After all the hype and bubble-blowing, I decided to dip my little pinkie into the mix and experiment with AJAX. The result has been the release of a new plugin, cleverly titled 'AJAX Calendar'. Once installed this allows the standard WordPress calendar function to be enhanced such that:
- Stepping through the months is now asynchronous, and only updates the calendar
- Clicking on the calendar title takes you back to the current month
- Clicking on the funny «-» button will expand the calendar and display the posts headings for that month
- All content is cached
- Works in most browsers
The plugin requires modifications to the WordPress theme, although these modifications have been included in version 1.23 of the Giraffe theme.
Have a play.
Read more here…
It's been such a long time since I've posted anything here, and this is just going to be a technical post. Based upon feedback from different users, and the general direction of questions, I've released quite a major update of the Giraffe theme and plugin.
Changes include a major overhaul of the admin interface - redundant options have been removed, and the interface has been simplified. Where possible I have used diagrams to show what the configuration options will change.
Read more here…
Another addendum to the Giraffe theme, with a Japanese localization courtesy of Tai. The .mo file can be found on the Giraffe page, and the WordPress localization file on the WordPress localization page. Test it out from the sidebar Localization menu.
Thanks once again to Tai.
Read more here…
Thanks again go to Tai for his translation of the second part of the Theme Guide series into Japanese. Great work!
Also, Simos Xenitellis has produced a Greek localization for the Giraffe theme. You'll need the .mo file for the theme, and the .mo file for WordPress (taken from this Greek translation website and converted into a .mo file). Check it out from the Localization menu in the sidebar of this website, or visit his website for the full effect. Thanks Simos!
Read more here…
You may have noticed a small drop-down menu labelled 'Localization' in the sidebar of this blog. It's something I've been playing about with since localizing the Giraffe theme and, while it doesn't magically translate the entire blog, it does provide a viewer with a simple method to change the locale.
But what is a locale? In WordPress terms it refers to the framework around which your posts are displayed. That is, the words, phrases, dates, and times, that surround your posts.
Read more here…
I've added a small Pinyin converter to the InScript plugin. Pinyin is a method of transliterating Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet. As Chinese is a tonal language, it is important that these tones are included in the pinyin. This is achieved through the use of accents and other marks over certain vowels.
The reason for the converter is that these accents are not easy to type, especially for people with keyboards in an accent-less language (i.e. English). It is possible to enter the characters using some form of character mapping tool, or by entering the HTML code directly, but this is not an intuitive method.
Read more here…
A big thanks to Stefano Aglietti and Mario Núñez Molina for providing localizations of the Giraffe theme in Italian and Spanish. I've added a small localization selector in the sidebar so that people can change the theme language and see what it looks like. It doesn't translate the posts, but it provides dates and other phrases in the chosen language, making for a better experience for non-English speakers.
Read more here…
My Giraffe theme has now been updated. I've made some pretty major changes and these are summarised below:
- The theme is fully localised! I don't have any translations yet, but once I release the relevant parts then hopefully people can translate the theme into their own language - no more hacking the theme to bits.
- Administrator interface. The support plugin now adds it's own interface into the administration section. From here you can configure many aspects of theme's appearance, such as colour scheme. More details in the themes section.
Read more here…
After the (almost) complete restoration of my system I can now get back to finishing off the things I was working on. The result of this is I've now made the theme for this website available for download.
I've tried to tidy it up as much as possible, although it's still not perfect. There is also one small issue with Firefox 1.0.4. Sometimes, on a wide screen (1400 pixels on mine), FireFox will incorrectly add a 1 pixel gap between a border in the comments section. I'm not sure what the cause of this is, and it only occurs on FireFox - all other browsers display it perfectly. I know it's a browser inconsistency because resizing the screen causes the gap to disappear. Until I can figure out a fix, or if anyone else knows the reason, then I will put it down as an acceptable problem that will hopefully disappear in the next FireFox release.
Read more here…
I've been tinkering away on a WordPress plugin idea I've had, and it's now finished and available for download.
It's a bit of a complicated plugin to explain fully, but the core effect is very simple: it is an expandable pattern matching script engine. Phew, what a mouthful!
Basically it means that you can insert patterns into posts, or have patterns applied to dates, titles, even the whole blog. These patterns can contain variables and functions that, when InScript processes them, will insert or manipulate the data as the page is being generated.
Read more here…
