Miklb's Mindless Ramblings

I’ve used the “Press It” bookmarklet about as long as I’ve used WordPress. When the feature was originally used in 1.5.x, a new window would open up, and you could reference the original site for what you wanted to use for content. In 2.0.x, it takes you from the site to your write post panel, which means I either have to go back and re-open the site, or remember what it was I wanted to use from the site. That is until today. I accidently had some text highlighted on a page when I used the bookmarklet, and when taken to the write post page, the highlighted text was pasted into post panel. Cool! Now I can highlight a blurb for a blockquote, then “Press It”, and simply add the blockquote html tags and finish the post.

I’ve blogged about my browser issues before, but I just have to share how cool I think FireFox 2 is. Now with built in spell checker (just right click a word, and suggestions are at the top of the menu, perfect for blogging and email), it’s quick, totally extensible , and just makes working on line so much more productive. A few extensions are a must for me, so I had to wait a few weeks for them to be released before I could start testing it, but the wait was well worth it.
First was the GrApple theme. I loathe the candy-ish default theme, and was quite pleased when theme makers started adding Mac Os-esque brushed metal themes. I haven’t taken to the newer Apple look, ie, iTunes 7, so the more subtle brushed metal look of GrApple suites me fine, especially the small buttons in the nav bar.
Then are the extensions.
Some plugins were FF 2.0 ready, such as the indispensable Web Developer. I’m a big fan of using tabs, and one extension was borking my tabs. Uninstalling the Tabbed Browser Preferences solved the issues. A better tab manager, Tab Mix Plus, fixes issues with windows opening up instead of tabs (note, I downloaded a RC from the developer site, the new release should up on mozilla in the next day or so).
Another great developer tool is MeasureIt, which allows you drag across the screen a box that measures in pixels. When working out kinks in spacing, this is invaluable. Also helpful is ViewSourceWith, which lets you choose an application (like a text editor) to open a page source with. Makes finding which line number an error is a snap. Finally, Colorzilla allows you to grab hex colors from a site, nice to have if you are trying to recreate an existing site, or simply like a color scheme of a site.
A few other extensions that I recently discovered are CSSViewer, which once turned on, allows you scroll around a page, and it shows the CSS for that element, and OPML Support, which allows you to import/export your FF bookmarks in an OPML format, which for WordPress users, is nice, as you can import those files into your Blogroll/Links Manager, not to mention RSS reader.
In addition to those, Google’s Browser sync and toolbar, CoComment’s extension and AdBlock Plus, make general browsing a snap.
There are literally thousands of extensions out there, with new ones being added all the time. If you’ve discovered any other can’t-live-without extensions, I’d love to hear about them.

(disclaimer)I’m not a coder, and this is my first attempt, I apologize if this isn’t properly documented or presented.

My very first WordPress Plugin! I’ve dabbled with a lot of areas of WP, but until this post in the support forums, I never really had an idea or need to write one. But after doing some reading, I found that there wasn’t a simple way to accomplish this task. All of WP’s archive features are based on date.

So with the help of alphaoide via #wordpress on IRC, I put together this simple plugin to accomplish the task. It worked fine on my test site, but may need some TLC before being good to go. Basically it outputs categories by name in an h2 tag, then lists post titles with a permalink to the post.

I tested this by creating a Page Template, then inserting the plugin code within the content div of the theme.
The code to insert is
< ?php mb_cat_archive(); ?>
(remove the space between the and ?, I’m not sure why that is getting reformatted in the post)
I suppose this could be used in a sidebar, however it may create a very long list…
So to summarize, download the file, unzip, and upload to your wp-content/plugins directory.
Activate the plugin in the dashboard. Create the page template, inserting the above code, save, and upload to your themes directory.
Go to Write->Page, and choose the template you uploaded.
The new page should now list your categories with their appropriate posts.
I haven’t looked into how it handles posts with multiple categories, that will be on my todo list, I’m sure, if the plugin proves useful or popular. I’d also like to add some AJAX to hide the posts until you click on the category (that would make it much more sidebar friendly), and the ability to change the h2 tag to whatever one likes.

You can download the file via:
http://www.miklb.com/blog/cat_archive.zip

I did a google search for the solution to a problem I had with some CSS and image links, and didn’t find a good solution, so I’m throwing this out there for anyone who might stumble upon it.
The problem I was having was that I was creating a site with a black ground. There was a global setting for all a:hover links to have a background color and different font color, a common effect. However, any image links that I had were also getting a small box of the same color at the bottom when I moused over it, not at all good looking. I tried setting the selector a:hover img to a black backgroud, but the color still showed up. After closer inspection of my style sheet, I had set a global marign and padding on all images. When I set those to zero, the color didn’t show up. However, I didn’t want to sacrifice all images to not have to margin or padding, or force the end user to add a special class to images, so I tried setting the a:hover img margins and padding to zero. The problem there was that the image would “jerk” when moused over, as the margin and padding shifted. So I simply set a img to zero margins and padding, and my problem was solved. The only down fall is if someone wants to post an image in a blog post that’s a link, the text will butt right up against it. However, if that problem arises, I can then set a class for that image, and should be able to give the image room.
Anyway, like I said, I didn’t find a solution in the first few pages of google, not that this will make those pages neccessarily, but it’s worth throwing out there.

Blog Maverick
Mark Cuban, blogger and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, is blogging the NBA finals. I have to say, his blogging has made it infectious to be a Mav’s fan for the finals. I’m not really a basketball fan, but have a few friends who’ve been watching the playoffs, so I’ve followed along. I also came across Mark Cuban’s blog while checking out some feeds while investigating over at Share Your OPML as the playoffs started. So I’ve been following his blogs while keeping an eye to the playoffs. It’s fun to see things transpire as they have.