Version 9.3 of the Advanced Sidebar Menu plugin is now available and ready for general use.
This release focused on improving accordion functionality and browser performance.
Accordion Icons are Now SVG
Icons displayed on accordions have now been converted from front icons to SVG elements.
Using an SVG instead of a font icon provides the following enhancements:
- Improved browser performance.
- Greater customizability.
- Support for any number of custom icon sets.
- Universal icon styles.
Supporting SVG also opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities when used with the advanced-sidebar-menu/styles/accordion filter.
Improved browser performance
Previously, icons required the WordPress Dashicons to be loaded whenever accordions were displayed on a page. This worked great when a theme was already using Dashicons.
When a theme was not using Dashicons, loading the styles added extra overhead and additional resource downloading. Dashicons are no longer loaded, providing a substantial network performance improvement.
Refactored Global JavaScript
The accordion JavaScript has been rewritten into Node modules and is now built using Webpack.
Using Webpack provides:
- Better browser compatibility.
- Smaller JS files.
- Modern code practices.
- Linting.
- Unit testing.
- Faster and more reliable updates.
You will notice the accordion JavaScript files are now compressed and have more descriptive names.
We’ve also aligned the list of supported browsers with WordPress core.
New global variable
Great care has been taken to support existing customization with the new JavaScript structure. Nearly all customization will work as is with version 9.3.0 of this plugin.
The previously used asm_pro global variable still works but has now been deprecated in favor of the new advancedSidebarMenuPro global variable. If you are using the asm_pro variable, you will see errors in your browser console with hints for updating to the new variable.
If you have any questions on compatibility or need assistance modernizing your customization, please reach out to support and we’ll be happy to assist.
New Icon Styles filter
Accordion styles (like other widget styles) are generated on the backend and rendered on the page where the menu is displayed using an embedded <style> tag.
The new advanced-sidebar-menu/widget-options/accordion/icon-styles filter allows you to adjust the generated styles or inject your own. This may simplify your site’s accordion related CSS.
Miscellaneous
- Fixed links as open/close when category counts are used.
- Replaced deprecated `keyCode` uses with `code`
- Fixed all ESLint and Stylelint notices.
- Updated the Node version to 18.
- Deprecated the `Accordion::load_assets` method.
- Loosely required the basic version 9.3.1+.