Sanjeev Shrestha

Yes! Joomla 1.5.x comes with mootools 1.1.x and it is a pity when you cannot use best of the latest mootools widgets with joomla 1.5.x.  To make the matter worse, you will rarely find forums and blogs that discusses about mootools 1.1. In this case you will definitely want to use mootools 1.2.x with Joomla in the frontend. So in this small tutorial, we will talk about how to use mootools1.2.x with Joomla 1.5.x. Remember the admin panel of Joomla will still use mootools 1.1.x.

I have written a post about how to use jQuery with Joomla earlier. This tutorial is just a slight modification of the codes from the earlier post.
To use mootools 1.2.x with Joomla 1.5.x, follow the following steps.

1. Download the mootools core from the mootools core builder site
2. Also Download the additional plugins you will use with your installation from more builder. I recommend downloading both compressed and uncompressed files from the mootools builder. We may need uncompressed files in debuggin mode.
3. Copy these files in a folder that can be accessed by Joomla. I recommend media->system->js folder of joomla installation. The choice is yours!

I copied four files mootools-1.2.3-core.js, mootools-1.2.3-core-compressed.js, mootools-1.2.3.1-more.js and mootools-1.2.3.1-more-compressed.js to media->system->js folder. Now locate and open a file named behavior.php which is inside libraries->joomla->html->html folder. Now find a method named mootools($debug=null) and modify it as below.

function mootools($debug = null)
{
static $loaded;
$mainframe=&JFactory::getApplication();
// Only load once
if ($loaded) {
return;
}

// If no debugging value is set, use the configuration setting
if ($debug === null) {
$config = &JFactory::getConfig();
$debug = $config->getValue(‘config.debug’);
}

$konkcheck = isset($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']) ? strpos(strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']), “konqueror”) : null;

if($mainframe->isSite())
{
if ($debug || $konkcheck)
{
JHTML::script(‘mootools-1.2.3-core.js’, ‘media/system/js/’, false);
JHTML::script(‘mootools-1.2.3.1-more.js’, ‘media/system/js/’, false);
}
else
{
JHTML::script(‘mootools-1.2.3-core-compressed.js’, ‘media/system/js/’, false);
JHTML::script(‘mootools-1.2.3.1-more-compressed.js’, ‘media/system/js/’, false);
}
$loaded = true;
return;

}
else
{

if ($debug || $konkcheck)
{
JHTML::script(‘mootools-uncompressed.js’, ‘media/system/js/’, false);
}
else
{
JHTML::script(‘mootools.js’, ‘media/system/js/’, false);
}
$loaded = true;
return;
}
}

This modified mootools behavior checks if the site is accessed from frontend or is it admin. if it is frontend it loads the mootools 1.2.x depending upon the debug mode. It will load uncompressed files in debug mode. This will load both core and more files in frontend. The admin still uses mootools 1.1.x as it heavily depends on it.

This is all! It worked for me. Let me know if it did or not for you. Happy reading!