Sandbox Revision Available

Andy and I have made some fixes/changes to the Sandbox. You can read specifics (general specifics, actually) on the change log following the Sandbox page. Basically PHP 5 errors have been fixed and the Sandbox should be working with 2.0 versions of WordPress pre-2.0.3. The same with older Widgets plugins. As usual, feel free to get in touch if something’s not working.

I’ve received a lot of useful feedback and general thoughts on the Sandbox and what would make it better. I kept track of these in a list and went through them with Andy. In the end, we decided on one change: adding comment_text() to the trackbacks/pingpacks. We felt that a trackback/pingback excerpt could be hidden easily with CSS, if so inclined.

Otherwise, there were just little tiddly changes—nothing structural.

Docs & Skins

The Sandbox has raised a lot of questions. A lot of specific questions. After considering the issue of providing documentation for the Sandbox as thoughtfully everything else so far, I’ve come to the following conclusions: (a) the Codex will be used (but not quite yet) for documenting the Sandbox, because this will serve the wp.org and wp.com communities best; and (b) I will be setting up a wiki here on plaintxt.org for Sandbox skins and Sandbox skins alone.

I decided to go the wiki route for the skins because I think we need to have something like a repo for skins. Already I have gotten three different K2 skins (and have another in progress) for the Sandbox. By having a thorough list of skins for the Sandbox in one place (ideally, but I’m also realistic) we can version them and repurpose others. I think it’ll be terribly useful and I know I’ll add my skins there. Will you? Please say yes.

Again, this wiki will be for skins only. No “How to make a skin” guide (that would go on the Codex—but not quite yet, we’re still laying foundations). No bug reporting or ticketing. Just skins. The skin CSS with its screenshot and any accompanying files. Installation instructions will be universal and hopefully confused users will be minimal.

And skin authors will get a public-facing link for their skinning work. So that’s something.

Until then.

Comments

Dana wrote:

Yay! It works!

I upgraded both WP and the widgets plugin, then installed the new version of Sandbox. Perfect.

(I tried the older version after the upgrades and it didn’t work.)

Thanks!

Posted 09 Aug 2006 at 8:30 am ¶
Scott wrote:

Glad it worked, Dana, and thanks for being patient while the kinks got worked out. Waiting for round two of the same . . .

Posted 09 Aug 2006 at 8:50 am ¶
Zeo wrote:

I think <?php comment_excerpt(); ?> is much more better to display pingback/trackback

Posted 09 Aug 2006 at 11:24 am ¶
Scott wrote:

Zeo: Thanks for the thought. It’s on my list.

Posted 09 Aug 2006 at 11:33 am ¶
Saracen wrote:

What a fantastic theme Scott, I can see amazing possiblities, like a special style for the blog on special occasions, highlighting “new today” posts, etc…

A sugggestion: how about adding a post counter so that you can style the first n posts in one way and the rest differently. Perhaps the first 3 are two-column width and the rest single column underneath, or maybe the first few are full posts, and the others are just headings.

Posted 10 Aug 2006 at 4:53 pm ¶
Zeo wrote:

Hello again Scott.

I’m still waiting the answer for the <abbr> thingy. And if there’s not yet any POT file for translation, here it is.

Saracen, you can do alt style for. Example:

.home .alt { background-color: red; }

Posted 11 Aug 2006 at 1:11 am ¶
Scott wrote:

Saracen: I like you idea of numbering each post relative to its position on the page; combined with the div.alt for posts, which is for every-other post, that would add quite a few more possibilities. It’s on the list.

Zeo: the <abbr> isn’t in the DOM for IE6 and earlier, as we all know. “Inherit” probably made you think

abbr.published { font: inherit; }

which wasn’t what I meant. Have a look at this.

Of course I’m not suggesting that every browser handles <abbr> the same way. Unfortunately not.

We’re at 0.5 still, so a div in this place (a block-ish location) is a possibility. Also on the list.

Posted 11 Aug 2006 at 1:58 am ¶
Diwaker wrote:

Hey Scott, have you guys thought about setting up a public code repository for Sandbox for people who want to track the cutting edge stuff? It’ll also probably be good for people who want to contribute (documentation, patches etc).

Posted 11 Aug 2006 at 3:15 am ¶
Scott wrote:

Hi Diwaker: Making the snv public is probably down the road. Think v1.0. Structural changes will be at a minimum. Very minimum. And new classes will be added into the readme.html tables.

Sandbox 0.5.0.2 is on the horizon. Thanks to everyone who’s given us feedback—critical and constructive. It’s making the Sandbox even better.

Posted 11 Aug 2006 at 9:20 am ¶
Zeo wrote:

Heh, I was doing something like that before. But the problem is because it “inherit”, you have to re-style some selectors. Furthermore, there’s a limit of what you can do.

I was playing with widgets yesterday, I found out that Sandbox use “Find” and widgets use “Search” for search button.

Posted 11 Aug 2006 at 10:15 am ¶
Scott wrote:

Yes, there is a limit, but my point is that the abbr along isn’t totally useless in IE, just mostly.

Good catch with the Find/Search discrepancy. It’s on the list under right under — Change “Options saved successfully” message to “Skin saved successfully.”

Posted 11 Aug 2006 at 10:20 am ¶
Scott wrote:

Lots of changes to the Sandbox, actually. I’m beat and have handed the code to Andy; he’s updating wp.com and then I’ll update in the morning (12-Aug-06, GMT-500). When I’m fresh.

It’s version 0.6.

Posted 12 Aug 2006 at 3:23 am ¶

Trackbacks & Pings

The News in Detail · plaintxt.org on 13 Aug 2006 at 2:28 am

[…] Yes, there were some crude ways to style it in IE, but, well, a lot of stuff (like block-level attributes) just wouldn’t work. So, zap, here you are. In the end, we settled on a div. […]

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