This is something that I can honestly say that I have never had an issue with prior to today but I have a client project that I have been working on for a few weeks now and almost ready to launch until the client mentioned that he didn’t like the way that Google Toolbar was turning some of his form fields a yellow color, it took me a minute to realize what he was talking about because I have honestly always overlooked this and not really thought a lot about it.  I went in search of a way to workaround this issue and stumbled upon Jenseng.com’s approach to a workaround using javascript, here’s the snippet if you are interested…

   1:  <script type=“text/javascript”><!–

   2:    if(window.attachEvent)

   3:      window.attachEvent(“onload”,setListeners);

   4:   

   5:    function setListeners(){

   6:      inputList = document.getElementsByTagName(“INPUT”);

   7:      for(i=0;i<inputList.length;i++){

   8:        inputList[i].attachEvent(“onpropertychange”,restoreStyles);

   9:        inputList[i].style.backgroundColor = “”;

  10:      }

  11:      selectList = document.getElementsByTagName(“SELECT”);

  12:      for(i=0;i<selectList.length;i++){

  13:        selectList[i].attachEvent(“onpropertychange”,restoreStyles);

  14:        selectList[i].style.backgroundColor = “”;

  15:      }

  16:    }

  17:   

  18:    function restoreStyles(){

  19:      if(event.srcElement.style.backgroundColor != “”)

  20:        event.srcElement.style.backgroundColor = “”;

  21:    }//–>

  22:  </script>

And here’s a link to Jenseng’s Blog Entry about Outsmarting the Google Toolbar | jenseng.com

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I just noticed this morning that there is an upgrade for Wordpress available.  I will probably block out an hour or so this afternoon and run through to upgrade all of our clients installations.  Not for sure what all is included in this upgrade but found this on the Wordpress blog posted by Matt Mullenwig, the Wordpress Founder and Lead Developer at Automattic Software.  I thought I would pass it along for any of you that might be running wordpress installations of your own.  Also, anyone that knows me well knows that I am a huge fan of wordpress!

I’m happy to announce that version 2.6 of WordPress.org is now available, almost a month ahead schedule. Version 2.6 “Tyner,” named for jazz pianist McCoy Tyner, contains a number of new features that make WordPress a more powerful CMS: you can now track changes to every post and page and easily post from wherever you are on the web, plus there are dozens of incremental improvements to the features introduced in version 2.5.

Post Revisions: Wiki-like tracking of edits

With the power of modern computers, it’s silly that we still use save and editing metaphors from the time when the most common method of storage was floppy disks. WordPress has always respected the importance of your writing with auto-save, and now we’re taking that to another level by allowing you to view who made what changes when to any post or page through a super-easy interface, much like Wikipedia or a version control system.

This is handy on any blog in case you make a mistake and want to go back to an older version of a post, and it’s super handy for multi-author blogs where you can see every change tracked by person

Press This!: Post from wherever you are on the web

A few months ago on my blog we started a conversation about the posting bookmarklet in WordPress and which systems we should look to for inspiration, like Flock, FriendFeed, Facebook, Tumblr, and Delicious. From these suggestions and the Quick Post plugin by Josh Kenzer, we developed a Press This bookmark you can add to your toolbar that provides a fast and smart popup to do posts to your WordPress blog.

For example, if you click “Press This” from a Youtube page it’ll magically extract the video embed code, and if you do it from a Flickr page it’ll make it easy for you to put the image in your post. On my blog I’ve been experimenting with using different categories and the in_category() function — such as video, quote, aside, et cetera — to create a more tumblelog-like format.

Shift Gears: Turbo-speed your blogging

Gears is an open source browser extension project started by Google that developers like us can use to give you features we wouldn’t normally be able to. There are a lot of things we can do with Gears in the future, but in this release we’ve stuck to using what’s called a “Local Server” to cache or keep a copy of commonly-used Javascript and CSS files on your computer, which can speed up the loading of some pages by several seconds (they just pop right up!). You can install Gears for Firefox or Internet Explorer, with support for Safari and Opera pending. WordPress works just fine without it, you just get a little extra juice when you have it installed.

Theme Previews: See it before your audience does

Now when you select a theme it pops up a window that shows the theme live with all your content, instead of immediately making it active on your site. This is great for just test driving themes before making a switch over publicly, and it is also helpful when you are developing a theme and need to test it but don’t want everybody to see your ongoing mistakes development.

Additional Fixes

This list of smaller enhancements and bug fixes that is included in this installation / release of Wordpress…

• Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.
• Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.
• Bulk management of plugins.
• A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.
• Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
• Plugin update notification bubble.
• Customizable default avatars.
• You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.
• Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen.
• Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
• You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
• Ability to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts.
• Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
• You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
• A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
• Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.
• Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.

Developer Notes

WordPress.org had over 75 people contributing code to WordPress 2.6. In addition to the core commit team we had contributions from Dion Hulse, Austin Matzko, Otto42, Benedict Eastaugh, and pishmishy. AaronCampbell and Marco Zehe provided more than a few patches. Back among the top code contributors is Jacob Santos. Alex Concha continues to have WordPress’ back. Joining bug reporting and gardening elite are hakre, Simon Wheatley, mtekk, and Matty Rob. Finally, congratulations to our Peter Westwood on your recent wedding! I’m also proud to announce we’re adding a new core committer to the team: Andrew Ozz (azaozz) has been a huge help to the core team this year, particularly around TinyMCE and making the WYSIWYG something that works for you, not against you.

Because of the new capabilities to make WordPress a clean SVN checkout, plugin and theme authors should do their best to handle forms and posts through WP rather than trying to post to their files directly, here’s a quick Codex article about how to do it using our forward-compatible APIs.

Upgrading

2.6 is pretty much identical to 2.5 from a plugin and theme compatibility point of view, so upgrades from 2.5 should be pretty painless. The 2.5 branch will no longer be maintain so everyone is encouraged to upgrade. Our standard 3-step upgrade instructions apply to this release. There were at least 1,984,047 downloads of the 2.5 series, the fastest growing release we’ve ever had, and I think all of those people will find 2.6 adds a level of polish that really makes WP a pleasure to use every day. (At least I do. :))

Easter Egg

There have been rumors and allegations that there was a so-called “easter egg” added to 2.6 early in its development. These rumors and allegations are completely false!

 

P.S. If you’re a fan of WordPress, consider joining our fan page on Facebook.

WordPress › Blog » WordPress 2.6

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Cotton Rohrscheib, Partner and C0-Founder of Pleth Networks, LLC, a Batesville, Arkansas based Web Development and Managed Hosting Provider announced on Monday that his firm had recently launched a new web presence for Detco Industries, Inc. of Conway, Arkansas. The new Detco Industries, Inc. website can be found online at www.detco.com.

“The Detco project was a total redesign, from the conversion and creation of their backend database to the implementation of their new corporate identity and logo,” said Rohrscheib. “We went through a discovery process and created a list of key components for the project that they (Detco Industries, Inc.) were interested in seeing on their website. We collaborated a few times during the process to fine tune various aspects regarding their products and internal processes.”

The new Detco Industries, Inc. website features a database driven content management system that allows Detco’s personnell to affect live changes and imports to their product line. The new website and database solution also allows Detco to capture sales leads from prospective customers and effectively manage this data.

“Another important module that Detco wanted to see in their new web presence was the ability to post career openings to their website and to receive job applications and resume’s online. We integrated this solution in with the existing products database so their internal staff would have a single point of entry to manage their entire web presence,” added Rohrscheib.

The new website features several other popular features such as MSDS and Tech Sheet downloads in PDF format, Google Map to their corporate offices, and PDF downloads of their Catalog and Line Cards. (click screenshot below to preview the new Detco Industries, Inc. website)

About Detco Industries, Inc.

For more than 20 years, Detco Industries, Inc. has been producing and distributing a full line of premium specialty chemical products. The Detco team strives to meet the needs of their customers with superior products, excellent customer service, and competitive prices. Detco is constantly adding new and more efficient chemical compounds for a variety of applications while remaining environmentally conscious. Detco customers have come to rely on the Detco name and recognize them as a leader in quality chemical products.

Incorporated in 1988, Detco services a wide base of customers from their manufacturing plant in Conway, Arkansas. They produce liquid products, powders, and package their own line of aerosol products, as well as other industrial chemicals. Detco’s state of the art, on site, laboratory also performs quality control, research & development and sample analysis for boilers and cooling towers.

About Pleth Networks, LLC

Pleth, LLC is an Arkansas-based technology firm specializing in delivering high-end web site design, managed web hosting, email hosting, and email services to a global client base. Pleth, LLC also specializes in customized web solutions for vertical markets such as Real Estate Firms, Auto Dealerships, and E-Commerce solutions.

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After beating the drum and getting all hopped up for the launch of Firefox 3 this week, I am just now getting around to downloading and installing it on my Dev2 machine.  I am going to test out my plugins and everything for a little while before I update all of my other machines, here’s a note about the recent Mozilla website outage…

An outage affected the Mozilla.com website on the day the organisation launched its Guinness World Record attempt for downloads of the new Firefox 3 browser. The mozilla.com site was unreachable from around the world, occasionally responding with the message, “Http/1.1 Service Unavailable”.

Melissa Shapiro posted a statement on the Mozilla blog to say that their servers were feeling the burn and should be back to normal shortly. An earlier post stated that the record attempt would begin today at 5pm UTC, but Shapiro announced after this time that the 24 hour period in which the downloads will be counted will begin once the site goes live.

Netcraft was able to access the Firefox 3 download page again shortly after 7pm UTC, but the Service Unavailable message was still seen occasionally. For some period before this, the page was still offering version 2 downloads, yet a Mozilla press release confirmed that Firefox 3 had indeed already been released.

A follow-up post on the Mozilla blog officially announced that the 24 hour period had begun, with Guinness counting all complete downloads of Firefox 3 before 18:16 UTC tomorrow.

The outages also affected the www.spreadfirefox.com website. Realtime performance graphs of the Mozilla website are available here.

Source: Netcraft

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I am just now getting around to updating my PHPRunner Software on my Dev1 Machine (have been really behind the times lately) and was surprised to find that they have added quite a few new features that are very handy one click type of things, here’s a list:

• Dynamic permissions
• Import data from CSV and Excel files
• Resize images on upload and iBox support
• Auto-update fields. Automatically insert a value into field every time record is updated (UpdateBy, UpdateTime, IP address of user etc)
• Visual SQL Editor
• Add new item to dropdown box as a fully-featured add page in popup
• Only allow complex passwords (mixed cases, non-alphanumeric characters)
• Registration confirmation via email
• CAPTCHA

Probably the first one on the list, Dynamic Permissions, is the one that I have most anxiously been awaiting. I can see how this is going to be very nice. I have been running 4.2 on my notebook pc for a little while now getting acclimated and it operates great, the new enhancements to the visual sql editor are most welcomed!

I know that I have a few folks that hit my blog from time to time that are also hardcore PHPR users, I would be interested in hearing from any of you and your take on the software as well. Just email me or drop me a comment / trackback to your blog on here…

Source: PHPRunner 4.2 released - Forums

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I was looking for some resources online to help me get up to speed with Expression and stumbled across Eric Meyer’s CSS Layout Generator software that works as an add-on for Microsoft Expression.  This is a no-brainer, wonderful idea.  I am a huge fan of code generators and anything else that will help me save time while styling layouts.  The cost of the software is very nice also, it retails for $100 I think but they are running a promotion right now where you can get it for half price.   I didn’t see a demo download but did find a feature tour and a solution recipe section with some pretty interesting things. 

One of the cool things about this software is that it allows you to easily use one of the predefined layouts that comes with the package and then “tweak it as needed”.  It looks pretty intuitive from what I have seen also.  I am not 100$ sure what kind of code it throws in but w/ it being from Eric Meyer it has to be pretty clean and validatable code.  One of the other cool features about this software that I have found is that it allows you to generate not only your main stylesheet but it also generates a print stylesheet also.

Here are some of the features I pulled from the website:

Totally simplifies CSS-based layouts

Modern Web design requires Web standards compliant CSS-based layouts. CSS Sculptor meets that requirement with flexibility, expertise and ease-of-use. Select a core layout, personalize it however you’d like and then output it, ready for your content and cross-browser compatible.

Integrates background images into your layouts

Background images are one of the true artist tools available to the CSS designer. With CSS Sculptor, you can easily incorporate background images into any part of your page, including the body tag or any individual layout div. Add faux columns, watermarks or repeating gradients with no hassle.

Saves and restores layout designs

Build your own collection of preset layouts with CSS Sculptor. Save any modified layout as a new design, which you can easily re-use or further modify. Export your presets to use in another system or share with others—and just as easily import preset designs.

Puts CSS expert Eric Meyer to work for you

Eric Meyer is recognized world-wide as a leading authority on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Eric is the author of numerous definitive books, articles and posts on CSS. Eric worked side-by-side with WebAssist to ensure that CSS Sculptor met the demanding needs of today’s Web professional.

Combines screen and print style sheet design

Make your Web pages hard copy compatible with CSS Sculptor’s easy to use Print features. CSS Sculptor converts your screen layout to a format more compatible with the printed page with just a few mouse clicks. Easily convert your page to black and white and hide any selected layout element.

Controls your CSS output from top to bottom

Store your CSS Sculptor-generated styles wherever you’d like—embedded in the of your Web page or in a new or existing style sheet. Specify the amount of placeholder content: full, minimal or none. Turn CSS comments on or off. Create your page your way with Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor.

Source: WebAssist Professional - Eric Meyer’s CSS Layout Generator for Microsoft Expression Web

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