Archive for the 'web development' Category

WP-Footnotes 3.2: Release Notes

Published
by
Simon
on 10/7/2008
in Geek and web development
. 3 Comments

This week saw the long awaited release of an update to the WP-Footnotes plugin for WordPress. WP-Footnotes is to easily add footnotes or sidenotes or a bibliograpy, etc. to any post using a simple mark-up which degrades (kind of) gracefully in the event that for some horrifying reason this plugin no longer works.

These notes actually cover releases 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2 which all happened in quick succession.

What’s been fixed

  • Some invalid mark up was being generated. Hopefully not anymore.
  • The notorious ‘a’ bug (I really hope).

What’s been improved

  • Add two new styles of footnotes:
    • Repeated symbol, and
    • Leading zero decimal.
  • Reorganisation to encapsulate fully in a class.
  • Security. I’ve hopefully addressed all know security issues for the plugin[1].

One further improvement is that you are now able to change the footnote style on an individual post basis by adding a custom field[2] to your post. If you add a field with the key ‘footnote_style’ and one of the following as the value:

  • decimal
  • decimal-leading-zero
  • lower-alpha
  • upper-alpha
  • lower-roman
  • upper-roman
  • symbol

What’s been changed

I removed the ’smooth scroll’ feature. If you want smooth scroll I suggest you add it to your theme. Instructions for doing so using jQuery (which is built into WP) are here.

  1. There were a few XSS vulnerability allegations floating around, which were founded if your host is stupid enough to have register globals turned on. [↩]
  2. Custom fields can be added on the write post screen down the bottom under ‘Advanced Options’. [↩]

Yahoo Map Mixer

Published
by
Simon
on 18/9/2007
in web development
. 0 Comments

Wow! Yahoo has finally beaten Google at something map related. I’ve been waiting for Google to add something like this for ages, but Yahoo wins for once[1].

  1. It’s a pity Yahoo’s road maps are so crap. [↩]

WP-Footnotes version 2.2

Published
by
Simon
on 2/9/2007
in web development
. 39 Comments

In case people are keeping track here and not over at the plugin repository, WP-Footnotes has been updated to version 2.2.

There are some pretty major changes behind the scenes since the 1.x versions of the plugin, but usage is pretty much the same. Check the plugin’s page for all the usage details and a download link.

Geni rocks my non-family-tree making socks off

Published
by
Simon
on 10/4/2007
in Family and web development
. 0 Comments

Geni logoI’ve never really got into exploring my family tree, although I don’t have any great aversion to doing so either. I’ve just never really been bothered, it never managed to get me excited. I’ve always expected that it would get me excited sooner or later and I’d start exploring and building, but not yet.

One thing that does tend to get me pretty excited is discovering a new web app which is super slick, uses some great technology, and does something interesting and useful. Enter: Geni.

I discovered Geni today by accident and got so excited about it that I’ve already added 54 people to my tree (that’s 40 blood relatives and 13 in-laws[1])[2]. Geni has a very slick flash-based interface which makes adding new members to your family tree exceedingly easy. Navigation and visualisation of the tree is a breeze; if the tree starts to get too crowded sections are automatically separated out in a logical way, always retaining your immediate family and direct lineage. All the possible relationships you’d expect to exist do (including same sex relationships[3] [4]).

The depth of information that can be stored in each person’s profile is vast, and useful[5].

The possibilities presented by Geni are huge. I can’t wait to see how it evolves, and to see how my tree evolves.

  1. It figures that out for you. [↩]
  2. I’m about to send out invites to a bunch of you, so if I know your email address expect to get invited. [↩]
  3. It even includes the ability to have two daddies or mummies, which is pretty cool. One thing it doesn’t seem to support yet is more than two parents, which could be a bummer for all those adopted children out there. [↩]
  4. I totally gave my sister a lesbian lover to test this situation out. [↩]
  5. This obviously presents some privacy issues, which the simple and clear privacy policy addresses quite satisfactorily for me. [↩]