Tag Archives: Code

(Web) Standards: Apple is Doing it Wrong

Posted by in General

Standards are not about vendor lock in (or in the case of Apple, vendor lock out), they are about interoperability. Apple’s recent HTML5 showcase, more appropriately named Safari Showcase, reveals Apple does not understand standards. Locking out browsers, as Apple does in their showcase, is not a best practice or in any W3C specification. Apple’s quest against Adobe and flash is not noble—don’t get me wrong, I hate flash. They are not embracing standards, they are embracing something they can control.

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Breadcrumb NavXT 3.5.1

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

This is the first bug fix release for the 3.5 branch of Breadcrumb NavXT. Several bugs related to the settings page have been fixed. These include fixing the wiping of settings on activation, XML settings file import issue, and the issues with saving the archive by date and custom taxonomy settings. Finally, the maintainers of the German and French translations have submitted updated translations. If you experience any issues with Breadcrumb NavXT 3.5.1, please leave a comment to this post describing your issue.

You can grab the latest version of Breadcrumb NavXT from the Breadcrumb NavXT page.

-John Havlik

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Backup Before Upgrading

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

There is a bug in Breadcrumb NavXT 3.5.0’s install script that will reset your settings on activation. If you do not want to lose your settings, please export them using the Import/Export/Reset tab, and then Import them after upgrading to 3.5.0. Next week 3.5.1 will be released to address this problem and a few others that were discovered today by myself and others (probably Monday night).

As for how these made it into the main release, there is no one to blame for it but myself. As I work directly out of my testbed, I don’t activate/deactivate my plugins except when to test the install script. The actual cause was back in 3.4.0 when I changed ‘tag_’ to ‘post_tag_’ in some of the option names to fit with the custom taxonomy support (and WordPress’ name for tags). However, 3.4.x had a bug where the install script did not actually run (in most cases). When that was fixed with the rewrite of much of the administrative interface code, this dormant bug appeared, but I didn’t notice it until today while trying to fix a bug with the “Archive by Date Suffix” setting.

Moving forward, if you are using Breadcrumb NavXT in a system that does not use the default settings, please do a settings export before upgrading. This will save everyone headaches in the future. Also, I try to fairly transparent about development progress, and almost always announce when the plugin is going to translators for translation updates. This is typically a week before I intend on releasing it. In this time, please feel free to test out the SVN trunk for bugs that may affect you. Since there are features in Breadcrumb NavXT that I do not routinely use, I may not catch bugs in these areas. The more people looking at the release candidate, the fewer number of bugs that will make it through (same goes for WordPress as well). As always, if something is broken let me know.

-John Havlik

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Breadcrumb NavXT 3.5.0

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

Holy customizable widgets Batman! With Breadcrumb NavXT 3.5.0 not only can you have multiple widgets (WordPress 2.8 Widget API), but you can also specify the options normally exposed to bcn_display();. Other changes to note are the addition of two filters, bcn_before_fill and bcn_after_fill, to bcn_breadcrumb_trail::fill(). These should allow for easier extension of Breadcrumb NavXT (though, with custom post type support coming in 3.6.0 this may be redundant). Finally, the settings page code has been rewritten and modularized, in the process, several outstanding bugs should have been squashed (no settings on first install).

Please note that this release requires WordPress 2.8 or newer.

Many thanks to Karin Sequen, Patrik Spathon, and Luca Camellini for submitting updated Spanish, Sweedish and Italian translations. Sadly, the French, German, Russian, and Dutch translations have fallen out of date. If you want to pick up translation of any of these, or want to submit a translation in your language, send me an email. For 3.6.0, I’d really like to get all of the translations up on the same page again.

You can grab the latest version of Breadcrumb NavXT from the Breadcrumb NavXT page.

-John Havlik

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Breadcrumb NavXT 2010 Roadmap

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

With the first beta of WordPress 3.0 being available, it’s time to think about Breadcrumb NavXT once again. Currently, the SVN version of Breadcrumb NavXT works in WP 3.0. All versions of Breadcrumb NavXT prior to 3.5 (not released yet), have known bugs in WP 3.0.

As Breadcrumb NavXT 3.5 is already upping the minimum WordPress version to 2.8, support for custom post types won’t make this release. Some modifications to the core will be done to enhance extensibility for those who don’t want to use OOP techniques (e.g. filter/action hooks will be added). The first “beta” of this will be available, without updated translations, in the next two weeks. After a month of beta status, translations should be updated and a release in early May (will be moved up to be within a few days of the WordPress 3.0 release, if not before).

Breadcrumb NavXT 3.6 will require WordPress 2.9 as custom post type support will be added. Depending on the time available this release may have enhanced multi blog support. Currently, it looks like this will show up sometime in July.

Breadcrumb NavXT 3.7 will wrap up any multi blog support not covered in 3.6. Depending on how WordPress 3.0 and 3.1 turn out, this version may require WordPress 3.0. This will be a fall release, probably sometime in October.

-John Havlik

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