Tag: wordpress

Simplish version 2.3

Posted by utopian – May 13, 2010

Freshened off a four-month break, a new Simplish massages the visuals just enough to mark version number 2.3. The latest changes burnish corners into gentle curves, erase extraneous divider lines, and multiply the multilingual mix with a new Belarusian (be_BY) localization.

The various *border-radius CSS techniques for turning corners don’t command the obedience of wayward Internet Explorer. While we tested some special border-radius techniques for IE, corners there remain square. Level 2.1 CSS validators will squawk at bits of the new CSS, while browser-specific mutations of same add typographical insult to standards-abandoning injury. Still, we feel those bevels are pretty sporty.

Another appearance tweak removes the bottom border that formerly underlined h4 headings.

Download Simplish version 2.3 here (.zip, sha1:3f8255653b4215c82f704700185f04f806c73c83), or see it soon in the WordPress themes directory.

Simplish version 2.2.3

Posted by utopian – December 22, 2009

The latest minor update to Simplish bumps it to version 2.2.3, and it brings a little change to the handling of Categories in the post meta box, spearheaded by Demetris. The theme now specifically checks for the category name Uncategorized, so if you’ve renamed your cat ID #1, it will be displayed on posts in only that category. Previously such posts would show no categories, as though the post were “Uncategorized”.

This change is tiny, but more details can be found in Issue #19 at the Simplish project site.

Download Simplish version 2.2.3 here (.zip, sha1:ac92c5a8d1168d69aafd94fa43c1dd880cac01ce), or see it soon in the WordPress themes directory.

Simplish version 2.2.2

Posted by utopian – November 22, 2009

Version 2.2.2 replaces calls to a few deprecated WordPress functions with their current cousins. No visible differences are introduced. This update ensures compatibility and maintainability atop the latest (read: recommended) and future versions of WordPress.

Many thanks to Demetris for the bulk of the patches included, and vigorous testing with the WP_DEBUG setting, which now gives Simplish the all-clear.

Download Simplish version 2.2.2 here (.zip, sha1:ce3e147c277cdcb2aac934fd9f0ec2bd20b8f6af), or see it soon in the WordPress themes directory.

Simplish version 2.1.3

Posted by Josh – November 27, 2008

Another little gift for the holiday: Here’s a new production edition of Simplish. This is the one you should be using on your real site, you know, where you don’t run pre-release software like Simplish 2.1.4RC, or WordPress 2.7-beta…

Version 2.1.3 is a tiny update that contains just one change: a contributed header background graphic (thanks to both Anonymous and Demetris) that’s 10x smaller than the original, down from ~2.7 Kilobytes to a super-slender 256 Bytes.

In other words, this update is definitely not a big deal. But it does trim the theme’s only image down to a size smaller than… most of your blog posts, and might help (a very little bit) with bandwidth or page load times if you’re using Simplish on a very-busy site.

Download Simplish version 2.1.3 here, or see it soon in the WordPress themes directory.

Threadbare no longer (Simplish 2.1.4RC)

Posted by Josh – November 27, 2008

As mentioned in comments on my original mild objection, I’ve been convinced that threaded discussions, new in the upcoming WordPress version 2.7, are a good value at the price. So today I slapped support for the feature into Simplish. This version of the theme should be considered “beta” quality, just like the new WordPress features on which it’s built. Both are subject to change before final release.

Demo
http://labs.utopian.net/who/josh/wp-svn/?p=1
Code
simplish-2.1.4RC.tgz

The demo shows a “jacob’s ladder” style for the comments/replies layout, where both left and right margins are indented per-thread-level. It’s an (experimental) attempt to ease the “comment chaos” feeling a deeply-threaded discussion can give.

A special thanks to Otto for his comments and his indispensable threaded comments getting-started doc.
More→

About Versions and Fixes

Posted by Josh – November 17, 2008

We have a very-roughly monthly release schedule, and as our infrequently-honored date of the 20th approaches, the fix I have is a good one, but the only one: Anonymous contributed to the sibling sp theme a new background header image in PNG form at just 10% of the original’s size.

If there are other corners we could tidy, let us know with a comment here – that includes providing specific examples for the reported issue with some AJAX sidebar widgets and Simplish v2.1.2, as well as the question about the importance of threaded comment support -vs- the simplicity of loading no JavaScript.

Exceedingly Clean (like Paul's Grandpa)

Posted by Josh – August 20, 2008

Simplish made an appearance on op111.net’s 5-theme shortlist for WordPress. I almost missed the trackback because I was moving the demo blog to make way for this space.

In the end, op111′s demetris chose to apply his own styling to Scott Wallick‘s excellent Sandbox theme. I came close to doing the same thing when I went looking for a snazzy ‘default’-kinda theme for Utopian.net’s use – and for my own blog at the Labs. I decided to adopt and update Kenny/Jeffrey‘s ScribbishWP, but since I started changing and departing from both ScribbishWP (in code) and Scribbish itself (in style), the plaintxt.org themes like Sandbox and blog.txt have inspired choices for Simplish. We even copy their code: the two basic hCard producer functions used in Simplish 2.0 are derived from blog.txt source (closely enough that Scott’s copyright has joined the NOTICE.)

op111′s list has some references to the many uses folks make of the Sandbox plus some chameleon CSS – Sandbox comes out of the box looking like 1995, but can be made into anything you can tweak into and copy out of Firebug. My favorite is still Sandbox co-creator Andy Skelton’s re-implementation of WordPress’s default/kubrick theme atop Sandbox.