I've been writing Joomla extensions for a long time; something like 10 years. I'm no stranger to extensions that I write having their functionality absorbed into the Joomla core. I expect it.
Joomla 3.9 was concerning to me, because the core devs decided to absorb several of my extensions functionality into the core. I've been busy though, so I didn't really look into it much other than to identify that it was happening. Here's the short list:
- Privacy Consent - threatened to absorb my EU e-Privacy Directive plugin functionality
- Action Log - threatened to absorb my System - Software Log plugin functionality
- Repeatable field type - threatened to absorb my Fields - Subform plugin functionality
- User Actions Log - threatened to absorb my User - Profile History plugin functionalty
I could not have been more wrong about these updates to Joomla.
The privacy consent extension is a joke, it's not multi-lingual and doesn't offer an option to opt out, nor does it offer the granular control of my extension. Anyone serious about legal protection would be a fool to use the built in tool.
The Action Log doesn't record much of anything: User X changed something in Extension Y. Not what was changed, no log of the previous values - just that something was changed. This information is only useful if you really need to point fingers at someone, otherwise - you're still in a situation if your system has been changed and you need to restore the previous values without restoring a backup.
The repeatable field type - wow, I thought that was going to be a problem....but it isn't. You're limited to only a handful of field types, while my Subform plugin imposes no limitations - you can do anything that JFormXML can do.
The User Actions log is again, a monumental joke. It records that something changed and by who - but not what was changed. My profile history plugin is very granular, omitting only sensitive information like passwords.
All in all - I'm sure people worked hard on these improvements. I just need to keep my extensions at least one step ahead and I'll be fine. Nothing is getting pulled for redundancy, and from the looks of it - that won't be a problem for a while.
