I’ve implemented resolution-dependent layouts (first noted by The Man in Blue) to ensure that this site is tailored to fit the size of your Web browser. Let me know if you run into any problems with the layout.
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Favatars, WordPress and Me
A while back, I posted about implementing Favatars on this site. While I ran into many small issues, I was relatively happy with the feature. Since my upgrade to WP 1.5, I have wanted to re-implement the functionality without hacking WordPress. Luckily, Joen, with the help of Jeff Minard took the work I did (which was based on the work of Paul James) and turned the idea into a plugin which is now running on this site. The plugin was extremely simple to install and implement within my templates and is a great example of the maturity of WordPress and it community of users and developers.
Return of the Photo Gallery
As I mentioned earlier today, I’ve wanted to (re)install a photo gallery on this site in order to post the loads of bits and bytes spewed forth by my digital camera. Plogger seems a perfect match, and having followed these simple directions posted by David Peralty , I have integrated Plogger and WordPress.
I’ll be adding many more photos as time allows.
Photos, Posts and the Integration Thereof
It’s about time to re-introduce a photo gallery system on this site, so I have spent a bit of time reviewing my options and have decided to give Plogger a whirl. While I have been excited about the release of Gallery 2, I have this sneaking feeling that it would be overkill.
And frankly, I’m just not in the mood to spend my day configuring and tweaking Gallery. Supposedly it is vastly improved, but I’m ready for simplicity. I’m ready for “it just works”. From what I have read, Plogger should be an ideal match: simple yet solid. I’ll let y’all know how it goes.
Collapsible Menus
I have implemented pureDOMexplorer (pde) in the sidebar to clean up the navigation a bit. It sits upon a foundation of accessible, XHTML-compliant unordered lists and uses unobtrusive JavaScript to toggle the visibility of sub-categories. It was extremely easy to implement and saved me a ton of time. I really wasn’t looking forward to writing the script to perform this functionality. Onlinetools.org is a very handy JavaScript resource that I recommend you check out if you are developing a site.
IE 7 + IE Hacks = Breakage
As expected, the introduction of IE 7 will wreak havoc on those sites that utilize CSS hacks to serve up different styles to IE browsers. The IE development team is urging developers to clean up their hacks. They recommend the use of conditional comments, but I lean to using server-side code to detect and serve browser/platform-specific styles as needed. In PHP I use and heartily recommend phpSniff . Now I need to research some options in JSP…