Exhale Version 2.0.0

What a ride these last couple of weeks have been as I hunkered down and built out this release.

Well, it’s been a ride for me at least. It started with one simple feature: flesh out the font controls of the Exhale theme. What happened was a complete rethinking of the architecture of how the fonts (typography as it’s now called) feature worked within the theme. If there’s anything that defines the 2.0.0 release, that’s it.

So, let’s jump right into this.

Typography Options

The “Fonts” section in the customizer has now been renamed to “Typography” because it’s about more than simply selecting a font now.

In 2.0.0, the “Headings” option has 4 controls:

• Font Family
• Font Style
• Font Variant: Caps
• Text Transform

In version 2.0.0, the theme provides 64 additional Google font options (that should bring us around 160+ total). Each font has been tested. Most of the new font families are display/handwriting-type fonts. They’re primarily suitable for headings.

The new Headings font options and additional families open up a whole new level of customization. This is really where you can add some personality to your Web site. A single change of a heading font can change the atmosphere of your site.

The Primary and Secondary font options only allow you to pick the font family. And, the list is limited to fonts only suitable for body copy. These are fonts with true normal, italic, bold, and bold italic styles, which are necessary for body copy.

More font options are coming in the future too. I’m just being cautious and testing each new addition thoroughly before rolling them out.

Block Styles

I added a few extra block styles to this release. I’m digging the new “shadow” style.

• Image Block:
  • Shadow – Adds a shadow around the image.
  • Rounded – Adds a fully-rounded border.
• Gallery Block:
  • Shadow – Adds a shadow for all the gallery images.
• List Block:
  • None – Removes the list bullet.
  • Circle – Uses circle bullets.
  • Disc – Uses disc bullets.
  • Square – Uses square bullets.
• Media & Text Block:
  • Borderless – Removes the border from the media.
  • Shadow – Adds a shadow to the media.
• Paragraph:
  • Shadow – Adds a shadow to the paragraph (best used with background color).

Other Features

Exhale 2.0.0 has a few other notable features.

Page Templates

This release features two additional page templates. Well, one is a replacement, so it’s really just one extra template.

• Content Canvas: Only shows the post content in the “content” area on the front end. The post title and other post-related data is not shown. Basically, the editor content is your canvas.
• Landing: Content Canvas: A combination of the existing Landing template (removes the site header and footer) and the new Content Canvas template.

All “page” templates work along with any post type now. So, if you have a plugin with some custom post type, you can use any of the templates with it.

The “No Post Header/Footer” template has been replaced with the “Content Canvas” template. The theme will auto-update the template whenever a page is visited with that template on the front end.

Native Lazy Loading

Version 75 (if I’m not mistaken) of the Google Chrome browser will having native lazy-loading of images built in if those images have the loading attribute set. Other browsers will likely follow suit.

Exhale now adds the appropriate loading attribute and sets it to lazy after the first featured image is shown.

If you’re unfamiliar with lazy-loading, it basically stops an image from loading until it is requested (i.e., comes into view on the screen). This saves time when first rendering your Web site and speeds up page loads.

Child Theme Dev

If you’re building custom child themes for Exhale, there’s a couple of notable changes with config files located under the /config folder.

• settings-font-family.php is deprecated. It should be renamed to settings-typography.php.
• settings-mods.php now supports adding default theme mods for everything but typography and color settings.
• settings-mods.php now allows for anonymous functions as a value.

Download Version 2.0.0

You can grab the latest version of the theme from your account page.

Not a premium member yet? Why are you sitting here reading this when you could be upping your Web site game? Go buy a copy →

Extra: Mountains Child Theme

Want to test drive an early version of the Mountains child theme, which is slated for release next week? It’s available on the account page for all current premium members.

Note: it’s featured in the screenshots used in this post. Have fun!