Control Option Command

I’ve been meaning to release the theme of this blog for ages, yet I never really got around to finishing it.
After a bit of consideration I’ve decided to go for the easy option and just release it “as is”. It’s based on Sandbox and is therefore GPL-licensed. Otherwise I’d release it under my personal “I don’t give a hoot, but please credit me”-license.

If you want to use this theme for your blog without making any changes, here’s what you might be interested to know:

• The text in the top banner is entirely configurable in the theme options. You can even choose between using Flash, a static image file (there’s a template included in the theme folder) or even plain HTML text
• The Twitter widget in the sidebar is likewise configurable. Enter your Twitter ID, choose whether or not to ignore @replies and Bob’s your uncle.
• This theme is not widget ready. If you try to add widgets they simply won’t show up. The default Twitter, Feeds, Recently and Pages is what you get. I’m sorry about this. This was one of the things I was working on when I ran out of time.
• I’ve tried to clean out most of the plugin-specific styling for the plugins I use. Simply delete the following files if you don’t want my plugin-styles to override the defaults:
  • styleextras.css
  • sociable_see_extras.css
• Like I said; Work in progress. Here be dragons. :)

If, however, you want to help out finishing this theme and / or add your ideas to it here is a list for you.

• The reason widgets don’t currently work is because I wanted to make it so that widgets would always be styled in a specific manner according to their position, rather than the type of widget. For example I wanted the next box on the right to be grey regardless of whether it was an archives widget or a recent posts widget. Anal much? Yes. Anyway; I made a JavaScript that assigns an extra class to each widget based on it’s position, or “number” if you please. It’s pretty much done except for making the graphics (getting the design to be height-agnostic is a real bitch). There’s some first attempts in the images folder if you want to give it a go
• The theme does not currently validate properly. It used to, and then I messed something up. Sorry.
• The comment styling is really messy. I’d consider working it over if I were you. (I’ll get around to it some day…)
• There’s probably more I should warn you about, but it’s late and I’m sleepy. I created this theme strictly for personal use, and although I’ve gotten rid of all absolute URLs and site-specific stuff I haven’t gotten around to cleaning up the code. I’m quite the salesman, huh?

So there it is. For the geeks, here’s a github link.
For the non-geeks, here’s a direct download to the theme zip-file.

Enjoy.

When Iceland went bust and started selling .is domains I grabbed martin.is. Of course I did. That’s the kind of guy I am. Even as I swiped that credit card (and by “swipe” I mean “typed in all my info into the appropriate boxes.”) I knew I had no idea what I was going to use it for, but what the hey; I’ve done plenty of even stupider domain purchases that never led to anything¹.

So finally, the other day I decided to set up a “lifestream”. An aggregate feed of all the highly interesting stuff I do on the web. Not because I think anyone particularly needs or wants to know. It just seemed like the kind of thing that goes on a domain called “martin is”.
I really didn’t want to spend loads of time on this. I have a job, a daughter and a blog that are all already wailing for my attention, so tried plugging all my stuffs into a WordPress install using FeedWordPress and a couple of other similar plugins, but I found the results to be (unreliable | explosive | bewildering)².

Alrighty then. What services do I know of that aggregate information like this? FriendFeed! I headed over to FF, and sure enough; Within half a minute I had managed to plug all the crap I generate into one massive hunka’data. In addition to supporting a bunch of services Friendfeed actually does pretty well parsing feeds from other sources and cutting the entries into little blurbs. Now only to get it out of there and onto my domain.

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No no. I’m not about to start a kerfuffle about changing the location and / or name of my blog again. I just wanted to make sure you’ve heard about the new ria.creuna.com site.

Basically me and the other RIA-developers broke out and started our own blog. If you like the code, geek and tech content from this site you should be sure to check it out. For example you could start with my huge post about URL Recognition, or you could read how my co-worker exposes the clickTAG sham for the lousy stinky piece of bad stuff it is.

If you have been around on the web for ten years or more you will remember (or maybe even filled the role) of the mythical “WebMaster”. The WebMaster would design and program your site. He (or she… but lets be honest girls. Mostly he) would publish your articles and fix your site when broken. He’d do some voodoo behind the scene and something very close to what you wanted would happen. He’d tell you what would work on the net and what wouldn’t. He would not be questioned. He was The WebMaster.

Ok, so usually the WebMaster was someone’s cousin who knew HTML, where to cut’n paste JavaScript snippets from and generally no marvel to behold, but it was a title not to be taken lightly and godsdamnit we held it in high regard.

But I’m not here to wax poetic about the lost title of The WebMaster. I’m here to talk about how the position, once highly esteemed, as a “Jack of all trades” ¹ in, well, WebMastery; fits into the calculation nowadays.

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Seeing this pop up around the webboblag lately I find that the old fire in my belly isn't quite the fiery inferno one might have expected. Don't get me wrong! If IE6 was abolished, not only would it be a burden of my shoulders; It would save the company I work for shit loads of money, and my girlfriend would love me more.

No, the reason my battle roar might come off as a feeble “meh” this´time around is that I've seen, promoted and participated in this endeavour several times over the last few years. From “Browse Happy“, to “Explorer Destroyer” and “Kill Bill's Browser” (both of which seem to be taken down lately) and several others.

All of the above set out with the same goal; to rid the web of its ugliest and smelliest bastard child. None of them really had the impact one might have hoped for.

The reason for this is that… Hey guys; We're preaching to the choir. The people that even gives a nanosmidgen about what browser they use have already changed it. Furthermore, the places you'd be able to actually put this banner would largely be the kind of sites visited by the aforementioned collective of choral performers. I know most of my clients would give me some odd looks if I suggested we'd smack that thing in there.

In the end this is all about numbers. When clients feel that paying web professionals extra money to make a site render properly in IE6 outweighs the benefits, they'll stop paying and we'll stop doing. One key battle here is the corporate world. If we made, let's say may 10th the international “Talk to your IT-department about FireFox”-day, I'd say we've come a bit further on the quest for no more pain, please.

In closing; I applaud the effort, and I wish nothing more than to be proven wrong. This one time. I usually don't care for it.