Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on March 31, 2008 by CyberNet.

It has taken a little while to get to this point, but WordPress 2.5 was released earlier this weekend. The biggest thing about the new version is the completely revamped administration area (pictured to the right). It not only has a new color scheme, but has also been reworked to make you even more productive. And the cookie system has been made more secure, and so any of our users will need to login again to our site.

Note: I noticed that you can switch back to the old color scheme by pulling up your profile page. The new layout will remain intact, but the colors will be changed.

I upgraded our site to WordPress 2.5 yesterday, and I have to say that it handles itself quite well. Performance is better according to some early benchmarks I’ve done, productivity will definitely increase, and best of all WordPress is now able to upgrade plugins for you. Since nearly all of the changes have been made to the administration section of WordPress you should find that the upgrade process will go rather smoothly. Very few themes should break as a result of the upgrade, but there could be issues with some of your plugins.

I also spent some time getting our Recommended Tags plugin working on WordPress 2.5. There is now a version available solely for the WordPress 2.5 series because of the significant changes to the administration screen. I considered rolling both versions of the plugin into one, but overall the performance is better by keeping them separate.

Want a better idea of what’s new in WordPress 2.5? No problem! Here’s an overview of the features organized according to users and developers:

User Features

• Cleaner, faster, less cluttered dashboard
• Dashboard Widgets — you can customize any of the dashboard widgets to show, for example, news from your local paper instead of WP news.
• Multi-file upload with progress bar — now you can select a whole of folder images or music or videos at once and it’ll show you the progress of each upload.
• EXIF extraction — if you upload JPEG files with EXIF metadata like camera make and model, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, et al. WordPress will extract all the data into custom fields you can use in your template.
• Search posts and pages — search used to cover just posts, now it includes pages too.
• Tag management — you can now add, rename, delete, and do whatever else you like to tags from inside WordPress, no plugins needed.
• Password strength meter — when you change your password on your profile it’ll tell you how strong your password is to help you pick a good one.
• Concurrent editing protection — now if you open a post that someone else is editing, WordPress magically locks it and prevents you from saving until the other person is done.
• Few-click plugin upgrades — if the plugins you use are part of the plugin directory since 2.3 we’ve told you when they have an update available. Now we take that to the next logical step — downloading and installing the upgrade for you.
• Friendlier visual post editor — I’m not sure how to articulate this improvement except to say “it doesn’t mess with your code anymore.” We’re now using version 3.0 of TinyMCE, which means better compatibility with Safari, and we’ve paid particular attention this release to its integration and interaction with complex HTML. It also now has a “no-distractions” mode which is like Writeroom for your browser.
• Built-in galleries — when you take advantage of multi-file upload to upload a bunch of photos, we have a new shortcode that lets you to easily embed galleries by just putting [ gallery] (without the space) in your post. It’ll display all your thumbnails and captions and each will link each to a page where people can comment on the individual photos.

Developer Features

• Salted passwords — we now use the phpass library to stretch and salt all passwords stored in the database, which makes brute-forcing them impractical.
• Secure cookies — cookies are now encrypted based on the protocol described in this PDF paper.
• Easy taxonomy and URL creation — probably best illustrated with an example: I can call register_taxonomy() with a few arguments to register a “people” taxonomy and whenever I edit an image I’ll see a UI like tags has for identifying the people in a photo, and these will be URL addressable with /person/firstname-lastname/.
• Inline documentation — the vast majority of the new code going into WordPress include inline documentation that explains the functions and documents their arguments.
• Database optimization — we haven’t changed the table layout in this release, which is one of the reasons so many plugins work fine with 2.5. We have added a few new indicies and made a few default fields more flexible based on some bottlenecks we found on WordPress.com.
• $wpdb->prepare() — now almost all of the SQL in WordPress is prepared first, and the same functions are available to your plugins. This should prevent elementary SQL escaping issues.
• Media buttons — the add media buttons above the post are both expandable, so you could have an “Add Google Map” button if you like.
• Shortcode API — the new gallery functionality is powered by the new shortcode API. Shortcodes are little bracket-delineated strings that can be magically expanded at runtime to something more interesting. The Shortcode API is fully documented.

Get WordPress 2.5

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on June 05, 2008 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

One of the things that bug me the most when buying something are the accompanying rebates, but sometimes that is the only way to get a good deal. When it comes to online purchases I like to print off the rebates as soon as I make the purchase, but then the laziness kicks in for a few weeks simply because I don’t feel like filling out the form.

Luckily some of the free PDF readers out there offer annotation capabilities, and so you can actually fill out a rebate form on your computer before it’s even printed. Not only will it save you the hassle of having to handwrite the form, but I’m sure it will save the person on the receiving end some trouble trying to read your handwriting. 😉

Here’s what an example form looks like that I filled out:

So how can you do this? We’ve got instructions below that make use of our two favorite (and free) PDF readers. The best part is that both of the apps also have portable versions, which means that you can fill out rebate forms digitally without ever installing a program!

Both of the PDF readers make use of a typewriter tool, which gives you a lot of freedom to type anything anywhere. To use the typewriter tool you just have to click on the document where you want to start typing, and then have at it. If there are any boxes or broken fields that you need to fill in just insert spaces to even it all out, like I did in the example form above for the UPC.

–Foxit Reader (Homepage)–

In Foxit Reader you’ll find what you need at Tools -> Typewriter Tools -> Typewriter. When you click on this for the first time you’ll see a warning saying that an evaluation mark will be placed on the document if it’s saved. Don’t worry, we don’t plan on saving the rebate form. Right after you get done filling out the form just go ahead and print it… there won’t be an evaluation marks as long as you never save it.

–PDF-XChange Viewer (Homepage)–

In PDF-XChange Viewer just navigate to Tools -> Comment And Markup Tools -> Typewriter Tool to get started. Unlike Foxit you can save the document without any evaluation marks being placed on it, but I’m guessing that once you print the rebate form you won’t need it on your computer anymore. If for some reason you like to save all of your rebate forms then this is probably the better solution for you.

–Overview–

I’m not 100% convinced that typing out a rebate form is faster than writing it by hand, but it’s definitely a lot easier to read than one that’s handwritten. So maybe it’s better if only to help minimize any mistakes that may prevent you from getting your well-deserved money!

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on January 16, 2007 by CyberNet.

One of the most valuable things for me on my computer is screen space. No matter how large of a monitor I have or how many monitors I am using it just never seems like it is enough. I try to keep the number of concurrently running applications to a minimum but it never seems to work out in my favor. Before I know it I’ll have so many applications/windows open that I’m afraid to close any of them.

I started searching around and found two great freeware applications that will make saving/optimizing precious screen space a piece of cake! They each have a different techniques to get the job done which means you could actually use both applications simultaneously to really be productive.

–WinTabber (Homepage/Mirror [version 0.2.156])–

One of the quickest and easiest ways to clear up some room on your Taskbar is to make use of an application like WinTabber, which is a little more complete than the Jedi Window Dock created for the App A Day site. WinTabber will let you pick and choose some of your open windows to throw into one simple tabbed interface. As you can see in the screenshot below I took a few of my open windows and in just a few clicks I had them removed from the Taskbar and placed into the application.

One program that I probably would keep out of it is Firefox though. Not because it doesn’t work properly but having the tabs in Firefox and the tabs for the applications can get quite confusing when you are trying to switch between websites quickly.

–WinArranger (Homepage/Mirror [version 1.11.73])–

This program is actually more focused on optimizing your screen space rather than trying to conserve it. It will take some of your open windows and try to arrange them in the most optimized fashion so that you can view them next to each other. The list of features isn’t long but the usefulness can be greater than you think. Here is everything that it can do:

• Hide of window borders and captions
• Customize number of windows per each monitor
• Customize layout for each screen configuration
• Has three modes for window ordering: manual, by process, by title
• Hotkey shortcuts for quick operation
• Rules for the flexible management of windows to be arranged

WinArranger can be configured to work just how you want it to. In the bottom left corner of the application you’ll see a button that says “Arrange” or “Re-arrange” and it will order your open windows in a fashion that lets you view them side-by-side. On the Rules tab of the configuration screen you can remove an application from appearing in the list of windows to be arranged. Here is what WinArranger did with the two windows that I had open:

–Overview–

There is all kinds of freeware out there, but it can be difficult to find exactly what you are looking for. Actually, you have to know what you’re looking for first. Maybe you say to yourself “there has to be some way to clean up my Taskbar,” but you just don’t know what you need. Another good solution might be using virtual desktops…you’ll need to play around with some solutions until you figure out exactly what’s right for you.

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on April 13, 2008 by CyberNet.

There’s a new feature in Firefox 3 Beta 5 that I just came across yesterday when using the browser, and I’m not sure how long it has been there. What I did was I clicked on the icon for our site which brought up what would normally be security-related information for the page your viewing. Then I clicked the More Information button:

I was then presented with more details on the security of the site, which includes being able to view cookies or passwords for that particular domain. What I found to be really interesting, however, is that it says whether you’ve visited that particular site before… and how many times you have done so:

If you frequently clear out the browser’s history then it obviously won’t be able to keep track of this, but it’s been a month or so since I’ve done that. Needless to say I’ve visited our site quite a bit in that period of time. 😉

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on July 10, 2012 by CyberNet.

I’ve always thought that free tools like Paint.NET are incredible pieces of software because they drastically simplify the image editing process for most users while still offering a lot of the advanced options for the power users out there. The downside to Paint.NET is that it’s only available on Windows, but a free app called Pinta tries to bring a similar set of features to all platforms.

Pinta takes many cues from Paint.NET, and that’s a good thing in my book. Since the app is cross-platform you can easily edit your images on Windows, Linux and Mac which can help make moving between operating systems an easier transition when you consider the interface will be the same on them all.

There’s not much else to say about the tool because it does what you’d want an image editor to do. Here is an overview of some of the features highlighted on the project’s page:

• Drawing Tools
  Use easy drawing tools to draw freehand, lines, rectangles, ellipses, and more.
• Full History
  Don’t be afraid to experiment, Pinta tracks your full history so you can always undo.
• Unlimited Layers
  Use layers to help separate and group elements of your image for easy editing.
• Adjustments and Effects
  Pinta includes over 35 adjustments and effects for tweaking your images.
• Your Workspace
  Like docked windows? No problem. Floating windows? No problem. Pinta will even let you mix and match. 

One thing I do want to note is to take a look at the prerequisites on the download page. For example, Windows users will need to install .NET 4 and GTK before Pinta will work.

Pinta Homepage (Windows/Mac/Linux; Freeware)

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com