I have updated Search Meter, my WordPress plugin that lets you find out what your blog visitors have been searching for. The new version includes a couple of widgets to make it easy to display recent and popular searches on your blog, as well as a few other changes. Here are the details. Continue reading “Search Meter WordPress plugin version 2.3” →
How to look at a GIF (in Windows)
Windows Picture and Fax Viewer (WPFV) is a bare-bones application for viewing images, but it does the job. Except when it doesn’t; somehow my Windows installation decided that it was going to use Internet Explorer instead of WPFV by default when opening GIF files. The obvious fix for this didn’t work properly, but I found a simple way of getting back to the behaviour I wanted. Continue reading “How to look at a GIF (in Windows)” →
Code Markup WordPress plugin version 1.2
Code Markup, my WordPress plugin that makes it easy to include program code samples in your posts, has been updated to version 1.2. Code Markup lets you include HTML markup in the code sample; it magically knows which characters should be displayed as code and which should be rendered as HTML. Version 1.2 has a few tweaks that will make it more useful and usable. Continue reading “Code Markup WordPress plugin version 1.2” →
elementReady: a jQuery plugin
Please see waitFor, the updated version of elementReady.
I have written a simple but useful jQuery plugin. elementReady calls a function during page load as soon as a specific element is available — even before the full DOM is loaded. It’s useful if you have unobtrusive JavaScript that you want to apply to particular page elements immediately, without having to wait for the whole DOM to load in a large page. Continue reading “elementReady: a jQuery plugin” →
Share This (jQuery): a WordPress plugin
I have made a useful modification to Alex King’s excellent Share This WordPress plugin. Share This adds a nice popup to your posts allowing readers to easily submit the post to any number of social networking and news sites. The original version relies on the large Prototype JavaScript library, which adds to the download size for the page. Share This only uses a sprinkling of its features, so I wanted to replace it with something smaller. Continue reading “Share This (jQuery): a WordPress plugin” →
Be careful with JavaScript variable declarations
Make sure you declare all your JavaScript variables exactly once. Otherwise it’s easy to introduce bugs that are hard to diagnose, especially if you’re used to programming in a C-like language such as Java, C++ or C#. Continue reading “Be careful with JavaScript variable declarations” →
Optimised jQuery Corners plugin
I’ve created an optimised version of Dave Methvin’s excellent jQuery corner plugin. This allows jQuery users to apply all sorts of fancy effects to the corners of web page elements: the now-standard Web 2.0 rounded corners, bevels, dog-ears and many more. The plugin works by injecting extra elements into the page, and I noticed a way to achieve the same effect with fewer elements. This improves the speed and memory usage of the plugin. Continue reading “Optimised jQuery Corners plugin” →
Top ten Firefox extensions
Here are my ten favourite Firefox extensions. Firefox is an excellent web browser, but its best features are the ones that aren’t included: the huge number of add-ons that can make this good application even better. Continue reading “Top ten Firefox extensions” →
WordPress vs. mod_security
WordPress blog posts with certain words in them can sometimes be blocked or fail mysteriously. Sometimes the offending word is silently removed from the post; other times the post fails with an HTTP error. Here’s a description of one possible cause, together with a useful workaround in case this problem happens to you. The problem could actually affect any blog platform or pretty much any other web application, not just WordPress. Continue reading “WordPress vs. mod_security” →
Digital Copyright Bill — New Zealand
The New Zealand government is looking to update the country’s copyright laws by implementing the new Copyright (New Technologies and Performers’ Rights) Amendment Bill, also referred to as the Digital Copyright Bill. They recently called for submissions from the public on this Bill. I’m posting my submission here for two reasons. First, because this is an important issue and I’d like it to gain more exposure. More importantly, I want to post it here because I missed the submission closing date. Continue reading “Digital Copyright Bill — New Zealand” →