Jim Barraud

Announcing the release of Manifest v1.1 for you downloading pleasure. Here’s what’s new:

New Features

• Threaded comments support
• Wordpress photo gallery support
• Comments on pages
• Subpage support (1 level)

Updates

• Integrated footer links into admin
• Improved top navigation wrapping
• Improved site title wrapping
• New comment form layout
• Updated “Next” & “Previous” links
• Updated Archives layout

Get it here

I know it’s been a while, so here’s a brief update on the state of Manifest. I had planned on releasing a substantial update to the theme about a month ago (think Manifest 2), but work and life as usual kept getting in the way. So I’ve decided to forgo the big update for small incremental updates. This way everyone can benefit from the added features as I finish them and not have to wait for substantial releases.

You can expect the first update in the coming weeks. After some tiding up of the code, this update will include features such as threaded comments and support for Wordpresses native photo galleries; along with other minor improvements.

I’d also like to thank everyone who has downloaded Manifest, sent encouraging comments and donated. Since it’s release a little over a year ago, Manifest has been downloaded over 15,600 times. Far exceeding any expectation for a theme I released just so it wouldn’t wither away in my hard drive.

To keep update with the latest on Manifest, be sure to follow @manifest_theme on Twitter.

It’s been two months since I released my first Wordpress theme, Manifest. And in those two months the response has far exceeded my expectations. Since it’s release, Manifest has been listed on various Wordpress theme blogs and used on countless personal blogs. It’s also enjoyed over 1100 downloads. Which still boggles my mind.

I’d like to say Thank You to everyone who’s commented, downloaded and enjoyed Manifest. I really do appreciate the support.

That being said, I’m considering making some updates to Manifest based on how I’ve seen it being used in the wild. While I have my own list, I’d like to hear from you as to what you would like to see (if anything) in an updated version.

One of the key features of my recently released Wordpress theme, Manifest, is that IE6 is unsupported. This hasn’t been an issue with the vast majority of people using the theme, but there have been a couple of comments and emails asking about IE6 support. I figured I’d clear the air on the subject.

I wanted the process of making my first publicly available theme to be fun. I also wanted to use it as opportunity to use some of the CSS3 (and even CSS2) features that I don’t normally get to use. IE6 was a roadblock to both objectives. There’s been some chatter recently in the web design community about when and how IE6 support should be phased out. Some elect for a more progressive approach, while others elect to drop support entirely. For Manifest, I went with the latter.

If you view a Manifest based site in IE6, you’ll be presented with an unstyled (but completely functional) site with polite message at the top informing your users that they should upgrade their browsers to something more current.

Here’s some common questions/comments when it comes IE6 support.

• A large percentage of my users still use IE6 : Manifest may not be the theme for you. The alternative would be to encourage your users to upgrade to a more modern and secure browser.
• Many people work in offices that still run IE6 : Encourage your employer to upgrade to a more secure browser. Using a browser that’s less susceptible to viruses and hacking is good for your employer. Oh, and get back to work! What are you doing browsing the internets on office time?!
• Will support for IE6 be added to Manifest? : No.

It’s not that IE6 support can’t be added. A good percentage of my day is spent getting complex web applications and ecommerce sites working in IE6. But it’s not a very fulfilling portion of my day. I’m not going to go into detail as to why IE6 is the bane of every web developer, there are plenty of other resources available that go into that. Here are a few:

• Bring Down IE6. A newer initiative.
• DearIE6. Send your regards.
• Browse Happy. Switcher stories.
• To Hell With Bad Browsers. Written eight years ago and still relevant.

I’m proud to announce my first publicly available Wordpress theme, Manifest. Manifest is based on a previous design of my personal site. It’s a theme I rather liked and didn’t want to see go to waste. So instead of letting it die off in a folder on my hard drive, I decided to clean it off, polish it up and release it into the wild.

My goal with Manifest was to create a clean and streamlined theme that focused on the content and not the distractions. It utilizes a single column, 500 pixel wide layout. No sidebars. No widgets.

Some highlights:

• Valid XHTML Markup. It currently validates as XHTML Transitional. That is until you start embedding all those crazy YouTube videos and Google Ads ;)
• Microformat support. The posts are marked up using the hAtom microformat. Which an increasing number of search engines (like Yahoo!) are beginning to support and index.
• 404 page. I’ve included the standard Wordpress 404 template, which in addition to a nice “not found” message, it provides your readers with a list of recent articles.
• Archives template. An archives template that supports categories, tags and monthly views.
• Links template. A basic links page template. This isn’t a standard Wordpress template so you’ll need to add it as a new page. But it will pull in any links you add to the Links section in the admin.
• Google ad (sorta) support. There a designated spot on the single post pages for Google or any other type of text ads. Commented out by default, but there if you want it.
• IE6 unsupported. This is a feature, not a bug. If a user attempts to view your site in IE6, they’ll be presented with an unstyled (but perfectly functional) site. Along with a friendly message suggesting they upgrade their browser.
• Some webkit visual candy. It’s minor but hovering over the buttons will provide smooth rollover transitions in Safari 4 and Google Chrome thanks to their new CSS based transition properties.

Feel free to use as you please, I just ask that you keep the Manifest link at the bottom. Thanks and enjoy.

Demo and Download Info

One of the touted new features of Firefox 3 is a more native look within your operating system of choice. I’m a Mac guy, so lets focus there. The new Mac theme is called Firelight. While it is a huge improvement over the Firefox 2 default theme, it still falls short of feeling like a native Mac app. It feels more like a Windows app pretending to be a Mac app. Gray gradients do not in itself make a Mac interface. While well known Apple pundits have given excellent Safari vs. Firefox comparisons, I figured I’d take a slightly different approach.

I’ve been a Safari fan for a while. I love it’s simple interface and think the webkit rendering engine is top-notch. But most of my day-to-day work involves working on web applications that are predominantly internal facing. And the ones I work on usually don’t have official support for Safari (as much as would love it they did). While Safari’s web development debug tools have made great strides, they still don’t compare to Firebug. That being said, my default browser for the past year or so has been Safari. Firefox 2 was just far to buggy to be considered any more than a development browser. Normal browsing and “getting things done” tasks were left to Safari. Firefox 3 on the other hand has made tremendous leaps over Firefox 2. I’ve been using it since beta 2 and while I still run into the occasional bug, I run into them far less often (days to weeks apart as opposed to hours). Now that Firefox 3 is officially released, I’ve made it my default browser (we’ll see how long that last though).

Default Firefox 3 Theme

Now that I’ve made Firefox 3 my default browser, how do I get around the not so native feeling of the Firefox 3 interface? Turns out there’s a wealth of options to paint your brand spanking new Firefox 3 with a coat of Safari. Lets check them out.

• GrApple
  This is the foundation to your Firefox Safarification. GrApple if a Firefox theme by Aronnax that pretty much mimics Safari in any way possible. You have two flavors to choose from, Yummy or Delicious. The difference between the two are the placement of the tabs in the tab bar. If your going for authentic Safari, you want Yummy.
• Fission
  One of the nicest safari features is the integrated loading bar into the address bar. Fission is a plugin that adds this useful feature to Firefox. You have the options of changing the color of the loading bar or adding a custom image, but the GrApple theme takes this into account adds that for you.
• Stop or Reload Button
  The stop and reload buttons are combined into one button in Safari. This cleans up and simplifies the toolbar a bit (or adds room for even more buttons depending on your taste). Use the Stop-or-Reload Button extension to combine these buttons in Firefox.
• firefox-mac-pdf
  One of my favorite Safari features is the built in PDF viewing support. The day I don’t need to load up the Adobe Acrobat Plug-in is a good day. The firefox-mac-pdf extension adds this same built in PDF viewing support to Firefox.
• Tab to Window
  Sometimes you need to pop out a tab into a new window. This often happens to me when I’m referencing content in one tab to fill out a form in another. Surprisingly this isn’t a built-in feature, but here’s an extension to fix that. Safari makes this easy in that you can just drag a tab off the tab bar and it’ll turn into a new browser window. This solution relies on good old contextual menus. Not as fancy, but it’s functional.
• Color Management
  Safari has great color management support since it reads the color profiles that can be embedded into images. Browsing a site like flickr is different experience in Safari then in any other browser because the colors are displayed “correctly”. Firefox actually has built in color management, but it’s not enabled by default due to performance issues and other small regressions. But the Color Management extension will enable this feature for you if you want to try it out. And I say try it out because I personally don’t recommend using it full-time since I did experience some noticeable performance issues when I had it enabled. The other issue is you need to define your system default color profile and no matter what I did I couldn’t get the colors in the browser to be correct. All colors in the browser, including the toolbar, were dark and over saturated. I’m not an expert on color profiles, so maybe I’m missing something. But the color and performance issues didn’t seem worth having this feature enabled. Which of course is probably why it’s off by default. I only list here as another weapon in your Safarification arsenal. Use it with caution.

Firefox with GrApple Theme and Stop/Reload plugin

Now these add-ons will get you most of the way there. But there will still be things you come across in your day-to-day Firefox use that reminds you of Firefox’s non-native Mac roots.

• There is no integration with the operating system wide keychain for password storage. I’m fully aware of Firefox’s password saving capability (and I use it), but this is functionality that should really be utilizing the system wide keychain. It gets real annoying when passwords are saved in multiple locations and there’s no way to keep them synced. This is probably my biggest Firefox pet peeve.
• Contextual menus have squared off edges and not round. It’s a little thing, but it gives you that “something’s not right” feeling.
• The form controls are not native. They’ve done a lot of work in trying to make them look native, but they still feel a bit off.
• There’s no support for the system wide dictionary. Command+Control+D has to be one of the most under used OS X keyboard shortcuts. I use it constantly, but whenever I mention it or someone sees me use it, they ask “what’s that?”

I know there will be the usual “Just use Camino” comments. I’ve used Camino and I think it’s a great browser. But I rely on Firefox’s web development extensions too much to even consider it.

If anyone has any solutions for the above issues, drop me a comment. I’d love to hear them.