Thursday, January 3rd, 2008
Wordpress are finally getting around to updating the Admin theme.
This is a great idea. From the beginning Wordpress has generally looked great when going out with visitors but she dresses awfully sloppily around the house.
The front end just keeps getting better as the backend stagnates.
Unfortunately, current previews of the updated Wordpress 2.4 Admin interface show a getup which looks worse if anything, than what's there now.
I'm having visions of Mambo circa 2004. What's with the dreadful new brown and orange? The blue on blue colour scheme is about all the Wordpress Admin Panel has going for it aesthetically.
The only good looking Admin interface for Wordpress has been Steve Smith's Wordpress Tiger Administration, which first saw the light of day in June 2005.
Tiger Admin Page Management
Tiger Admin Dashboard
I gleefully ran Wordpress Tiger Administration for about six months back in 2005. Sadly, Wordpress Tiger Administration doesn't run on Internet Explorer - there's some very fancy CSS involved, which Steve didn't feel like bending to Internet Explorer. As Wordpress Tiger Administration is free, who can blame him?
The end result though as the clients started to edit the sites themselves, I didn't want to be using an interface that was in any way different than theirs. Otherwise, I just might now know if a site was working properly.
John and I talked about doing an Admin panel redesign but John talked me out of it for compatibility reasons. Had I known just how long the stagnation would go on, he might not have dissuaded me so easily.
In the end we did create Foliovision Edit Templates, now part of the full Foliopress CMS suite with Foliopress WYSIWYG, Foliopress SEO Images and Foliopress Advanced Page Manager and Foliopress Dashboard.
foliopress edit templates
foliopress advanced page management
foliopress dashboard
Frankly, Foliopress Edit Templates and Foliopress Advanced Page Manager look better to my eye than what's coming Wordpress 2.4. I'd still like to see a first rate designer have a go at the CSS.
As soon as John gets our registration and download system setup, I will release them for download for free non-commercial use. All of the Foliopress Admin enhancements are easily installed plugins which are fully compatible with all Wordpress versions between 2.1 and 2.2 so switching over is not difficult.
By Alec
WordPress |
Thursday, January 3rd, 2008
One of the beta testers for Foliopress WYSIWYG has just complained that Foliopress WYSIWYG is not compatible with PHP4. Apparently PHP5 is still only 6% of the installed PHP base across all webhosts.
That figure should be enough to strike terror into any developer. But that number will change very soon as PHP4 has hit the end of the line.
PHP4 incompatibility started off not as a deliberate decision. Generally I like wider compatibility.
But on serious consideration, I'm not worried about Foliopress WYSIWYG being PHP5 only.
Why not?
- Our own webhost no longer supports PHP4 (they will put up with it on legacy projects, but strongly discourage it).
-
One click image posting from Foliopress WYSIWYG
via updated KFM right click: this image and caption
were posted with a single click
One of the core components in Foliopress WYSIWYG is Kae Verens's brilliant KFM (Kae's File Manager) which we have turned into an advanced image manager (see illustration right). Kae is no longer supporting PHP4 in future development: "PHP4 is a hindrance. My own project has already announced a similar plan - we will no longer be catering to PHP4 after the present release."
- PHP5 has been available for 3 years now and is thoroughly tested and is at version 5.2.5
- PHP5 has a lot of improved functionality over PHP4.
- PHP4 will start to disappear like dry brush this year. In six months there will no longer be PHP4 legacy issues as anybody keeping their online applications up to date will have moved on to PHP5 for one reason or another.
- Foliopress WYSIWYG target user profile: our users will be running PHP5 for the most part. If not now, in two months. Anyone who cares enough to change the default text editor in their Wordpress or Drupal install is likely the kind of person to be running PHP5 and not PHP4.
Sometimes releasing new software is great. One isn't hindered by legacy issues. We are looking to the future - Foliopress WYSIWYG will be PHP5 only. In any case, Foliopress WYSIWYG is good enough that it's worth upgrading in a heartbeat to PHP5.
Other Discussion: PHP4/PHP5 Compatibility Decisions
By Alec
WordPress |
Saturday, December 29th, 2007
Just when you think you've got technology under control, some small gnat comes along to bit you. I had just added and styled the nice registration form for people interested in Foliopress WYSIWYG and SEO Images to the previous post :
and then I began seeing double. That is to say two me:
dd add signature plugin error
That nice headshot with the articles is created by Alastair Dagon Design's Add Signature Plugin. What's seems to be causing the doublevision is the inclusion of a form inside a post. I tried moving the form into a Sniplet (where it should have been in the first place, quite frankly and reuseable). I've cured a few Wordpress malfunctions by pulling code outside a post and into a Sniplet - but that was pre-Foliopress WYSIWYG. Most of the Wordpress Editors damage or modify code so a Sniplet can stop them from getting a chance to break code. But this time the Sniplet trick didn't work.
I couldn't find the issue in the plugin itself:
wp-content/plugins/dd-add-sig.php
Nor does the issue seem to be in our template index.php file, although there seems to be room for such an issue there.
Read the rest of this entry »
By Alec
WordPress |
Friday, December 28th, 2007
Spent most of the day working on Foliopress WYSIWYG together with Peter Baran.
Our solution for the Wordpress WYSIWYG and image handling nightmare is coming along quite brilliantly well. This is what the basic toolbar looks like.
Foliopress WYSIWYG toolbar preview
Foliopress WYSIWYG offers true What You See is What You Get Editing for Wordpress.
- It is backwards compatible with legacy code (hello Xstandard/TinyMCE)
- It doesn't break complex forms (hello TinyMCE/Xstandard)
- It doesn't discard whole posts (hello Xstandard)
- It doesn't go haywire and create more and more nested P tags (hello WYSIWYG Pro)
- It doesn't look like hell in the Wordpress interface (hello normal FCK)
- It doesn't make uploading images a never ending and hopeless struggle (hello Wordpress uploader)
- It doesn't make your clients hopping mad and lead them to breaking everything (Plaintext/RAW html)
- Your drafts look like exactly like your posts will, without having to waste time with a preview function (hello Xstandard)
- You have unlimited standard undo from the keyboard (hello Xstandard)
- Very easy to configure (including site WYSIWYG) (hello Xstandard, TinyMCE, FCK)
In short, Foliopress WYSIWYG is what you always wished the Wordpress Editor would do. I'm using it now and can't believe no one created and editor like this earlier.
Read the rest of this entry »
By Alec
WordPress |
