July 8th, 2007

Developing WP Trainer

Posted by John Havlik in WordPress > Plugins

The rather unfriendly weather this weekend provided a rather good opportunity to begin coding WP Trainer. Contrary to previous thoughts, my previous experience with RSS has helped little in working with the XML parser in PHP. Thus, getting the Garmin output XML file into a nice array of objects in PHP took a bit of time, but now that part is done. Now comes the learning of the Google Maps API, which has excellent documentation and looks like it will be easy to do. After that I’ll need to select a graphing API. Mootools does not have graphing capabilities so using that is out besides AJAX and effects stuff. If anyone knows of a good, fast, and lightweight javascript/SVG API for doing all sorts of graphs let me know.

Expect a beta for WP Trainer sometime near the end of this month, with a preview available on this blog in the coming weeks. Corresponding to this release I will rework moo.wp and the available download will correspond to the featured description. At the time of release API documentation for moo.wp will be available for theme and plug-in writers. Features described in the API documentation are guaranteed to remain the same for three WordPress major releases (e.g., 2.0.0, 2.1.0, 2.2.0, etc.) and will remain available for at least one year.

Breadcrumb NavXT is starting to get hits, Micheal did get a forward link going which has spurred that traffic. All of the various WordPress plug-in sites need to be updated, which means I probably have some e-mails to write. Anyways other that WordPress 2.3 support for 1.9, which includes the new tagging system, some more advanced length limiting techniques will be available. These include maximum total breadcrumb length and options on where and what to trim.

One last thing, I do realize that Internet Explorer 6 (and maybe 7) messes up the header on this blog, the simple solution to this is to at least upgrade to IE7, and think about switching to Firefox. Opera users will see that the footer is messed up, I am working on this but it may not be resolved for a week or so. I can not test for KHTML based browsers (e.g., Konqueror and Safari) right now so their status is unknown, but assumed to work.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

June 30th, 2007

Breadcrumb Navigation XT Version 1.8.0

Posted by John Havlik in WordPress > Plugins

Since the original author of Breadcrumb Navigation XT ran out of time for further development of the WordPress plug-in, I have picked it up. After a few days of coding and working on setting up the code section of this blog, the new version is ready for release. This new version, 1.8.0, includes support for author pages, and limiting the number of categories displayed in the breadcrumb.

Note that beginning with this release the version numbering scheme is to follow the same as WordPress uses, the first digit changes for major changes and as the second runs past 9. The second digit changes with the addition of features, internal structure of the class will not change in with a change in this digit. Finally, the third digit signifies a bugfix to features previously introduced without any added features. The next version, 1.9, is planned for the release of WordPress 2.3 due to the addition of tags into WordPress.

Check out the Breadcrumb NavXT project page to get the latest version.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

March 29th, 2007

Introducing WP Trainer

Posted by John Havlik in WordPress > Plugins

Today, the birthday present from my parents arrived, a Garmin Forerunner 305. Someone on the track team, during my senior year, had one of the old 101s that weighed three times as much and are twice as big. But, despite its size it worked well. In fact, it worked well enough for the cross country coaches to purchase two 201s for the use of the team for keeping track of distances ran, instead of those running wheels. That’s where the idea to get it for me came from.

The 305 includes a heart rate monitor and records it along with time and other various stats during a workout. I have yet to try it out but tomorrow I’ll take it for a test run. Tonight, I charged it and installed the Garmin software, which defiantly feels lacking. What is good about it though is data exporting, and with that a WordPress plug-in will be made for keeping track of runs. Naturally, this won’t be available for some time, but it will be a free and powerful alternative to MotionBased.

WP Trainer will first work with the Forerunner series training GPS, but eventually support for the iPod + Nike setup, which is a really neat setup and defiantly less expensive as well. iPod + Nike has one drawback however, as it is not a GPS system, route tracking will have to be manually done by the user. With the Forerunner units, uploading the exported data should allow an auto generation of a path overlay on top of Google maps. Since I do not own a iPod or the Nike + iPod Sport Kit this setup will not be the emphasis of this plug-in (initially that is, I’m sure I’ll have access to the needed equipment when the time comes). More details will be revealed as I begin to implement things. This blog will be the test bed for this plug-in so if things get flaky that probably is the plug-in.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]