Archive for the 'Web Design' Category

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WP-Slimbox2 v0.9.7 Released!

Published on April 21, 2009 in Web Design. 9 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

The latest version of WP-Slimbox2, v0.9.7, has been released.

Major changes on the user side include the addition of the wonderful jQuery Farbtastic colorpicker Javascript, created by Steven Wittens and a new key code detection script (written by me) that allows you to simply type the keys you’d like to use instead of looking up their key code.

Major changes on the backend include a rewrite of the core to utilize the WPlize class to clean up the code and minimize database calls by utilizing a single database entry and utilizing an array to store all the variables.

Major changes for people who don’t speak English, or would just prefer to use their native tongue, we’ve added Dutch/Nederlandse and French/Français to the list of supported languages. Thank you nv1962 and Jandry for your efforts, and to all the translators for bringing their translations up to speed.

That means WP-Slimbox2 is now available in Dutch/Nederlandse, English (of course), French/Français, German/Deutsch, and Spanish/Español.

Hopefully the list of supported languages will continue to grow. If you’d like to contribute a translation, or have suggestions please post a comment and check out the support forums.

Calling Translators/Localizers

Published on February 12, 2009 in Web Design. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

For those of you who are unaware, WP-Slimbox2 has had Localization support since v0.9.4, and support for RTL Localization since v0.9.5.

Unfortunately, what I do not have are localizations, Spanish/Español aside.

So I’m putting out the word, on my mostly unread blog, requesting people to provide translations! It uses the standard POT file method, the same as WordPress, so just load up the POT file included in the languages sub-directory of the plugin package in your PO editor of your choice (such as POedit) and get to work. You’ll also need to create image files for the Next, Prev, and Close displays. Look at the default English files, as well as the Spanish files, if you want examples.

I’d really like to be able to serve as many people as possible with the plugin, but I can only read and write English and don’t see myself becoming a linguist any time soon.

If you’d like to contribute, please leave a comment here, as well as on our support forums where I’ll set up a special localization thread a bit later.

Thanks!

Gallery Integration and jQuery Slimbox WordPress Plugin

Published on January 3, 2009 in Web Design and Whatever I'm talking about. 7 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

I added two plugins today regarding images galleries. One of them was to more directly integrate the gallery I already use, Gallery2, with WordPress. It’s called WPG2 and supposedly makes it easier to insert images into posts and so forth, though I’m still trying to figure out how it all works. Another nice feature is that it supposedly supports lightbox and slimbox display effects, I was unable to get these to work, but since it supported those effects with separate plugins I tried the numerous ones available for WordPress and was able to get the effect. Unfortunately most of these effects used JavaScript frameworks that weren’t already loaded on my page (MooTools, prototype). Since my page uses the jQuery framework already (thanks to the K2 theme and my work on the Multi-Level Navigation plugin) I really wanted one that would use it so I could cut down on load times.

As it turns out, there was one option, jQuery Lightbox Balupton Edition which worked ok and obviously did use jQuery, but it had a few really annoying aspects to it, like the big advertisement in the upper right corner when you used the effect, plus the name was ridiculously pretentious. For some reason several of the plugins I tested also had issues where the dropdown menu wouldn’t properly situate itself into the background either (though I could resolve this by changing my menu’s z-index).

What to do? Well, I searched around the WordPress plugin repository, that’s how I found the various plugins that I did test, and then I tried a few internet searches. That’s how I stumbled onto Slimbox 2, the ultimate lightweight Lightbox clone for jQuery. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a WordPress plugin for it, fortunately the javascript itself really just needed to be loaded up, the gallery plugin already added in the lightbox cues (though the JS also will add them in for images that don’t have them). Ultimately I could’ve just hacked it into the code, or probably plugged it in with a K2 hook, but I figured it be better to just write a new plugin to do it, so I did. Currently it’s basically just a tiny php file that tells it to enqueue the javascript, points to a CSS file, and has a few image files, but I’ll see if I can maybe flesh it out, after I look over what capabilities Slimbox 2 provides. I’ll also likely want to figure out how to properly credit the author of the script, but assuming I can figure it all out I’ll likely release it for others to use too.

Let me know what you think.

Menu’s continued…some more

Published on November 3, 2008 in Web Design and Whatever I'm talking about. 2 Comments

So it turns out it was my attempts to make the menu semi-transparent that killed it in IE. I’ve since modified the CSS to get the same effect, and IE ignores the opacity setting there, so now the menu works (as far as I’ve seen up to this point) in both FF and IE….

If you can’t get a menu to work leave a comment…

Menu Problems Continued

Published on November 3, 2008 in Web Design and Whatever I'm talking about. 0 Comments

So I thought I’d finally gotten the menu working correctly, it looked great in Firefox, it looked great in Opera, and it looked great in IE 7 too. Then I got in to work and tried it out on IE6 and…failure, the same stupid problem with the sub-level menu’s not folding out.

I’m sure it’s partially related to IE’s standards compliance issues, but at the same time the demo’s for the plugin I utilized work in IE6, so there might be a setting that just needs a tweaking….

If only IE would get banned from the internet…

Dropdown menu issues.

Published on October 31, 2008 in Web Design and Whatever I'm talking about. 2 Comments

I’ve been messing around with the dropdown menu on the site. If you use Firefox (and possibly Opera and Safari) it should work, most of them time. IE, because it’s such a poorly designed browser, is a bit less functional….though I believe I had IE7 working more or less. IE6 is another story.

Oh yeah…and if you’re interested in having a similar dropdown menu on your website, I highly recommend this one, which can be downloaded from http://pixopoint.com/multi-level-navigation/

It’s coming along nicely from when I first started using it, partially because I started to read the support forums and saw what people were requesting, and made some requests of my own…and then realized that seeing as how I know php (the coding language wordpress and it’s plugin’s are primarily written in) I could make some of them myself. So I did, and then I passed along my work to the author, who’s been quite enthusiastic about my contributions. He’s slowly beginning to incorporate them, as he looks over them and starts to understand them. I’d say the most noticeable addition would be the little “>” that indicate sub-menu’s, but he hasn’t gotten around to incorporating that one just yet.

Recently he’s also made some javascript changes, and since he’s utilizing the wonderful jQuery library I’ve been able to further tweak/modify/condense those down too. The keyboard navigation (that I suspect…no one uses…but if they wanted to) has now been greatly enhanced.

Currently I’m trying to work on fixing up the fancy slideouts of the menu’s, unfortunately I’m getting some weird results (this is the cause of the menu issues). Hopefully I’ll resolve them soon.

And of course if you’ve read things this far…you now think I’m a dork… good for you.

Bear