragraph breaks, and links are also displayed as entered.
The following elements can be used in the special blog display:
Articles
Decoy
Media
For blogs, the goal is to display the list as a continuous text. The layout arrangement of headline, text, and image is predetermined.
The blog display can be further customized using various element settings in the list.
The following element settings are specifically available for lists with blog teasers:
Visible paragraphs
Determines how many paragraphs from the content are already displayed in the list.
Unlike most other list headers, there is no text truncation in the blog list header. Instead, at least the first paragraph is always displayed in full.
With this element setting, additional paragraphs after the first one can also be displayed directly in the list.
Optionally, all paragraphs can be displayed in the list, in which case there may be no need for a detailed display. In this case, if you enter ‘none’ for the button label, no link to the detailed display will be created, not even in the heading.
Show image zoom
This option is available for blog list teasers, as the image is not linked as it is with most other teaser types.
Show author
Optionally, the author of an article can already be displayed in the list.
Please note that the author is only available in the “Article” element. For the other elements that can be used with the blog, such as ‘Decoy’ or “Media,” it is not possible to specify an author. Therefore, no author is displayed in the list for these elements.
Blog comment counter
This option allows you to display the number of comments for a blog entry directly in the list. This requires additional settings on the page, which are described below.
