Critical Bug in zTopTabs

[ernestmcd]

I've been using zTopTabs as the default backend theme for a number of my clients, they like the display and all the help menus that it offers. An excellent extension particularly for clients who are new to Content Managment and Contao.

While troubleshooting a a minor conflict with the Coolumns extension, I ran across what I consider a critical error in zTopTabs. Because I use a variety of extensions, every once in a while there will be a conflict with another extension and I've found it useful to selectively "deactivate" extensions in the Settings area to try and identify the offending culprit.

IF you have zTopTabs activated as the backend theme for the current user, AND you deactivate the extension in the Settings area, AND then SAVE the change, the display in the backend only shows the top portion of the zTopTabs and nothing on the backend page below that. Nothing can be changed or updated once this error occurs.

The error is significant in that I haven't been able to recover from this in a test environment. An attempt to manually untinstall the zTopTabs extension, and then run the Contao Install tool still left the display in the back end exactly the same with the page display missing below the zTopTabs. As a workaround for this error, where in the database is the settings for an extension that has been "deactivated"? I haven't been able to locate this to manually undo the error.

I suspect that the zTopTabs extension is not completely deactivating itself when the checkbox in the Settings area is active. It probably should reset the active user to the "Default" backend theme as part of the deactivation process. In my experience deactivating extensions in the Settings area works smoothly for most if not all extensions, so hopefully this won't be a problem to repair.

In the meantime, I'm just taking extra care not to deactivate the zTopTab extension unless I've changed the user back to "Default" backend theme.

[Andreas]

Deactivated extensions are saved in system/config/localconfig.php
$GLOBALS['TL_CONFIG']['inactiveModules']
You can place a '#' before that line to activate all extensions and save.
Additionaly since Contao 3 there's a .skip file in the extensions folder.

[ernestmcd]

Andreas:

Thanks, that's very helpful!

Ernest McDermon
Snellville, GA