Internet – Reciprocity

iPod Touch…Fantastic!!

I’m currently writing this post from the WordPress App on my new iPod Touch. I’m going to be doing mobile themes for one of my regular clients, so I needed a device to test with. So far, I’m really loving it…but it REALLY makes me want an iPhone so I can use it everywhere.

For those of you with mobile devices, you’ll notice that my site now has a mobile-friendly theme that shows up when you visit from one of these devices. It’s currently using the default theme from the plugin I’m using (WPTouch iPhone Theme), but I plan on changing that soon.

So yeah, iPod Touch good! 🙂

CMS-like Admin Menu Plugin – Version 2.1 Released.

Another plugin update…this time for my plugin for rearranging the admin menu to bring the Pages menu to the top. With version 2.0, on WP 2.8, you got a doubled Category link, and it didn’t support custom taxonomies. As of version 2.1, it now does.

It was an easy fix, I just needed the time to get it done. I just committed the new version to WP Extend, so if you’re using the plugin, you’ll be getting the upgrade notice shortly. You can also find it on the Plugin page if you’d rather download it manually.

CTC – Version 5.2 Released

This is a quickie update to address a couple of issues. First off, you should once again be able to use the admin plugin update feature to get new versions, as I have now moved the plugin files out of the folder I had them in.

Secondly, as of version 5.2, all PHP short tags have been eliminated from the plugin. It didn’t seem to be a major issue, but if your server had short tags turned off you couldn’t use the admin panels to set your options.

Lastly, the individual link items inside the cloud now have their own class for styling purposes. You can now target a.ctc-tag in your stylesheet to apply styling to the links themselves.

As always, you can find the new version on the CTC Page, or you can grab it from the plugin page at WP Extend.

CTC — Automatic Upgrade Issues…

There is an issue when you use the automatic update feature. It creates an erroneous folder that contains the actual plugin folder. For the time being, please refrain from using the automatic upgrade. If you have already upgraded via the automatic method and the plugin disappeared from your plugins list, just ftp to your WP install, go into the plugin directory, and move the ‘tag_cloud’ directory from the ‘configurable-tag-cloud-widget’ directory to the main plugins directory. After you do this, you can activate the plugin as normal.

Sorry for the issues…I’m trying to find a fix, and will post agian when I figure it out.

CTC – Version 5.0 Released!

I just updated my configurable tag cloud plugin to version 5.0. The big news in this version is the widget has been brought up to date with the new Widgets API released in WordPress 2.8, and you can now limit the tags displayed in the cloud by the number of posts attached to each tag. This will stop the issue of having a few tags that overpower the cloud.

I haven’t updated the CTC page yet, so for now, you’ll need to either use the WordPress plugin update feature, or visit the plugin page at WP Extend to get the new version.

CTC — Upgrade Coming Soon

With the release of WordPress 2.8, a new widget API was released into the wild. The effect of this is the widget portion of my configurable tag could plugin doesn’t work the way it should any more. I have started working on upgrading the plugin to work with the new API, and it’s looking good so far. There will also be a couple of new features in the new version. I’m not quite ready to talk about those features, but I think they will be welcome additions.

~~That said, version 5.0 of the plugin will be released for WordPress version 2.8+~~ ~~ONLY~~~~, so if you want the new features, you will have to upgrade your WordPress install.~~ I figured out I could make it work for all versions of WP 2.3 and beyond. I have a couple of folks beta testing the new version, and when they give me the all-clear, I’ll release it so keep an eye out here or your WordPress plugins page for the notice.

CMS-Like Admin Menu – Version 2.0 Released.

In case you haven’t noticed the update notification on your WordPress plugins screen, I released an updated version this morning. No functional changes have been made (or needed), but the plugin in now 100% compatible with WordPress 2.7. You can get the updated version either via the automatic update function, or you can head over to the plugin page to grab a copy manually.

You may also notice that there are now two download options on the plugin page. This is because version 2.0 is only for WordPress versions 2.7 and above. The menu item numbers changed in 2.7, so the new version of the plugin won’t work correctly on WordPress 2.6 or earlier. If you’re still running version 1.0 of the plugin on an older version of WordPress, there’s no need to update, as you already have the newest version that will work for you (though, I highly recommend you upgrade WordPress as soon as possible to take advantage of the new features and security enhancements).

As always, please feel free to leave any comments on the plugin page.

Internet Explorer 6…Time to call it a day?

As web developers, we all know IE 6 is a major PITA. It’s CSS support is horribly broken (google “CSS IE hacks” and enjoy browsing through 4.7 million hits), with the CSS box model being the biggest culprit. It was released in 2001, when most of the technologies we use today were in their infancy, if they were being used at all. These days, it’s really starting to show it’s age.

Which is why, effective today, I’m not supporting it any longer.

It may seem strange coming from someone who develops web sites for a living to drop support for one of the most widely-used browsers on the market, but let’s face facts. According to Net Applications, IE 6 has been losing market share for at least the last year. and it now barely ranks number 2 behind IE 7; with only a scant 3.28% lead on my recommended browser, Firefox 3. This tells me that the majority of Windows users have either upgraded to Vista (which comes with IE 7), or have finally upgraded their XP install to IE 7. Either way, it seems that IE 6’s race has been run, and it’s time to move on.

New WordPress Theme — News Portal

I finally found a few minutes to put the finishing touches on an open-source theme conversion I’ve been working on for a while. I have posted the theme for download here. Take a look, and let me know what you think.