Page Structure Panel
Page Structure Panel
We welcome Balbooa Family and our guest in 2019! Christmas and New Year holidays have come to an end and it's time to continue to delight you with new incredible updates for the Joomla Website Builder Gridbox. In the Gridbox 2.6.1, we have fixed all reported bugs and added new image optimization tools such as lazy load, adaptive Images, and WebP support.
In the Gridbox 2.5.9, we have released an automatic image compression tool which automatically resizes and reduces image width and weight. In today's update, we want to introduce you new tools which allow you to optimize pictures for better page performance.
Lazy load is an awesome technique which loading pictures on a web page asynchronously. Pictures start loading only when they appear in the browser’s viewport.
In the Gridbox, pictures start loading on one screen earlier. A visitor wouldn't see the image loading process. The same technique we are using in the Balbooa Joomla Gallery.
To enable lazy Load in the Gridbox open "Site" settings >> Tab "Performance" and select checkbox "Lazy Load Images".
The Lazy Load in the Gridbox works for all Gridbox plugins and all type of pictures. All you need is just to enable and enjoy by faster page loading time.
The feature Adaptive Image directed to improve website performance on mobile devices. The main idea of the "Adaptive Images" is displaying reduced version of the picture for smaller screen sizes.
Gridbox automatically generates 5 versions of the picture for each mobile device screen size and display the appropriate version. The width of the generated picture depends on the configured breakpoints. Here is an example:
As you can see, using "Adaptive Images" feature you can greatly improve performance, pages will load faster on mobile devices.
Adaptive images in the Gridbox released as a part of “Image Compression” tools, so before enabling "Adaptive images" feature you need to enable image compression.
WebP is a modern Google's image format that provides lossless and lossy compression for images on the web. In compared with JPG and PNG formats, WebP provides a smaller size with the same quality. Also, WebP support transparency and animation, so WebP can replace JPG, PNG and GIF.
Gridbox 2.6.1 is fully compatible with WebP format, you can upload WebP images and animations to the Gridbox media manager and use them for your pages and blog posts. Also, Gridbox Photo Editor works with WebP format, feel free to edit your WebP images directly in the Gridbox.
Before you start uploading WebP images, please note, that you need to add WebP as the allowed file type in the Gridbox options (Gridbox Admin >> Options >> Allowed File Types).
For the brand new Gridbox installations, WebP is added by default.
Before you start using WebP in your web projects, you should know that WebP image format is fully compatible with Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Microsoft Edge.
Safari browser doesn't support WebP at the moment. But since the all modern browsers added WebP support, it is quite possible that Safari also will start supporting WebP soon.
In the Gridbox 2.6.1, we have added a possibility to convert your JPG and PNG to the WebP image format!
To convert picture in WebP format, you need to save picture as a copy in the Gridbox Photo Editor and select checkbox "Save as WebP".
No reason to use 3rd party tools to convert pictures. All you need is inside Gridbox!
We recommend updating Gridbox to 2.6.1 since this version includes a huge bug fix update.
At the moment we are already developing long-awaited plugins that you have been asking. New updates with new features are coming soon! Let’s Rock!
v.2.6.1 - 9/01/2019