Andy and I have made some fixes/changes to the Sandbox. Basically PHP 5 errors have been fixed and the Sandbox should be working WordPress version 2.0 and beyond. 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.
Documentation and skins
The Sandbox has raised a lot of questions. A lot of specific questions. After considering the documentation issue, 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 WordPress.org and WordPress.com communities; and (b) I will set up a wiki for Sandbox skins.
I decided to go the wiki route for the skins because I think we need to have something like a repository for skins. I have gotten three different K2 skins (and another is in progress, I believe) for the Sandbox. By having a thorough list of skins for the Sandbox in one place, we can version them and repurpose others. I think it’ll be 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.
12 Comments
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!
Glad it worked, Dana, and thanks for being patient while the kinks got worked out. Waiting for round two of the same . . .
I think
comment_excerpt()is much more better to display pingback/trackbackZeo: Thanks for the thought. It’s on my list.
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.
Hello again Scott.
I’m still waiting the answer for the
abbrthingy. 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; }Saracen: I like you idea of numbering each post relative to its position on the page; combined with the
div.altfor posts, which is for every-other post, that would add quite a few more possibilities. It’s on the list.Zeo: the
abbrisn’t in the DOM for IE 6 and earlier, as we all know. “Inherit” probably made you thinkabbr.published { font: inherit; }which wasn’t what I meant. Of course I’m not suggesting that every browser handles
abbrthe same way. Unfortunately not.We’re at 0.5 still, so a
divin this place (a block-ish location) is a possibility. Also on the list.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).
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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[...] 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. [...]