Recommended Wordpress plugins

After utilising Wordpress for a couple of web design projects now, I found this post useful. There are thousands of Wordpress plugins to use, and so sifting through the various good and bad offerings is made a little easier with this article.

10 good plugins for Wordpress. Examples include SEO, database backup, and super cache for quicker page loads.

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PRP - more mobile websites

Another good round up of iPhone compatible site, provided by Webdesignerwall.

What I find interesting is that personal preference lies with the ones that tend to imitate iPhone apps styling. They don't necessarily have to be the same colour, but curved edged boxes that hold the main content or links is styling that I seem to like more so. Or alternatively, big chunky links - both of which are illustrated above.

Nonetheless, there are a few things that I've picked up from this roundup and have proved encouraging/inspirng. Take this one below which shirks traditional navigation options layouts:

The navigation options are tucked behind a drop down list. This makes the styling cleaner - a benefit. However, by positioning the navigation drop down close to another button, it could prove more difficult by pushing the wrong one, due to their close proximity on an already small screen.

Also, listed in the Webdesignerwall round-up is an example of an already existing gossip site, so that means that Gossip Blox will now probably be shelved. I like the designs created so far, so I shall just have to repurpose for artifact 5 instead.

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Pipes by Yahoo - RSS mashup

One of the designs I suggested for my app was a female gossip centre.

Rather than just making a dummy app I hoped instead to get something that functioned and updated regularly.

Enter Pipes by Yahoo an RSS mashup aggregator type thing. This has been available for a while now yet it still offers great value. What's really cool is the user interface. It's all drag and drop and done through on screen graphics.

At first it's a little daunting to know what you are expected to do, or to even get it to function. But after following the video tutorials made available (RECOMMENDED) I have managed to amalgamate a suitable feed for the app, Gossip Blox.

Specifically this 'Pipe' takes the RSS feed from heatworld and digitalspy and strips them of surplus news entries older than a day. It then removes through a keyword search any duplicate content. Lastly, the content is trimmed to a mere three posts and ordered with the newest first.

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This is all well and good. I had high hopes for implementing the designs that I had set out for the app. However, Yahoo have made presenting your pipe sort of accessible and sort of not. You can grab the script which they provide as a 'badge' and embed it, which I tried. Thereafter I tried styling and positioning the content through CSS however it didn't work as I expected. A lot of the formatting is overridden (no doubt purposefully) through the scripting. Certain properties are passable in the head of the HTML but not enough to enable the design I wanted. :(

Sooooo, although I've found a great tool, which I would recommend to anybody in need of one, this testing will have to go down as research and experimentation.

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Sticky footer

A recent freelance update I did required the footer to stick at the bottom of the page, but should the content expand down below it, it will push the footer down too.

After several trials, I have found this link to offer the solution: http://www.cssstickyfooter.com/using-sticky-footer-code.html.

It works in all the browsers, requires no Javascript or CSS clear fix hacks.

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PRP - artifact #5 - iPhone GUI resource

I discovered this resource whilst reading up on the iPad and how it will differ (or more likely won't) when compared with the iPhone.

As an example, the back arrow button has now become synonymous with iPhone apps and so I believe this package could come in handy as a valuable asset for my artifact's production.

http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/2009/06/18/iphone-gui-psd-30/

Obviously some of the components available here won't be possible for the html version of a mobile site - the 'label two', 'label three' scroller wouldn't work for example.

However, trying to maintain the visual appearance of an Apple iPhone app is important if you want to maintain the perception of quality.

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Client - Footworks XHTML validation

It was important to try and achieve validation for Footworks site as it better ensures correct rendering across browsers.

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In my quest for validation, XHTML Strict, the most demanding validation testing - it took a bit of effort, the first problem regarding making a whole div a hyperlink.

The problem lies in the fact that divs aren't allowed to have a hyperlink wrapped around them, like this:

It breaks the rules set out for XHTML Strict.

It was eventually after reading this forum thread that I discovered why: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum83/5857.html.

A quick change to the code, making the inline content have the hyperlink attached, and applying a 100% width/height, and making the targeted <> tag { display : block } means that this problem is eradicated and the homepage validates.

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Unfortunately, there is one page that does not get the green tick for validation on Footworks.

The Contact page uses a plugin called Contact Form 7. It's versatility makes it a great plugin - you can basically get the contact form to have the input fields you want, the correct input types you expect, error messages written exactly in the correct tone etc. Great...

However, the creator has made each of the input fields a list item. For some reason, he has failed to apply these list items in an unordered list tag wrapper. Hence, the fail.

I did try going into the plugin codings, looking at the php and javascript but failed to locate where this list was generated. I don't believe this to be that bad a fault though, minor really.

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In all the site validates all apart from this contact page. I am content with this, and will look into seeing if the plugin can be fixed.

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Time to geek out - Nintendo 3DS

Nintendo have announced that their next iteration of the DS will feature glasses-free 3D gaming. And that doesn't mean merely 3D graphics.

This following youtube video demonstrates what is already capable on the DSi, using the camera lens to measure depth and perspective.

If the new one turns out anything like this then I think Nintendo have got another winner on their hands. Damn new technology!! Depletes bank accounts!!

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