And I didn't even change the skin!

Well I finally got round to upgrading InnerVisions to the latest version of b₂evolution, mainly because it was getting a tad of a ballache developing plugins on my test blog and then constantly having to redo the zip files, something which is automated via my credits page for installed plugins. This is just stage one of the upgrade though, the next step is to integrate my blogrum with the rest of the InnerVisions network. Once again this is going to involve merging two different evo installs complete with all the users, posts, comments and groups ... not made any easier by the fact that the two installs share some users as well .... ah well, it'll be worth it when it's finished .... at least, that's what I keep telling myself

One of the plugins that I'm currently playing with allows you to customise your dashboard to suit your own tastes, it even allows you to add widgets to your dashboard, be warned though, not all widgets play nice on all dashboard tabs .... you can easily tell, they normally barf out with fatal errors ... if they do then just remove them from your dashboard huh? Another cool feature is the ability to drag 'n' drop the widgets into the order that you want instead of the normal "click arrow" ..... "wait" ..... "click arrow" .... you get the picture. If anyone's interested in it then you can read a smidge more on the blogrums ( Experimental : Playing with admin ), don't bother downloading the linked zip though, it's already out of date, you can grab the latest version from here ( AM Deluxe Dashboard ). I will be making a more detailed post about it once it's nearer to a release version

The chances are that this upgrade has screwed summat up somewhere, so if you find anything funky then just let me know .... assuming that the funkiness isn't to do with my anti-spam measures, in which case you might find yourself accidentally banned for a couple of hours ...... guess you'd need to grab me on the forums or my blogrum. When I get chance I'll be removing most of my current anti-spam stuff and replacing it with my Irish Captcha as it's pretty good at telling humans from bots without any hoops for the humans to jump through ... the bright side is that my comment form should actually be able to remember visitors names for them after that

¥

External links are a pane

I decided to have a play around with my skins external links code, which uses javascript to add an onclick event to any links with class="ext", and a plugin I've had lying around for a fair smidge which does something similar for all/any external links by looking at the href for the link in question. The end result is a shiny new plugin which will add a graphic to every external link on your blog, clicking the graphic opens the link in a fancy little overlay which I stole from our photozoom plugin. I also threw in a few settings so that you can change the text that's added and add any domains that you class as internal links, although the plugin will auto generate an entry for each unique blog url on your system so you probably won't need to add any.

If you fancy having a play with this then you'll need to download 2 plugins as I've decided to separate the fancy javascript screen stuff into it's own plugin as I'm starting to use it in a couple of plugins and it's easier to have a dependency and maintain one codebase. You can download the external links plugin here ( am_externallinks.zip ) and the javascript helper plugin which it needs here ( am_jshelper.zip ), upload them both, install the js helper plugin and then install the external links plugin. That's pretty much it, now all your external links will have a crap looking arrow graphic which, when clicked, will open your link in a cool overlay. Your links will also have the class amExternalLink added to them so that you can style them as you wish. The arrow <img> tag will also have the same classname applied so you can change the graphic to suit your skin.

As always if you find any bugs or it melts your blog then just let me know

¥

Does your admin look bloated?

A totally minimalistic admin area

NOTE : The chances are that none of this works in IE, so if you use IE you may as well skip the rest of this post ..... or read it and then go get a better browser ... whichever rocks your boat

So, I was playing around with the admin area to see what could be done using js, as it's required for the admin area to function anyway, and css. The main idea was to hide all of the clutter that's not used for the majority of posts, or only used briefly during the whole posting process, whilst also leaving it accessible for the moments that you do need it. When I say "clutter" I pretty much mean everything except the textarea that you type in and the post title. Toolbars - gone, advanced properties - gone, categories - gone, post status - gone, you get the picture

Hovering over the toolbars makes them visible. You can also pin them open by clicking

All of this is done from a plugin which hooks into a couple of the admin events and then unleashes a bit of javascript to play around with classnames and id's and onclick events and stuff. The rest is handled by a simple bit of css ...... so simple in fact that IE can't understand it ...... nothing new there then huh? ..... anyway, the end result is that pretty much everything in admin is collapsed or hidden until you hover over or click stuff. The toolbars will show on hover, or you can click the text to pin them open if you're going to be using them a lot for a particular post.

The whole of the right column is hidden until you need it, which allows for a much bigger posting screen

The whole of the right column is reduced to a lil tab handily marked "OPTIONS". Hovering over the tab brings the right column back so you can play with your categories, visibility and renderers and things. This allows the post textarea et el to be expanded to fill the width of the screen which, for me, makes posting far far easier ...... combine that with Afwas's plugin ( [2.4] Resize Admin Textarea plugin ) and you can pretty much fill your screen with just the post area ...... cool huh?

Finally a thanks to John for his constructive criticism and suggestions about the plugin ..... and for allowing me to scare the shit out of him when most of his admin area disappeared ..... I suppose I should have warned him first

Don't worry, it's all still there

Anyway, if you fancy having a play with this plugin, and you're using a decent browser, then you can download it here ( am_tidyadmin.zip ). If you find any bugs or flaws or stuff ( apart from "it doesn't work in IE", and variations of the same tune ) then just let me know.

¥