What's new in Joomla 4.1?

A new minor update (version 4.1) in the Joomla 4 series was released in February 2022. In this article, I will show you all the improvements and new features that this version brings.

If you haven't worked with Joomla 4 before, but are familiar with older versions of Joomla, I recommend you read the article"What's new in Joomla 4.0" first.

When will Joomla 4.1 be released?

The stable version of Joomla 4.1 was released on 15 February 2022.

Code improvements

As with every update, there are improvements and optimisations in the code. These are not always immediately noticeable when managing a website or building a new one, but these improvements are no less important to the project than the new features added. For a complete list of all changes, check Joomla's public Github repository.

Jooa11y

Jooa11y is a plugin that makes many accessibility issues visually visible to the website administrator. Here, you can think of headings that are in the wrong order (H1, H4, H2) or a forgotten alt-tag to an image that makes it not always clear to screenreaders what the image contains. The articles will be checked at around 50 points and if there is an error or a warning, it will be clearly visible. Read more about jooa11y - The Joomla Accessibility Checker plugin

Some examples are:

I wrote a complete knowledge base article about this plugin. Read more about jooa11y - The Joomla Accessibility Checker plugin

Scheduled tasks (Cronjobs)

1 of the other major additions is the management of cronjobs within Joomla. Since not every hosting party offers this by default, you were then assigned to external services.

Now you can also solve this within your Joomla environment via System " Manage " Scheduled tasks.

You can create a task that will be executed at the times you want, without having to manually press the button. For example, you can think of importing new articles into your Joomla shop every day.

There are already a few plugins ready that can help you further, e.g. checking and resizing images in a certain folder.

Child templates

When you want to make a modification in a component or module, you can use overrides. With templates, this was not possible. You always had to copy and rename the whole template, otherwise your changes would be lost during an update. In addition, you had to go through the entire code to change the name, which was not very convenient.

In Joomla 4.1, Child Templates are introduced. You can use these Child Templates for both website templates (such as Cassiopeia) and administration templates (such as Atum).

To create a child template, go to System " Templates " Website or Management templates (do not confuse this with template styles) and click on the desired template.

Click the "Child Template" button at the top left and give your template a new name. A new folder called "/templates/main template_childtemplate" is then automatically created, containing an xml file with the name of the Child Template, your name as author and the date when you created the template.

You can modify the information in the xml file and copy the files you want to modify from the main template to the Child Template. All files not in the Child Template are automatically loaded from the main template.

Modifying colours in Cassiopeia

The default Joomla template Cassiopeia comes with two colour schemes, standard and alternative. When you edit a colour scheme, your changes will be undone on update. In Joomal 4.1, you get the option to add additional colour schemes.

Create your own css file in the media/templates/site/cassiopeia/css/global folder with a name such as, for example: custom_colors_orange.css and you can select your colour scheme in the cassiopeia template.

Forcing 2 Factor Authentication for a user group

The use of 2 factor authentication could already be forced for all users who had access to the website and/or the admin area, but from Joomla 4.1 onwards, you can also force its use for one or more specific user groups.

To do this, go to the Users " Manage " options page and select "Force two-step authentication" for the website (frontend), admin (admin area) or both and then the option to choose a user group appears.

This way, you can, for example, force only Super Users to use this extra security.

Icons in menu item

Until now, a menu item could consist of a title or an image (whether or not followed by the title of the menu). An option has been added to be able to add icons to the menu as well.

For example, if you want the menu item of your homepage to consist only of a little house (fontawesome), in the menu item " tab "Linktype" " option "Link icon class" add the text fas fa-home and change "Show menu item title" to NO.

In the cassiopeia template menu, this then looks like this:

Giving registered users rights to add new images

Normally, a registered website visitor has no rights to add or edit anything. However, you could add a media field in this user's profile so that he can upload his picture there.

To still allow the visitor to add a photo, an option has been added to: Content " Media " Options " Rights. You can now allow or deny the "Create" option by access level.

Images in search results

In joomla 4, only the smart search system is still used. From Joomla 4.1 it will be possible to show images in the search results.

Currently, it is only applied to articles with an intro text image, but other extensions can also start using this option.

Microdata / SEO improvements in the breadcrumb trail

The JSON-LD format is the recommended format for breadcrumbs. As of Joomla 4.1, this will therefore become the default. This change makes the HTML code cleaner because the data is moved to a script in the head of the page.

Another advantage of this change is that the current page is always added to the data. Until now, this was not the case when the "hide last item" option is active.

Turn descriptions on/off in general settings

In Joomla 3, fields in general settings were described in a tooltip. As these tooltips do not meet the requirements of an accessible website, these descriptions were moved in Joomla 4 to a text below the field.

This led to an impractical interface as some fields required a lot of text to explain how to use it. These texts were therefore removed in Joomla 4, as it was not always relevant to users familiar with the system. Unfortunately, this approach made Joomla even less accessible to newcomers.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos (known from Akeeba) added the ability to turn these descriptions on or off in the general settings by means of a button at the top right of the page.

Tags have been added to the quick icons

When you log into the administration area of Joomla 4, you will see several quick icons in the main screen, for users and articles, among others. From Joomla 4.1, the option for tags is added to this. You can enable these via the gear icon in the top right of the shortcuts.

Want more flexibility in your shortcuts? I created a free custom quick icons module for that and I'll tell you more about it in the November 2021 Joomla magazine

Save as copy when editing in the frontend

When you want to edit an article in the frontend, in Joomla 4.1 you now also have the option to save the article as a copy. This option allows you to create a new article based on the data of that article being edited.

Tinymce improvements

The following improvements have been made to the Tinymce editor that comes with a Joomla installation by default. If you are using another editor such as JCE, these changes will not apply.

Text with multiple languages in Tinymce

Screen readers can read out text in different languages, but to do so, it is important that you indicate to the screen reader which piece of text should be read out in which language. This seems logical. For example, if you have English terms read out by a Dutch-speaking screen reader, it can become a very unclear text.

The solution is to give specific terms or pieces of text in another language the correct language tag. This can be done in the Tinymce editor of Joomla 4.1

HTML5 containers in Tinymce

This customisation in the default editor adds the ability to highlight your content with article, aside and section which are important landmarks for the author of the page.

Syntax highlighting in Tinymce's source code

When you view the code of an article or module in the editor, you will see that it is no longer shown as standard text but colours have been added, which you can recognise from different editing tools. This makes the text easier to read and faster to edit.

Absolute time display in User action log

Until Joomla 4.1, it was only possible to display relative time in the user action log.

Now under Users " User action log " Options you will see the option to display these actions as absolute time as well. This can be useful when, for example, you want to create an export of all your activities for the client.

Relative view:

Absolute view:

Saving contacts in menu

In Joomla 4.0, the "save to menu" option was introduced for articles. This way, you can now create menu items faster and easier. In Joomla 4.1, this option will now also be available for contacts. When you have created and saved a contact, you can create a menu item for this person directly via this op.

Web Services media options

If you are already using Joomla 4's Web Services (API), a number of new options are added there in Joomla 4.1 that relate to retrieving, saving, modifying and deleting media/images.

The End Points to be used are:

GET {{base_path}}/api/index.php/v1/media/adapters
GET {{base_path}}/api/index.php/v1/media/adapters/{id}
GET {{base_path}}/api/index.php/v1/media/files/{path}
POST {{base_path}}/api/index.php/v1/media/files
PATCH {{base_path}}/api/index.php/v1/media/files/{path}
DELETE {{base_path}}/api/index.php/v1/media/files/{path}

In short, great new things and improvements await us in the new Joomla 4.1 version.

How can I update to Joomla 4.1?

If your website was created in Joomla 4, you can update by pressing one button. If you still have a Joomla 3 version (or even older) then a migration is required. You can read more about this in the article"What's new in Joomla 4.0?".