Category: Web Development

Thoughts on web development, mostly HTML or CSS probably but also the industry in general.

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WordPress 3.1 Released

The newest version of WordPress, version 3.1 codenamed “Reinhardt”, has been released and is available to download or via an autoupdate from the dashboard.

In addition to over 800 bug fixes, this update includes a new admin bar, a cleaner writing interface, and more flexibility for theme developers. WordPress 3.1 also focuses heavily on continuing to turn WordPress into a low end CMS option by adding functionality around their custom post formatting and content type features that were introduced in the 3.0 update.

Continue reading “WordPress 3.1 Released”

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Three (Somewhat) Easy & (Really) Important Ways to Improve Your Site with jQuery

Web developers have been using JavaScript to layer on enhanced user interfaces and add dynamic content since the days of Netscape Navigator’s dominance. Today JavaScript can be used to build huge advanced web applications but it still remains a valuable tool we use daily to add progressive enhancements that can make the difference between a good site and a great one.

The jQuery JavaScript Library helps make many common tasks easier and gives developers a powerful toolset to handle page events, animations, and more. Complicated, common tasks go from 100 line endeavors to single lines of code. The vast list of available plugins available can add even more capabilities.

Using the jQuery library and leveraging reusable logic makes adding some basic usability and interaction features a no brainer on most projects. Relatively easily we can make important tweaks that improve the overall user experience of your site.

Read on to learn more…

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YouTube Mobile Redesigned, Now Using HTML5 for Video

YouTube has updated the mobile version of their site with several important improvements, including now serving videos using the HTML5 video tag. If you’re using an HTML5 compliant mobile browser, which includes the iPhone and Android phones, you’ll get the new and improved site. If you hit m.youtube.com with an older phone (or a desktop web browser) you’ll get the older, more basic version instead.

The redesigned mobile site features touch-friendly interface changes, speed improvements, and much higher quality video than the previous Edge-optimized version. The original mobile site launched in 2007 and the native iPhone YouTube app has hardly been updated since the first iPhone was released, so many of the changes revolve around getting the mobile site on the same page as changes to the full version of the site. Most importantly, users can now choose to watch the high quality versions of videos when available.

Continue reading “YouTube Mobile Redesigned, Now Using HTML5 for Video”

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Cisco Show and Share: YouTube for the Enterprise?

Last week at an event in Las Vegas, Cisco surprised the tech blogs when they announced their new Android-based tablet dubbed the Cius. Without a cool new gadget to go with it, their new social video system didn’t cause as much of a stir but may end up having the bigger impact on the way companies communicate, collaborate, and educate their employees. Cisco Show and Share could be YouTube for the enterprise.

Show and Share looks to make it easy for employees to upload, share, and edit videos within the security of the corporate network. Videos can be synced with presentation slides making them great instructional tools or a way to archive meetings for those who could not attend. Uploaded videos can be made available only for certain users and extensive viewing statistics are available, great for making sure everyone has seen the important video from HR or the marketing team has watched the new training video.

Perhaps most importantly, speech to text technology can automatically create searchable transcripts of uploaded videos. Once videos are transcribed, categorized, and labeled in Show and Share, employees will have easy access to the knowledge of coworkers both down the hall from them and across the country.

Knowledge sharing is one of the most important components of the modern corporate intranet and that doesn’t just mean making files available in a central repository. Increasingly, multimedia and connecting employees to each other to encourage communication are becoming the preferred way to promote knowledge transfer and to stay on the leading edge. Video tools such as Cisco Show and Share could go a long way in not only making the information available, but also making employees actually want to use it.

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Some (Very) Early Impressions of WordPress 3.0

It’s been just about a week since the final version of WordPress 3.0 was released to the world, bringing with it interface improvements, important core menu and post changes, and of course tons of bug fixes. Check out the announcement video to get a good overview of the new features of 3.0 along with the new default “Twenty Ten” theme:

I’ve now had a little bit of time to explore and play with the new features and some definitely stand out right away.

The Help tab on the top of every page includes vastly improved contextual help text throughout the system. Click the tab and get a great overview of the current page along with detailed description of options and links to more information and support forums. As someone who trains users to use WordPress, this will result in immediate cost savings for clients as they are able to retain information better and therefore need less follow up training.

The other two big new features that caught my eye combine to push WordPress 3.0 another step towards becoming a viable CMS in some situations. The new release includes custom menu functionality mixing posts, pages, categories, and other content into one menu and also gives developers the ability to easily create new custom post types. For most client projects that MarketNet takes on a more enterprise-level CMS will be the best solution, but these two new features are great additions. If you need to create a site or microsite that is primarily a blog with additional content such as employee profiles or e-mail newsletter archives, it just got a lot easier with WordPress 3.0.

Go checkout the the full changelog for 3.0 and of course download now to take advantage of all the new goodness.

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WP-Syntax Code Highlighter Plugin

As a blog by and for web developers, many of the articles on DevSpot tackle some problem with HTML, JavaScript, or another markup/programming language. That means we frequently need to embed code snippets into our WordPress posts to help explain a solution. To make them easy to understand, code samples should be color coded and include line numbers for reference.

For WordPress blogs, that’s where the plugin WP-Syntax comes in. There are several to choose from (including the more powerful SyntaxHighlighter), but WP-Syntax the right combination of features and usability that we needed. It converts blocks of text wrapped with pre tags and a lang attribute into syntax-highlighted code. Continue reading “WP-Syntax Code Highlighter Plugin”

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WordPress post scheduling bug

If you schedule posts for future publication in your WordPress blogs, don’t just Set It and Forget It but remember to check frequently to confirm your posts actually go live. You could have posts still sitting in limbo that you thought had been published out days or weeks ago.

Various server configurations or temporary issues can apparently cause a scheduled post not to go out on time. When you look at your list of posts the status Missed schedule shows up in the date column (see the graphic at right) and once it’s scheduled time has past WordPress will not try again to publish that post. In order to publish the post you have to go in and very frustratingly switch the post status back to draft, change the time of the post, then and try to republish to get it onto the site.

We’re running WordPress 2.7 but it still appears to affect some sites running the current 2.8.1 version. Other than manual workaround mentioned above, there are a few other “fixes” you can try to solve the problem until a fix is in the official WordPress builds.

Please note the following workarounds have not been tested by MarketNet, use at your own risk:

  1. Modify the file wp-cron.php
  2. Replace wp-cron.php with a version from WP 2.6.5
  3. Install the Scheduled MIAs plugin

Until the issue is fixed, don’t forget to occasionally check your post lists for unpublished posts.

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Mozilla Jetpack? Utilize JavaScript, HTML, and CSS to build Firefox extensions.

Mozilla Labs, the people behind the Firefox web browser, have recently announced their newest project: Jetpack. Jetpack is… well it’s a little complicated. From an end user’s point of view, Jetpack will be another type of extension you can install to add features for your browser. For developers, it’s an API to write add-ons for Firefox (and maybe “more” according to Mozilla) using technologies you already know. Continue reading “Mozilla Jetpack? Utilize JavaScript, HTML, and CSS to build Firefox extensions.”

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New WordPress 2.8 release adds features, speed

WordPress 2.8 (codename “Baker”) hit the World Wide Web last week and it brought a slew of new fixes, features, and improvements to the reigning number one blogging platform. This version sees improvements to the theme browser (not particularly useful to our clients and their custom themes), sidebar/footer widget functionality, admin usability and functionality, and most importantly optimized code to improve speed and the overall blogging experience. According to the official WordPress announcement post, this version brings “cooler, smoother, simpler blogging” to the masses.