Code Markup is a WordPress plugin that makes it easy to include program code samples in your posts. You can even include HTML markup in the code sample; Code Markup magically knows which characters should be displayed as code and which should be rendered as HTML. Continue reading “Code Markup: WordPress plugin” →
Google Sitemaps Deconstructed
Google Sitemaps seemed like a moderately good idea at first. A standard format for information is always good for interoperability. But it’s hard to see Google Sitemaps ever really being useful to web search engines. Some features seem to add little to what Google already does, and others seem entirely useless. Continue reading “Google Sitemaps Deconstructed” →
Google Sitemaps
Google Sitemaps is a good idea — it’s a standard XML format for site maps. Google (and anybody else) can use such a sitemap to get information about site structure without having to crawl the entire site. The sitemap can contain information about the URLs in your site, including how often they are updated and how important they are relative to the other pages in your site. Continue reading “Google Sitemaps” →
Setting the “name” attribute in Internet Explorer
I have recently needed to write code that uses JavaScript to add elements dynamically to a web page on the client. I read the relevant W3C documents and wrote the code, and it seemed to work fine. Until I tried it on Internet Explorer. After some digging, I found an explanation in the MSDN DHTML reference, on the page describing the NAME Attribute. Continue reading “Setting the “name” attribute in Internet Explorer” →
Top Cat: a WordPress plugin
Top Cat is a WordPress plugin that allows you to specify a main category for your posts. Even though WordPress posts can have more than one category, you may want to specify which of them is the main category. Top Cat lets you do this and also provides template tags for displaying the main category of each post. Continue reading “Top Cat: a WordPress plugin” →
Evermore: a WordPress plugin
Evermore is a WordPress plugin that automatically abbreviates all posts when they appear on a multiple-post page such as the main blog page. Readers will simply see a “teaser” rather than the full post. It has the same effect as putting <!--more--> after the first paragraph of every post. All formatting and HTML tags are preserved in the abbreviated post. Continue reading “Evermore: a WordPress plugin” →
Multiple class selectors in Internet Explorer
Current Windows Internet Explorer versions do not support multiple class selectors in style sheets. This has been well known for a while; this article shows a technique I have used to work around this limitation. Continue reading “Multiple class selectors in Internet Explorer” →
Microsoft doesn’t understand the GPL
Microsoft’s Shared Source Initiative website contains some pretty outrageous falsehoods about free software licenses and the GNU General Public License (GPL). The Shared Source Initiative (SSI) allows certain third parties access to some of the Windows source code. It’s dismaying, but not entirely surprising, that the SSI website shows such a lack of understanding about the GPL. Continue reading “Microsoft doesn’t understand the GPL” →
Mozilla Thunderbird email
Everybody loves Mozilla Firefox, the open-source web browser du jour. But there’s nowhere near as much attention being paid to its sister application, Thunderbird, an email and news client and RSS reader. I use Thunderbird for all my email: it has a lot of excellent features, but somehow doesn’t have quite the same mojo as Firefox. Here are some of the things I love, and some other things, about this fine program. Continue reading “Mozilla Thunderbird email” →
One-click “To Read” list
I often stumble across intriguing web pages when I’m busy doing something else. Now I can save them with a single click, and easily come back to them later on, whether I’m at work or at home. Now you can do this too. Continue reading “One-click “To Read” list” →