Archive for the 'Plug-ins' Category

Poor Programming Proliferation

It seems, reading the news, that nuclear proliferation will be the end of the world. For a WordPress developer, on the other hand, poor plugin programming seems likely be the end of the world. I rarely take shots at other people online (it seems rather trollish to me), but the sheer horror of Fire Studio’s Wordpress Plugin Templates compel me to say something.
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µAudio 0.7 Preview

With several major features now in µAudio 0.7, I wanted to preview what’s coming up.

1) Static JavaScript. Instead of using the *.js.php which I have been using, javascript templates are being parsed by a small JS templating engine and stored as static files. This should significantly cut down on the amount of time spent processing php. Each file is stored as filename-hashcode.js.

2) Bootstrapper. People have told me a) They don’t think it’s fair to count the size without jQuery (it probably isn’t) and b) They don’t want to load jQuery on every pageload. To that end, the default install will now include a tiny bootstrapper (hopefully under 200 Bytes) that doesn’t load the player until and unless someone actually wants to use them.

3) Single audio player. For legacy browsers, there will only be one player, the awesome Sound Manager 2 player. User interface will be provided via jQuery based controls. Using a single “invisible” player allows a consistent JavaScript interface for all the players, and, should help to

4) <audio> tag based player. This will probably be beta only in 0.7, but I want to move towards using the native browser implementation instead of flash. Using a javascript interface and sound manager means it should be a seamless user experience, and the only difference is whether the JavaScript is calling the sound manager js or the <audio> tag.

I’ll be at WordCamp in San Francisco this weekend, anyone who wants to bend my ear about a feature can do so. Twitter at jwriteclub to get together.

µAudio 0.6.2 Released

Due to one annoying bug that just missed the 0.6.1 release AND some missing documentation, I decided to push out another update.

As always, head over the the µAudio page at Wordpress.org or grab a copy from my µAudio page.

µAudio 0.6.1 Released

A minor bug fix release for µAudio is out today. Properly validates at W3C now and fixes a couple little bugs in the css parser.

Head over the the µAudio page at Wordpress.org or grab a copy from my µAudio page.

Those of you waiting for the 0.7 release with the new sidebar widget shouldn’t have too much longer to wait. It’s coming with some major changes to how µAudio handles javascript. There will probably be a 0.6.2 release in the next week or so to fix any lingering bugs with the current implementation, and then 0.7 will have the new code.