I updated a couple of the WordPress plug-ins used on the site. If you notice any problems, please let me know. Thank you!

WordPress 2.6.2 is out and I’ve updated the site. I also updated plug-ins, and in the process I decided to drop Viper’s Video Quicktags. It added a lot of page volume with the included files and I found it didn’t cover some of the sites I was linking video from. Plus, being JavaScript driven, it meant the RSS feed didn’t get the embedded videos, just a link. Since I’m a long time web geek I decided to just create my own template files for the sites I link video from. I’ve gone back and edited past posts where I’d used the plug-in so the videos should still work with it removed.

As always, let me know if you spot a problem.

Example templates:
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I just updated a few of the plug-ins I use on this site, so let me know if you experience any issues.

I also finally got around to switching to Firefox 3 yesterday. I’d kept using Firefox 2 because of some of the browser add-ons I prefer not yet being supported on FF3. But they flipped the switch to start prompting FF2 users to upgrade, and I decided enough of the add-ons were now available to make the jump.

• Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5
• BugMeNot 2.0
• ColorZilla 1.9
• FirefoxView 1.0
• Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer 2.1.0.12
• FoxyTunes 3.0.4
• Google Gears 0.4.15.0
• Google Toolbar for Firefox 3.1.20080730W
• Html Validator 0.8.5.2
• IE View Lite 1.3.3
• Image Zoom 0.3.1
• InfoLister 0.10
• JavaScript Debugger 0.9.87.4
• Linkification 1.3.5
• Linky 2.7.1
• Live HTTP Headers 0.14
• MR Tech Link Wrapper 2.2.1
• Plain Text to Link 1.5.20080618
• Tab Mix Plus 0.3.7pre.080816
• Tweak Network 1.3
• View Cookies 1.7
• Web Developer 1.1.6

Unfortunately it looks like two of my favorite Firefox extensions are gone for good - Tabbrowser Preferences and Google Browser Sync. Tabbrowser Preferences was last updated in 2006 and it looks like development is dead and it won’t be updated for FF3. I’m trying out Tab Mix Plus as a replacement, and it seems to do a decent job, but if anyone has a suggestion for a better add-on to replace Tabbrowser Preferences I’d love to hear it.

And I was upset to find that Google has discontinued Google Browser Sync. If you currently have it installed you can continue using it through 2008, but you can no longer download the add-on and it wasn’t updated for FF3. This is the biggest loss for me, I made constant use of this. I loved being able to close FF and re-open it later with my existing session even moving from one machine to another. And keeping everything in sync - passwords, bookmarks, etc. I was thrilled back when it came out because it finally gave me something to match the old Roaming support in Netscape 4.7.

So far I haven’t found a replacement for it. I’m using Foxmarks for bookmark sync and backup, but it only does bookmarks. Tab Mix Plus has some session persistence, but only on the same machine. I checked out Mozilla Weave but it is in the very early stages, and right now they aren’t accepting any more users anyway. Google has turned over the code via Google Code so someone may resurrect it in a new form. But in the meantime I’d love to hear there is a good replacement out there.

This was an especially bad thing to find out because during the upgrade I lost my current bookmarks and they reverted to a set many months old. Back when FF3 was in beta I’d installed it alongside FF2 and it imported my bookmarks. I’d since removed the FF3 beta from my system. But apparently the imported bookmarks lingered, and when I upgraded from FF2 to FF3 yesterday instead of importing my FF2 bookmarks it just used the old FF3 set, yet it seems to have completely removed any trace of my FF2 bookmarks from my system. So I’ve lost any new bookmarks I’ve added since then, and, of course, just last week I’d finally gotten around to cleaning up my bookmarks to delete a bunch and file them, and now all the junk is back and messy. Sure there is a nice copy stored in Google Browser Sync, but now I can’t get to them. Even if I reinstalled FF2 the add-on download is gone. (If anyone knows where I can get the XPI to install it, that’d be great.)

In general FF3 is a nice upgrade, despite the troubles, though I’m really not seeing what is so awesome about the ‘awesome bar’ (as some call the URL/Location bar in FF3). Even in FF2 I disliked the way it’d suggest pages from the history and I always lock that down to just pages I’ve actually typed - as below. If there are any other add-ons or configuration tweaks you think I just have to check out, let me know. Share your Firefox tips for everyone to see.

Some of the settings I tweak in about:config in FF3 (definitely not a comprehensive list):
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I’ve updated the site to WordPress 2.6.1. Please let me know if you notice any issues. Thanks.

WordPress 2.6 has been released and I’ve updated the site with it. I’ve also updated a number of the plug-ins I use on the site. If you experience any issues, please let me know.

I can never leave things alone, and that includes my WordPress installation. I make a few changes to WordPress to get to to suit my needs and preferences a bit better than it does ‘out of the box’. For example, I don’t used the advanced editor (TinyMCE) because I prefer doing my markup by hand. But I do use some of the simple editor buttons on the basic editor, and I change them to better suit me - for example, I have the ‘img’ button prompt me not only for the URL and alt text, but also the width, height, and border, because I always include those. So I thought I’d share the diffs between WP2.5.1 and my changes, simple as they are. As well as some tweaks to the Sociable and reCAPTCHA plug-ins.

I’ll put this under a cut since it is long, and not interesting to most I suspect. Though I hope that this might encourage other WP users to try getting their hands dirty and tweaking things a bit.
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Overnight I upgraded the site to the latest version of WordPress, 2.5.1, as well as updating a slew of the plug-ins. (If you run a WordPress site, you owe it to yourself to check out Admin Drop Down Menus. I can’t recommend it enough.) If you notice any issues, please let me know. Thanks.

PS. Don’t forget the Style Selector in the upper-right for those of you who dislike the green-on-black color scheme.

Boy, that was more of an adventure than I’d planned. I just spent the night, literally the whole night, upgrading the site to WordPress 2.5, and then tracking down all the issues it created with the plug-ins I use. A couple were actually problems in the new versions of the plug-ins needed to go with 2.5, but some were just strange - why does refreshing permalinks fix the problems with the WP-Print plug-in? Nothing changed, they’re just refreshed! *sigh* I also had to re-apply some of my customizations. I make some changes to WP and some plug-ins to make them behave more to my liking.

Anyway, I think I’ve managed to squash them all now. And everything seems to be working. I’m not too happy about some of the changes they made to the interface. The biggest complaint is moving ‘categories’ on the authoring page. It is used on every post, and it used to be right next to the editing box in a nice pull-down, now they’ve moved it down the page such that you have to scroll to get to it. Everything used to fit on one screen to write posts. That’s really annoying. I’d be a lot more annoyed by the new interface if not for the Admin Menus plug-in. The default navigation is far too obtuse. These are the plug-ins I use now.

If you experience any trouble with the site, let me know - either directly or leave a comment.

I’ve just upgraded the site to WordPress 2.3.1, the latest and greatest. I’ve also updated the plugins I use, and I installed several new plugins in the process. Such as the one I just linked which lists the plugins that are installed. You can also get some basic stats.

But the more useful additions you may notice are the ‘Print This Post’ or ‘Print This Page’ links, which open a printer friendly version of the post/page for better printing. I’ve also added reCAPTCHA to help control the comment spam. As this site gains readership it, unfortunately, also comes up on the radar for more spammers, so the volume of (attempted) spam has been increasing.

I finally added a contact page so you can email me directly. That’s linked in the top, bottom, and left navigation so it should be easy to find for new users. I’ve been meaning to do that for a while.

This version of WordPress also adds tagging support, so I’ll be trying that on for size.