Back At It

After very nearly a year without a post to my blog, I am finally back at it. The reasons for not posting anything recently are the normal boring reasons no one really wants to hear about. I mean, yeah, it’s primarily because of laziness. Also, I finally understand why people with kids never have time to get anything done. It takes some adjusting.

In addition to finally posting a new post, I have also gotten around to updating my WordPress Plugin, WP SimpleWeather. That is the primary purpose of this post.

WP SimpleWeather Version 0.2.2

For anyone who might feel the need to update to the latest version, I would like to apologize. Version 0.2.1 of the plugin saw me add in some functionality to allow for a clean uninstall of the plugin. My intentions were good. Unfortunately, I made a mistake, and set it to perform this clean uninstall upon deactivation, rather than explicitly on uninstall. So, when you update the plugin, you will lose all related settings. I’m sorry. But this won’t happen again. I’ve fixed it in version 0.2.2, and it will not remove the settings on deactivation, but only on uninstall.

At the request of Thomas Nielsen, I have added the capability to change the metric units for windspeed from km/h to m/s. This isn’t a big update at all. Unfortunately, it took a fair amount of time due to my recent lack of time. I had to relearn my own plugin. It felt a bit strange. Any way, I hope you enjoy it. If there are any issues at all, please let me know.

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WP SimpleWeather Plugin

Today I released my first WordPress Plugin to the WordPress Plugin Repository. It can be found here. I have also created a page here on my website explaining the basics of the WP SimpleWeather Plugin.

As this is my blog, let me go a bit more in depth here. As I briefly mentioned above, this is the first WordPress Plugin I have created. I suppose that could lead to a variety of questions concerning it, so let me go ahead and hold a brief question and answer session with myself to explain.

Q: This is your first WordPress plugin? Does that mean it’s going to suck?

A: Yes, this is my first WordPress plugin. I mean, I’ve used plenty before, but this is the first one I have made. I suppose it is quite possible that it will indeed suck. I mean, I don’t think it does, but it is possible that users of the plugin will find any number of issues that I have not thought of. I am new to the game here, so be gentle. I will do my best to fix any issues as soon as possible.

Q: Why did you decide to create a WordPress plugin in the first place? Why a weather plugin? There are a ton of those!

A: Well, I have been using WordPress for quite some time in the creation of my websites. It is the most popular blogging platform in the world today. This website itself is made using WordPress. During the creation of another website (which I am still working on), I needed the use of a Weather Plugin. Unfortunately, all the WordPress plugins I came across dealing with weather were, well, not quite what I wanted. So, I went searching around and eventually came across the jQuery simpleWeather plugin. It was pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Except that it was not yet a WordPress plugin. I could use it easily as a jQuery plugin, but then my clients would not be able to easily update it via the WordPress back-end. So, I decided to convert it into a WordPress plugin.

Q: Someone else made it? And you’re taking credit? Isn’t that wrong?

A: Yes and no. The jQuery simpleWeather plugin was created by James Fleeting using the Yahoo! Weather API. There are a variety of available plugins which use the same. I really liked his, and merely converted the publicly available code into a WordPress plugin. If Mr. Fleeting would prefer that I take the plugin down, I will do so at his request. I am fully crediting his work (as you can see here), and do not wish in any way to be stealing his thunder. I sincerely hope that creating this plugin will bring both he and I more web design business in our respective locales.

If there are any questions, feel free to ask away in the comments section. I hope someone enjoys the plugin. If not, at least I’ve found it useful for myself.

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Web Browsers…

I’ve been thinking a lot about web browsers lately. Recently a variety of lesser known browsers were in the news as a result of Microsoft’s antitrust case in Europe. I like to test my designs in a variety of browser to be sure they render correctly… I suppose it comes with the territory of designing web pages. Since I’ve been checking out so many different web browsers lately, I thought I’d go ahead and make a post about my thoughts on the different web browsers available out there today. Today? Yes, today. It’s worth pointing out that Opera 10.5 was released today.

Below you will find my ranking of browsers. I’ll explain afterwards a bit about why I ranked each one where I did.

• Google Chrome 4.0
• Opera 10.5
• Mozilla Firefox 3.6
• Apple Safari 4.0
• SeaMonkey 2.0
• Arora 0.10
• Flock 2.5
• Internet Explorer 8
• Sleipnir 2.9.3
• Avant 11.7
• Konqueror (unrated)

Clearly, I’m rating anything older than these versions as unworthy of even considering using. Why would anyone use an out of date browser? Really? You can download a modern browser quickly and easily. I highly recommend everyone do so.

On to my ranking.

Google Chrome 4.0 – It’s fast. It’s efficient. Using the WebKit browser engine, it is highly W3C standards compliant. It meets all CSS2.1 standards as well as some from the draft for CSS3. It passes the Acid3 test with a perfect score. I like it’s smooth clean look. My only complaint is that it doesn’t offer a Print Preview Button. I simply don’t understand why it doesn’t have it.

Opera 10.5 – My initial impressions are that this is a great browser. It has nearly the upside of Google Chrome. I haven’t yet noticed any issues with it’s rendering engine… it passes the Acid3 test with a perfect score. It has that Print Preview Button that I miss when using Chrome. But, unfortunately, it’s bookmarks system is kind of a pain. Maybe it just takes some getting used to. I don’t know. When I put my bookmarks on a bookmarks bar, it messes up the clean new look. I can’t seem to get easy access to a drop-down list of my bookmarks… I have to click around a little bit for it. Chrome just seems easier to navigate to me, but… like I said, it could just be because I’m used to Chrome.

Mozilla Firefox 3.6 – Where Chrome is clean, Firefox is cluttered. But at the same time, the clutter is what makes Firefox so good. It meets most W3C standards and draft standards that Chrome and Opera do, coming up with a 94/100 on the Acid3 test. But it’s real strength lies in it’s add-ons. Working in web design, I’m constantly finding myself checking my designs using add-ons such as Firebug and Page Speed.

Apple Safari 4.0 – It basically is the same as Google Chrome… except that Apple got a bit too fancy for my tastes, and it seems to slow everything down.

SeaMonkey 2.0 – Basically the same as Firefox. A branch off of the same Gecko rendering engine as Firefox, it scores nearly the same at 93/100 on the Acid3 test. I believe it can use all the same wonderful add-ons as Firefox, but I haven’t messed with it too much. It doesn’t seem to have tabs, which is a bit disappointing. I’m sure there’s a greater difference in there somewhere, but I haven’t found it yet.

Arora 0.10 – This upstart new browser looks like it could have real potential. My only complaint thus far is that the CSS3 rendering on text-shadow seems a bit off.

Flock 2.5 – Flock is an interesting little browser. It is focused on Social Networking type stuff. If that’s your thing, it could be a decent browser. Unfortunately, it is using an outdated version of Firefox’s rendering engine, and scores a mere 71/100 on the Acid3 test. It doesn’t display my CSS3 text-shadow properties at all.

Internet Explorer 8 – IE is really making strides in the last few years, but they’ve fallen too far behind the curve. They have little to no support at all for CSS3, and only have partial support of CSS2.1. How a major player in the computer industry such as Microsoft can fail to keep up with the fully adopted CSS2.1 standards, I’ll never understand. I mean, I’m shocked that they aren’t ahead of the open-source projects of WebKit and Mozilla. But they’re way behind. They score a mere 12/100 on the Acid3 test. No sign at all of my text-shadow.

Sleipnir and Avant – All the problems of IE8, but without the good parts. Avant especially annoyed me, as it automatically set itself as my default browser and changed my default search provider without asking me.

Konqueror – I hear it’s great, but the website to download it is just strange, and I didn’t feel like going to the hassle of figuring it out.

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