January 18th, 2008

Oops, I Broke It

It seems when I was playing around with Compiz, Compiz-Fusion, Emerald, and Avant Window Navigator, something in Gnome broke, now nautilus won’t load. I did however get some work done on Breadcrumb NavXT. Nautilus was not the only thing broken, poEdit broke as well. With poEdit broken I could not produce the .po file needed for the localization of the administration interface. Thus, I had planed on releasing something last night, which will be pushed off until tonight. I can’t say if it will be 2.0.0 or RC 1, right now I’ll refer to it as RC 1. I’ll do an actual release tag in the SVN for this release, and hopefully it will work nicely with the plug-in update notification built into WordPress 2.3.

One last word on RC 1, I know some documents may have stated that there will be uninstallation support for it. Since I in particularly do not like the current plug-in for doing that, I’ve decided to wait until WordPress decided to include it into their API (where it belongs I believe). What I don’t like about the current method is that it adds more work on the part of plug-in developers. The developer should not have to register with a separate entity the wp_options that it sets. Any of the values set using the set_option method should automatically register to the generating plug-in, as should any new entries created by update_option. Then the uninstallation part would be occur after the plug-in is deactivated, an uninstall button should pop-up, which will remove all of the DB entries used solely by the plug-in. The only entities that should have to be registered is any custom db tables created by the plug-in. Thus, 2.0 will not support this, and I will wait until things mature a bit before adding support in a future version of Breadcrumb NavXT which will correspond to the release of WordPress 2.5.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

December 28th, 2007

The Berry Experiment

Posted by John Havlik in WordPress > Themes

Originally the concept was to be highly modular, allowing for flashy yet quickly loading design. This concept still has yet to be met, mainly due to a lack of time. Blu-Berry, a rather bastardized version of the vision for Berry, remains the incomplete theme powering this blog. Its introduction was a stop gate measure as WordPress 2.1 had some changes that broke the blog with the theme it replaced. Some have inquired on the link to download the theme. When the time comes Berry will be released to the masses.

Despite the incomplete implementation of the vision, I admire Berry (sounds awkward doesn’t it?). When messing around with a few of the images for the holiday season, with the transparencies and such, the thought crossed my mind about the future of this blog and what it will look like for the majority of next year. Nothing new will surface until the end of April, but a three column layout may not be out of the question. Those ugly “date badges” will receive much needed tweaking.

The crib will undergo some much needed organization in the meantime in preparation for changes present in the next Berry. Its a big task, and between other projects time for doing such things is scarce at best.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

December 13th, 2007

Iframe-B-Gone 1.0.0

Posted by John Havlik in WordPress > Plugins

As Christmas approaches one bears early gifts. The first is the release of Iframe-B-Gone 1.0.0. It should greatly help in identifying and removal malicious code that is contained within the wp_posts database table.

This is the first plug-in that one’s written that utilizes the official WordPress way of localization, included in the zip archive is a .po file that can be used in writing translations. If you have created a translation and would like it to be included in the main distribution please leave a comment. Iframe-B-Gone can be downloaded on its project page.

Note that even though this software has been tested in a testbed, it may not be fully ready for production use. Before utilizing the cleaning functions please backup the infected posts, as if any data is lost, or erroneously removed one can not help in restoring that data. This plug-in comes with absolutely no warranty. Use this software at your own risk, and report any bugs that are found. Unless a serious bug is discovered no updates to this plug-in will be released until the first of next year (Breadcrumb NavXT needs some loving).

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

November 30th, 2007

Breadcrumb NavXT 2.0 Beta 2

Posted by John Havlik in WordPress > Plugins

No bugs were reported for Beta 1, but I did find a problem with the way the breadcrumb was build for pages. Beta 2 fixes that and not much else. I need feedback and translators. There is now a SVN repository for Breadcrumb NavXT, its over at wp-plugins.org. This version also has a slightly different file structure, the main folder for Breadcrumb NavXT is now breadcrumb-navxt instead of breadcrumb-navigation-xt-2. The change corresponds to the assigned directory in wp-plugins.org.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

November 22nd, 2007

Breadcrumb NavXT 2.0 Beta 1

Posted by John Havlik in WordPress > Plugins

Its here! The first beta of the new Breadcrumb NavXT 2.0. An improved administration interface now sports language files for enhanced localization support. Speaking of which, I need translators! I have created the english.php language file as a template, and started a bare-bones espanol.php (Spanish language file) which needs to be filled in with the translations from english.php. Breadcrumb NavXT, is located in many files under the breadcrumb-navigation-xt-2 folder, all localization files are located in the subfolder named languages. A new order of calling occurs in this version, and it shows up as two plug-ins in the plug-in menu, one “core” and one “administration interface”. If you intend to use the administration interface, only enable the administration interface plug-in as it will automatically load up the class located in the core file. Only enable the core plug-in if you are going to use the advanced method for integrating Breadcrumb NavXT into your blog, and you can figure out the differences for calling the differently named class. For basic users integration into your blog has not changed from the 1.10.x method.

You can grab the beta from the Breadcrumb Navigation XT page, or from the link below:

[download=6]

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]