Author Archives: Richard

About Richard

Caution! Author is entirely capable of independent thought.

MistyLook at WordPress.com gets some welcome updates

Posted on
6

Guest post by Richard

mistylook screenshotMistyLook, with its clean and pleasant design has always been a very popular theme around WordPress.com, but being a very old theme, it had limitations, especially when compared to all the new themes that have been released over the past year. MistyLook also suffered from some top navigation issues due to the placement of the built-in search box which was at the right end of the navigation area.

The Theme Team here at WordPress.com though, decided to breathe new life into this popular classic.

Custom Menu Support

Shortly after the implementation of custom menus into WordPress, staff updated MistyLook to support them. This was a welcome addition since the placement of the search box at the right end of the top navigation limited how many tabs you could have. With custom menu support, you could organize your menu items in dropdowns, and even include categories and custom links.

Hide the Search Box

There were a lot of forum posts asking how to hide or move the search box because the user needed the additional space for their navigation tabs. It used to be that if you wanted to hide the search box, you had to purchase the CSS upgrade and hide it via CSS. Now all you have to do is go to Appearance > Theme Options and simply check a box and the search box is gone.

Hide Single Post Navigation

Another thing that some were not fond of are the previous and next links that appeared at the top of the single-post pages. If you do not like those, you can now go to Appearance > Theme Options and turn them off.

Custom Background

Two other popular MistyLook requests were changing the background color and adding a background image. Now, instead of having to get the CSS upgrade, all you have to do is go to Appearance > Background and you can add a background image, or a custom background color.

Unintended absense

Posted on
13

Hi everyone,

Timethief asked me to let everyone know that her computer has decided to take a few days off (without letting her know ahead of time), so unfortunately she will not be around till Monday at the earliest.

Let’s all keep our fingers crossed that her computer is up and running again very soon.

IE9: Not quite ready for WordPress.com primetime

Posted on
12

Guest Post by Richard

There is a lot of buzz around Microsoft’s beta release of Internet Explorer 9, and it even rated a (sponsored) fawning on the official WordPress.com blog, but there are issues that people are running into trying to use it on WordPress.com and I suspect on self-hosted WordPress blogs as well.

One issue is that you cannot add or move widgets around on the widgets admin page, or rearrange them in the sidebar panel. IE9 in this respect has resurrected the ghosts of IE past. IE 6 had this issue as did IE7 when first released.

The important word to keep in mind is “BETA” as in not finished. It still has missing and loose nuts and bolts. WordPress is highly unlikely to address any IE9 compatibility issues till the browser goes full public release. If they did, they might end up chasing shadows as MS changes this and then changes that and then changes both of those again.

Never use a beta release browser as your main browser. If you want to download it and try it out, fine, but always keep the latest stable release around for your main work.

From looking at the new features and improvements though, IE9 promises a greatly improved user experience. As with any software though, only time will tell.

No paragraph spacing in post-page editor

Posted on
15

Guest Post by Richard

This is just a quick, short post about some recent issues people are reporting with the post and page editor at wordpress.COM, but it also applies to self-hosted blogs using the software from wordpress.ORG.

If you are having problems getting a blank line between paragraphs in the visual editor, it might be something as simple as the editor not properly coding the paragraphs. In other words, somehow the formatting got changed to something other than “paragraph.”

First, make certain you have the lower second row of icons showing in your editor. If you do not, then click the “kitchen sink” icon at the end of the top row of icons (square with several lines of dots).

Editor lower left cornerNow, look in the lower left corner border area of the editor content window. If all is right, you should see something similar to the image at left: “Path: p” (click for full-sized view).  If you see anything that doesn’t contain “p” (such as div), then the editor is not set for standard paragraph spacing and that is why you are not getting any blank lines between the paragraphs. How did this happen? That is a million dollar question with no real answer, but give the following solution a try when you lose the blank line between paragraphs.

With all the text in the post or page selected (highlighted) go to the style pulldown at the left end of the lower tool bar (image at left) and select “Paragraph” from the pulldown. Your blank lines between paragraphs should magically appear and from that point forward, you should be alright—until the next time it happens, and it probably will. Just remember this solution. It has always fixed the issue for me.