(Yet Another) Article About Matt Mullenweg

Another interesting newspaper article about WordPress’s founder Matt Mullenweg from last week that I missed. I can never get over how young he is, it’s impressive. Unfortunately no mention of bbPress or TalkPress in this article however. There was another one from another paper from earlier in the year if you missed it.
Check out the patches on the coat arms, cute – lol!

What’s new in PHP 5.3

Besides the 15% speedup for most code (20% in some cases!) and reduced memory use, PHP 5.3 has some very interesting and handy features. Check out this really nice “slideshow” of what’s new in PHP 5.3 by Ilia Alshanetsky:

[PDF] http://ilia.ws/files/phpquebec_php53.pdf

or in plain text (somewhat garbled as formatting is lost:

Pages: 1 2 3 4

stop using “window.onload” in JavaScript

I don’t write full blown AJAX but I do code some JavaScript from time to time. One big tip I can offer other “casual” javascript coders, since many times a script must be executed after a page is loaded, is to STOP using window.onload=your_function;

The reason for this is simple – you should be APPENDING your script to the page loaded hook, not CLOBBERING any existing scripts that may be already attached. The “window.onload” method can only hook one function at a time and these days it’s common to use several third party scripts on a site. If you are not careful, you may be left scratching your head why something stopped working – because you accidentally stopped it from loading.

There used to be some clever workarounds for this, like making a function that checked onload and appending it to a list of functions to call and replacing it with your own onload. But with modern browsers today, all that mess is not needed. Just replace your code with this (albeit longer) code:
if (window.attachEvent) {window.attachEvent('onload', your_function);}
else if (window.addEventListener) {window.addEventListener('load', your_function, false);}
else {document.addEventListener('load', your_function, false);}

Tested working in all major modern browser (IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera) and it appends instead of replaces the onload process. Hope that helps!

PHP 4.4.9 goes RC1

I missed this from a few days ago – PHP 4.4.9 has gone RC1
The update seem trivial except for maybe that open_basedir bug with curl

22 Jul 2008, Version 4.4.9 RC1
- Updated PCRE to version 7.7. (Nuno)
- Fixed crash in imageloadfont when an invalid font is given.
(discovered by CzechSec, fixed by Pierre)
- Fixed open_basedir handling issue in the curl extension. (Stas)
- Fixed bug #37421 (mbstring.func_overload set in .htaccess becomes global). (Rui)

also see: PHP 5.3 goes RC1

Proposed New Features For WordPress 2.7

During an informal, public IRC meeting attended by Matt, this list was derived and voted on (the iii’s are votes – people could vote against so that reduced the tally)

iiiiii - Comments API
iiiii - keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation
iiii - remove old/unused code
iiii - theme update api, like we do for plugins
iiii - some default shortcodes, maybe the most popular 10 from WordPress.com
iii - dashboard and write box rearranging
iii - one-click plugin installs
iii - oEmbed support, tied in with shortcodes
iii - admin-only reply thing, for admin replies to comments
iii - better UI for post revisions, maybe an optional field to say what changed in a version
iii - core updating
ii - OAuth support
ii - a frame-like method for moderating ping/trackbacks
ii - GeoData for posts, comments, attachments, etc.
ii - Duplicate post Tags UI for other taxonomies (6387)
ii - SWFUploader make it work with Flash 10
ii - template tags to do everything the custom gallery on ma.tt does
ii - plugin browser embedded
ii - codepress code highlighting for template editing
ii - php xref hosted on WordPress.org
ii - tag intersections, all posts that have tag x AND y
ii - menu editor


best firefox plugin ever – install it now, seriously

I’ve been using this plugin for a couple years now and it’s saved my arse at least half a dozen times when Firefox corrupts one user file or another for some reason:

http://www.pikey.me.uk/mozilla/?addon=bb

It’s called “Bookmark Backup” but it does SO much more.
If you open the options you can tell it to also save your history and more importantly your password files among many other files.

PHP 5.3 feature freeze tomorrow? alpha1 July 31st?

I am uncertain if they are still on schedule but if so, this is very exciting because PHP 5.3 will realize significant speed improvements for all PHP programs on the web (15% for WordPress). They are suggesting a “stable release between mid September and mid October”.

http://sebastian-bergmann.de/archives/745-Benchmark-of-PHP-Branches-3.0-through-5.3-CVS.html

PHP 5.3 brings new features (namespaces, late statics binding, and the garbage collector, for instance) but the refactoring of the argument stack, for example, and other optimization patches have lead to a measurable performance improvement (PHP 5.3 is 1.2 times faster than PHP 5.2 for raw execution speed).

Here’s a nice “slideshow” in PDF format of what’s new in PHP 5.3 by Ilia Alshanetsky

Movabletype doesn’t report security issues

Every so often I come across a comment on the web about how Movabletype “doesn’t have the security issues” that WordPress does, which really annoys me. No one likes bugs but to be misinformed about security is wrong.

The reality is this couldn’t be further from the truth – Movabletype has had at least three security issues this year but Movabletype is to blame for hiding/lying about the situation with no vulnerability reports and leaving people in the dark until they have a fix. So which is worse, warning people ahead of time there’s a vulnerability and not being petty about how it will make you look – or just not telling the users while the hackers already know how to exploit the problem?

Essentially no one researches Movabletype security vulnerabilities anymore – perhaps the user base has become too small, perhaps hackers aren’t even bothering because they can’t find sites using it worth hacking.

Want proof? It’s simple. Go to any site that tracks security vulnerability announcements. Here’s an example, securnia:

Theme Browser Returns to WordPress.org

I was going to blog about who you can email to help beta test the new WordPress theme browser but apparently in the past 24 hours it’s gone LIVE now for everyone so this is fantastic:

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/

This apparently is the result of much hard work by Joseph Scott, brilliant job Joseph!

There is a more formal announcement here:
http://wordpress.org/development/2008/07/theme-directory/

Now they need to get the http://bbPress.org side
up to speed as the 600px wide drives me crazy.

How to fix Firefox 3.0 auto-launch for some files

You may have noticed that Firefox 3.0, in a change from 2.0, does not auto-launch some files correctly like Word documents (doc), spreadsheets (xls), torrents, nzb, etc.

Here’s how to fix it:
1. go into about:config
2. create browser.helperApps.deleteTempFileOnExit
3. set it to boolean: false

Fix for wordpress 2.6 can’t login

Many people are having trouble logging into WordPress 2.6 admin area after upgrading.
After clearing cookies the problem persists for some.

After a bit of digging in the code I figured it has to do with a bug in the new cookie for admin access and how they (incorrectly) try to fall back to the default path.

Here’s a workaround:

go into your `wp-config.php` and add this line:
@define(‘ADMIN_COOKIE_PATH’, ‘/’);

NOTE ‘/’ would be your blog path.
If you find that ‘/wp-admin’ doesn’t work, make it ‘/blog/wp-admin‘ or whatever your path is.
Last but not least if nothing works, try just ‘/’ but note that reduces security in theory.

bbPress presentation at WordCamp UK 2008?

For my UK mates, WordCamp UK 2008 is coming up next Saturday and Sunday 19-20 July 2008 at The Studio in Birmingham.

(42 out of 100 tickets have been sold as of yesterday, so it’s bound to sell out)

I’d love to hear any recordings (video or just audio) of the more technical sessions and of course Sam’s presentation on bbPress

ps. check out Sam’s impressive WP crests!