Init FX Engine – Interactive, Event-Driven, Lightweight

2.0.1 – October 1, 2026

• New: Seasonal Effects — holiday scenes rendered over the page: Halloween (bats, ghosts, pumpkins), Christmas, New Year, Lunar New Year / Tết (peach & apricot blossoms, lucky money), Valentine and Mid-Autumn (glowing lanterns rising). Three motion styles: falling, rising and fluttering
• New: Built-in holiday calendar with automatic theme switching; Tết and Mid-Autumn dates are computed from the Vietnamese lunar calendar (UTC+7) and bundled through 2040. Also supports a custom date range or always-on mode, homepage-only display and custom emojis
• New: Themed greeting effect, played once per browser session (fireworks show on New Year, lucky money on Tết, lantern rise on Mid-Autumn…)
• New effects: Halloween Burst, Lucky Money (Tết), Fireworks Show, Snow Burst, Lantern Rise — available as keywords, in [initfxen-fx] and in the FX Trigger block
• New library: fireworks-js 2.10.8 (MIT) for the realistic Fireworks Show. It is lazy-loaded only when the effect actually runs; if it cannot load, the classic confetti firework is used instead
• New: JavaScript API — FXEngine.trigger( name, options ), FXEngine.register( name, fn ) and FXEngine.effects() (the FXEngine.trigger call mentioned in the FAQ now actually exists)
• Settings: Seasonal Effects section with a live Preview button, the upcoming holiday calendar and a “today visitors will see” indicator; preview buttons for every new effect
• Settings: the settings page is now organized into clear sections (Preloader, Keyword Effects, Snowfall, Seasonal Effects, Grayscale, Inline Formatting), one setting per row with proper labels. Field names are unchanged, so existing settings are kept
• Performance: the seasonal renderer draws pre-rendered emoji sprites on a single canvas, starts after page load via requestIdleCallback, pauses while the tab is hidden, caps device pixel ratio at 2, reduces particles on small screens and respects prefers-reduced-motion
• Performance: inline formatting no longer serializes the whole page (innerHTML) to look for spoilers, and skips text nodes without any formatting marker before running its regular expressions
• Performance: emoji/heart shapes are cached instead of being rebuilt on every effect, and all “in-view” shortcodes share a single IntersectionObserver
• Performance: removed duplicated rules from the preloader critical CSS (same visual result)
• Compatibility: fx-engine.js and fx-snowfall.js now also start when they are deferred/delayed by optimization plugins (after DOMContentLoaded); fx-engine.js declares its canvas-confetti dependency explicitly
• Developer: new filters init_plugin_suite_fx_engine_seasonal_themes, init_plugin_suite_fx_engine_seasonal_window, init_plugin_suite_fx_engine_lunar_dates, init_plugin_suite_fx_engine_seasonal_config
• Internationalization: new strings added to the POT file and Vietnamese translation (PO/MO/JSON regenerated with WP-CLI)
• Uninstall: the new init_plugin_suite_fx_engine_seasonal option is removed on uninstall

2.0.0 – August 4, 2026

• New: Block Editor (Gutenberg) support: a native FX Trigger block (equivalent to [initfxen-fx]), grouped under its own Init FX Engine block category (instead of the generic “Widgets” category). Registered via block.json (with a PHP render.php file wired through the "render" field, WP 6.1+) that calls the exact same shortcode function as its shortcode counterpart — no duplicated display logic, output always matches. The editor integration is a single, no-build-step vanilla JavaScript file using wp.serverSideRender for a live preview directly in the editor. The [initfxen-fx-ambient] shortcode does not get a block equivalent in this release — its rendering behavior wasn’t stable enough yet; the shortcode itself is unaffected
• Changed: Requires at least raised from 5.5 to 6.9, for consistency with the rest of the Init Plugin Suite’s 2.0.0 releases
• Note: this release does not add Abilities API support. This plugin has no data to read or write — everything it does is a purely visual, client-side effect — so there is nothing meaningful for an AI agent to query
• Tested up to: 7.1

1.6 – December 17, 2025

• Enhancement: Added advanced Snowfall configuration options — control snow amount, size, fall speed, and opacity
• UX: Introduced fine-grained snowfall tuning for balanced visuals without overwhelming content
• Performance: Optimized particle density calculation to prevent visual clutter at higher snow counts
• Stability: Enforced strict value clamping and safe defaults to avoid misconfiguration and extreme effects
• Developer: Normalized snowfall settings schema with backward-compatible defaults for legacy installs
• Developer: Frontend now receives a minimal, sanitized snowfall config payload (reduces JS surface and coupling)
• Compatibility: Improved resilience when particles.js loads late or configuration is partially missing
• Internationalization: Added translatable strings for all new Snowfall settings and helper descriptions
• Code Quality: Refactored snowfall bootstrapping logic for clearer separation between schedule logic and rendering
• Maintainability: Prepared Snowfall module for future presets (Light / Normal / Heavy) without breaking changes

1.5 – December 9, 2025

• New Feature: Added Homepage-only Snowfall option — allow snowfall effect to run exclusively on the homepage
• UX: Snowfall settings now provide clearer scope control between full-site and homepage-only display
• Developer: Extended snowfall option schema with homepage_only flag
• Security: Improved sanitization for snowfall scope settings
• Compatibility: Ensured correct behavior with both is_front_page() and is_home() configurations
• Stability: Prevented unnecessary asset loading on non-homepage pages when homepage-only mode is enabled
• Performance: Reduced frontend script footprint when snowfall is limited to homepage

1.4 – November 14, 2025

• Performance: Rebuilt FX Keyword Scanner — now uses a single-pass TreeWalker, unified regex engine, parent-level deduping, and smart skip rules for ultra-fast DOM parsing
• Stability: Improved safety checks with data-fx-keyword-processed to prevent reprocessing loops and ensure clean node replacement
• UX: Smoother keyword-trigger interactions via a single delegated click listener (reduces event overhead and boosts responsiveness)
• Developer: Refactored internal matching pipeline for clarity, extensibility, and easier debugging
• Compatibility: More accurate keyword detection across multilingual and mixed-format HTML content

1.3 – September 13, 2025

• New Feature: Added Session-only Preloader option (only shows preloader on first visit per session)
• New Feature: Added Inline Formatting toggle (enable/disable parsing of inline syntax in texts)
• New Feature: Introduced Spoiler syntax using ||text|| — wraps any content (including images) inside a blurred container with click-to-reveal overlay
• Internationalization: Spoiler overlay label (Tap to reveal) is now translatable via i18n
• CSS Injection: Optimized to load highlight and spoiler styles only when needed
• Developer: Extended sanitize and settings registration for new options (session_once, inlinefmt)
• Stability: Fixed duplication issues when parsing spoiler blocks and ensured clean DOM structure
• UX: Improved spoiler accessibility with ARIA labels