Aug
12th
For a couple of years, I'd been running an active forum for my Open Source projects. Years back, I'd chosen simple machines forum (better known simply as SMF), because of its features and the fast development progress it had back in 2005, prior to its first official release.
SMF was free, but not Open Source. It was kept under a proprietary license that disallowed the distribution of modified versions of the software. For me, this was never a problem, because I had no intention to distribute anything and local modifications (for your own use) were not prohibited. With the release of SMF 2.0, this has changed and SMF is now licensed under the modified BSD license, so it is as free as a piece of open source software can be.
In the last two years, some not so nice things happened at SMF. I do not want to go into detail here and, to be honest, I cannot, because I do not have enough knowledge, but everyone who was frequently following the SMF community probably knows that some things weren't always quite right over there. In short, there was a lot of fighting and arguing over mostly political and legal things, that's all I know.
However, from a developer's point of view, these issues are now settled. The code is out, it's open source and this is really all that matters for me. So I decided to play around with and create something new from it, adding a couple of new features, fixing a few annoying issues and - most importantly - giving the software a new, fresh and modern theme.
This has just started. Really, it's just about 2 weeks old, and it is really far, far, far from being a usable product, but it's a start.
If you are interested, you can follow it here.
Jul
25th
Sometimes, when you activate a plugin in the admin panel, you may see an error message like this:
The plugin generated 1 characters of unexpected output during activation. If you notice “headers already sent” messages, problems with syndication feeds or other issues, try deactivating or removing this plugin.
This is usually caused by additional white spaces or empty lines at the beginning and/or end in one of the plugin's PHP files. PHP files should start with the <?php tag in line 1 column 1 and end with a ?> on the very last line. Additional empty lines before the starting- or after the closing tag can cause this (basically harmless) error.
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Jul
20th
Everyone who has been using jQuery knows the purpose and how to use the jQuery(document).ready() function. But what if you want or need to implement such a construct without jQuery (for whatever reason, one would be to avoid the jQuery overhead if all you really need is the ready() handler?
One would think it's as simple as using a onload event, just like:
<body onload="myReadyHandler();">
But it is not. There is an important and significant difference between onload and document.ready():
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Jul
19th
Pages do not offer manual excerpts by default
So, I wanted to add a small modification to my WordPress theme to use the (manual) excerpt as a meta-description tag and found out that there is no way to set the excerpt for pages but only for posts. Really? I found that hard to believe.
The truth is that pages can have excerpts, but they are disabled by default for some unknown reason. I'm sure there is even a valid reason, but I still want to use excerpts for pages.
The solution is actually a one-liner and can be added to any theme.
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Jul
16th
Chrome doesn't allow simulating a click using the click() method.
While working on some WordPress plugin to enhance the comment system with a couple of Ajax features, i ran into a problem. My code was using the click() method on a link object to simulate a click on this link and while this did work fine in Opera, Firefox and Internet Explorer, it did not so in Google Chrome. Now, I know using click() is a bad thing and there is almost always a better way but in this specific case, there wasn't so I had to find a solution.
The reason why Chrome doesn't allow this is most likely related to its security model and I think it does it on purpose which is all fine, because such functionality is rarely, if ever, needed.
Jun
7th
Why does my web server rename a .xlsx file to .zip?
A friend called me with a trivial problem he was having on his web server. He wanted to offer a excel document for download and some of his users pointed out that the document's file name extension was always changed to .ZIP when they were downloading the file. He did some research and found out that it was browser dependent. Firefox did save it as .xlsx while IE and Opera did not.
MIME Types
I instantly knew that this was a mime type problem. A Office .xslx or .docx document IS actually a .zip archive that holds a number of files, according to the OpenXML specification. Web servers like Apache have some magic implemented to determine the mime type when no one had been set for a given file name extension. Because of this, the server identifies the document as a .zip file, because the configuration did not tell it about the existence of Office file formats (technically, this is perfectly ok, but it is not what the user expects) and returns it as .zip archive.
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Jun
2nd
Unless you've been under a rock for the past few days, you probably know it already.
Google has launched the +1 button for web masters to integrate into their sites. I'm not going much into detail about this button as there is plenty of stuff to read on the web. Obviously, they are trying to set up some competition for the viral Facebook Like that has appeared on so many pages over the past year. It does make sense - Google still dominates the web and search results, so introducing another social component for the millions of Google accounts is only a logical step. Whether or not it will help to improve the user experience stays open for discussion. Right now, I cannot see how and why a +1 given by one of my Google contacts should improve my surfing experience. People are very different and what he or she finds cool stuff might not be of any interest for myself at all. But that's a personal opinion only.
I'm not overly excited as I see this +1 thing with the same amount of worries I also have about embedded Like and Tweet buttons. Nevertheless, I've given it a try and if you're a web designer or site owner, you better adopt early, because people will love it, regardless of all the privacy concerns. After all, people do love the Like button as well.
Embedding a +1 button is fairly straightforward and so simple that no one should need a plugin for it. But I'm sure there will be plenty of plugins soon, but as always, I prefer to add simple features to my template framework.
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Jun
2nd
 I'm not exactly sure why, but I've been receiving a number of emails and instant messages in recent weeks and months, asking about the fate of Miranda. Most people were, in some or another way, asking:
Is it dead?
First of all, no, it's not dead. Fact is, an Open Source project cannot die, because there is no single person or organization that controls it. The code is available to anyone, so anyone could pick it up and continue development at any time. Whether or not this will happen, nobody can know for sure. Also, it's obviously not possible to predict when it will happen, so stop asking. Nobody can answer it.
Personally, I've stated more than once that I see my work on the plugins and core code I've contributed over the last years, as finished. There are several reasons for this and lack of time is one of the more important ones. Whether or not this is a final decision, I cannot say. It very well might be or maybe not, only time will tell.
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May
31st
The crux with the Like
As a matter of fact, there are a lot of privacy concerns with the viral Like and Tweet buttons that appear almost everywhere on the net. While the feature itself is nice and can certainly help to attract visitors and generate traffic, people often fail to see the risks. Do you really want allow Facebook to track ALL your surfing activity, because that's exactly what they can do with these buttons?
When you are logged into your Fb account (and I think, most Facebook users are permanently logged in most of the time) AND have your browser configured in a way that makes it possible to use the Like buttons (it must, at least, grant read access to 3rd party cookies), every page you visit that embeds such a button could - at least in theory - be tracked by Facebook. In theory, they know what pages you visit and can connect your surfing behavior to your account profile. Whether they do this or not isn't really relevant. Maybe they only do it for certain pages, or don't do it at all. Maybe they'll do it in the future - nobody really knows. What matters is that these buttons build the technical foundation to track users.
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May
29th
How do you deal with JavaScript?
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A couple of days ago, I had one of these discussion with a good friend, who is - like myself - a typical "IT guy". Many of his opinions can be seen as fairly "old school", but he does have a lot of experience, particularly with network security and the evils of the Internet. I would say, he is a highly qualified expert in that area and he certainly knows his stuff.
While browsing my site, he noticed that it recently has become quite heavy on JavaScript with all the things I integrated, particularly the colorbox script, the syntax highlighter and some jQuery stuff. I know, he is not a fan of script heavy sites at all and he prefers to surf the net with JavaScript disabled by default.
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