Ever wanted to use the power of BreezingForms and store your form submissions from your website into the cloud, working with others on the collected data?

The existing Google form builder is good enough for very simple and limited forms, but if you need some freedom and more complex forms, then you might be happy to read that it is now possible to combine BreezingForms and Google Drive Spreadsheets.

Starting with BreezingForms 1.8.1, you'll find a new addon in the package zip file called GData that allows you to easily store your form submissions into the cloud.

You can also watch our Google Drive Spreadsheets tutorial video here.

Install and enable this plugin in the Joomla! extension manager and you'll get a new tab in the form's advanced settings called "Google Drive".

After entering your Google login data, you may choose from your already existing spreadsheets and all worksheets that are associated with the selected spreadsheet.

After choosing a pair of spread- and worksheets, you may now assign your form fields to the corresponding fields in your spreadsheet at Google Drive. Please note, that the first row of your Google Drive spreadsheet represents the headers. This is very important, otherwise the field's won't show up. Also make sure you don't use special characters such as blank and hyphens in your header titles.

After the fields assignments, you and your collaborators are ready to test the submissions and see in real-time how your spreadsheet is receiving the data. From there you may be able to do all kinds of spreadsheet operations that Google Drive allows, such as calculations, exports to different formats and data presentations. So you basically have another record management besides the existing one but located in the cloud.

Please note that the Google Drive integration also allows synchronization of already existing records. So if you already collected some data, you may copy them over to your Google Drive spreadsheet. Be aware that the synchronization might take some time and the regular PHP execution time is limited to 30 seconds. So please make sure the max_execution_time in your php.ini is set good enough to cover the data export.

The Google Drive integration also supports meta data assignments like timestamps, dates, usernames and so on, so you will be able identify from where and when a submission has been done.

BreezingForms and Google Drive Spreadsheets is a solution that will add more value to your and your customer's business and helps taking it into the cloud while still keeping control over the technology of your choice.

The Google Drive Spreadsheet integration is bundled with BreezingForms 1.8.1 and available from here.

If BreezingForms - either the free or commercial version - is your favorite Joomla!® extension, you may now support it and crosstec by voting in the Joomla!® Monthly Community Choice!

Simply drop a quick line at at the bottom of the community choice page what you like about BreezingForms and the Joomla!® team will consider it as monthly community choice.

By supporting your favorite Joomla!® extension BreezingForms, you make sure that it will be continuously improved and we know that we are on the right track. Thank you!

Vote For BreezingForms Here

Some of you might remember the early days of the web, where many sites had plenty of animated GIFs, obtrusive color schemes and funny ways of navigating the user through the site.

Fortunately these days are over. But sometimes, things are coming back later on, in a more sophisticated and nicer way. I remember stumbling upon sites that had background animations in the early 2000s. These sites vanished pretty quick when more professional designs, simplicity and usability took over the web (which fortunately lead to what we have today).

But there are news: Animated backgrounds are back. Yes, pretty sure. But the way they are presented these days is totally different from what we had at that time.

A good example of animated backgrounds (aka slider) is our new and pretty Joomla! 3.0 template Prismatic. Not only having the ability to slide backgrounds and having neat overlays for them, it also ships with responsiveness. Means, the background slides will work the exactly same way on your mobile handset as they do on your desktop -- and scaling properly on the target device.

Additionally, it ships with a responsive accordion that is able to load modules from any module position where each accordion page resembles a single module. So you can either place images, html or any kind of module into the accordion.

Have a look at the demo here to see how the template works. Please don't forget to open the same page with your mobile or pad.

If you are into both, good designs and technology, then give this fine template a try. You will be able the edit the color scheme and many other things with a few clicks. More detailed information available in the template's documentation.

Though we develop our own popular Joomla!® forms extension BreezingForms, it is always good to know that there are alternatives. I would like to introduce you some of the other major Joomla!® forms extensions that I think are definitive worth to have a look at.

1. Chronoforms

The definite choice besides BreezingForms is this one fine non-commercial extension. A bit "out-of-date" but due to its concepts one of the most popular extensions for Joomla!®. It's quite simple: you create your own form HTML, copy and paste it into the form manager, the rest is done by Chronoforms. Awesome.

chronoengine.com

2. Proforms

Proforms is a relative young commercial form extension for Joomla!® and targets the non-experienced users. Its advantage is the ease-of-use but also provides an app system to get enhanced. The apps are provided by the developers themselves and are mostly commercial. Unlike BreezingForms, support is limited on domains, keep that in mind if you need it for plenty of installations across different domains.

mooj.org

3. RSform pro

This commercial extension is one of the oldest available ones for Joomla!®. Though technically not cutting-edge, it is meant for the not-so-experienced user and has basic features but still does its job pretty well. Similar to Proforms, support is given on limited domains, but there are plans to have support for unlimited domains, too.

rsjoomla.com

4. Blue Flame Forms

Another fellow form developer offers this very feature-rich commercial extension. There is plenty of stuff to discover. Personally, I like the wizard form creation interface and focus on things like different anti-spam systems.

forms-for-joomla.com

5. Fabrik

The absolute forms expert tool and a world of its own. This free extension is a hybrid between form creation and a content construction kit. If you need to create complex form based applications, then besides BreezingForms this is another alternative worth trying. The full documentation will cost you a few bucks.

fabrikar.com

There are plenty of other form extensions for Joomla!® available but the collection above are definitely the best ones available at this time. For now, only BreezingForms and Proforms are Joomla!® 3.0 ready but this might change anytime in the future.

For the fellow users of the free version of BreezingForms I am proud to announce that we back ported the Joomla!® 3.0 forms compatibility from the commercial into the free BreezingForms version 1.7.5 backport 1.

I am glad to see that Joomla!® 3.0 is broadly accepted amongst people quickly and therefore we hurried to bring users of the free version the ability to experience BreezingForms in the latest version of Joomla!® as well.

While there are already Joomla!® 3.0 versions of free from builders out there -- for example by form creators such as Proforms, there will be certainly updates for RSForm Pro, Chronoforms, Mailforms, Fabrik and many others soon.

Keep in mind that the free version of BreezingForms already contains many stunning features you usually don't find in free versions of a commercial extension.

Download the free version from here to start advanced form building in Joomla!® 3.0:

http://crosstec.de/en/breezingforms-1-7-5.html

Please consider to get a subscription if you feel you want to use the latest version of BreezingForms 1.8 with true mobile support, Salesforce® and Dropbox® integration and our other Joomla!® extensions and responsive Joomla!® templates. It will keep us making new stuff and improvements that you and the community will benefit from.

If you are reluctant or want to take part differently, then just spread the word about the free version of BreezingForms and Crosstec.

Thank you!

Have you ever created forms or a theme for BreezingForms? Then you may like to share your work with others.

Maybe you didn't know it, but Crosstec's Community Market is intended for just this -- sharing forms and form themes with the community. No matter if you would like to sell your advanced form apps and themes or just contribute them to the community for free, the market is the right place to do so.

Register for free here at Crosstec, head to the Community Market (My Listings), add your listing and after a short approval time, enjoy the traffic. Tens of thousands of fellow BreezingForms users will appreciate your contributions!

People like those from polishedgeek.com with their stunning BreezingForms for Virtuemart plugin can surely tell that taking part in the Community Market can help to promote your expertise in many areas.

If you never created a form or a theme before, just find out about in our documentation and you will soon be ready to submit your listing.

Joomla!® 3.0 is out and this leads to changes that we developer have to consider when updating our templates and extensions.

The most dramatic change in template development for Joomla!® is the fact that it ships with bootstrap. Bootstrap is a great framework from Twitter that eases the pain gives us the joy of modern template development.

Some template vendors prefer to use their own framework and now facing the problem to bring both frameworks together. Theoretically, you don't need to include bootstrap into your template, but as soon as any component, plugin or module requires it through

JHTML::_('bootstrap.framework');

it will surely lead to collisions with your own css or css framework and the bootstrap.css, which is loaded if the above is called.

Because of this we decided to create our templates from ground up for Joomla!® 3.0, such that it still includes bootstrap and thus supporting upcoming extensions that will require bootstrap. As of today we are starting with CleanLogic, one of our most demanded template and over time, we will create Joomla!® 3.0 versions for our other existing ones (besides regular releases of new templates).

It will be interesting to see how template frameworks and template vendors such as Gantry, RocketTheme, YooTheme and Gavick will deal with the situation (usually, changes like these lead to loads of new innovations).

All in all, the decision to implement bootstrap and the JUI into Joomla!® might lead to a well defined development path for templates, which in the end is in the advantage for developers and users.

Every Joomla!® user from time to time needs to spice up the registration form for his website. Whether it be for collecting additional information he requires from the registering user or for doing some actions right before or after the registration process.

Joomla!®, at least in its current version, doesn't provide any of these features. In Joomla!® 2.5 or 3.0 you may enable some additional fields but you cannot add custom ones or even take some actions in the registration process (think about paid registrations, uploads upon registration, sending emails to different recipients, calculations and so on).

Fortunately there are solutions available. One of these solutions comes for BreezingForms in the form of a ready-to-run form package (also known as Form App).

Form apps in BreezingForms are basically nothing else then a regular form that has been exported from your site and may be imported into any other Joomla!® site running BreezingForms, including all the assets like custom scripts and settings you previously made.

The BreezingForms Registration includes a complete form that you can extend, remove and add fields and replace the entire Joomla!® registration.

Here is a demonstration page, which shows how the registration is replaced by BreezingForms. The fields you see there (except name, username, email and password) may be removed or added as per your requirement. You can also add a PayPal button and make paid registrations possible (choose the option "send email after payment" in the PayPal settings screen of the button).

Installation Of The Custom Registration Form

• Make sure BreezingForms is installed. Download the free old version from here or obtain the commercial pro from here if you don't own a copy yet.
• Obtain the registration form app from here (depending on the above plan you can skip this).
• In BreezingForms, go to Configuration => Package Installer => upload the form app file.
• In BreezingForms => Manage Forms => choose the "registration" package from the top menu.
• Enter the settings of the registration form and add / remove fields as you desire.
• In the Joomla!® menu manager, create a BreezingForms menu item and add the registration form.
• Optional: Disable the Joomla!® standard registration in the user settings.

There is plenty of stuff you can do and play with, once the form is installed. You can even place different types of these forms, with different fields and actions on your page, if the registration processes should differ depending on the page the user is accessing (it also works within articles or modules).

If you have further questions on the use of the registration form app, just let me know. You can also ask some BreezingForms experts in our forums.