wejustblog

WordPress.com users now have the option to turn on falling snow on their blogs, after Matt Mullenweg asked for a falling snow script two days ago. Since it is only for WordPress.com users and not for self-hosted WordPress blogs, I whipped up a plugin that does the same. All you need to do is upload the plugin folder to your plugin directory and activate to see falling snow on your blog.

Wordpress.com users will have the snow until 2nd January but with this you can leave it on for as long as you like, though it does not make much sense to leave it on for too long.

Download at: WordPress Plugins Directory
Plugin version: 1.2
Required WordPress version: Should work with all.
License: Released under the terms of the GNU GPL: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt

Installation & Config

To install, upload the folder “let-it-snow” with its contents to “wp-content/plugins/” and activate the plugin in your admin panel. That’s it!
The snowfall is configurable by editing snowstorm.js. More information at original DHTML Snowstorm page.

Support

If it does not work for you. Check that your theme has the wp_head() function call in header.php. If it does not, add <? wp_head(); ?> just before the closing </head> tag.
If the snow is going under or covered by stuff on your page, you need to open up snowstorm.js and change this.o.style.zIndex = 2; at line 192 to something like this.o.style.zIndex = 999;. (Thanks to Torben)
If you have questions or need help, leave a comment here.

Credits

This falling snow script used in this plugin is by Scott Schiller.
continued…

Made with Comiqs

Having been away on military duties the past fortnight, coming back to find the Widgeo.us blog launched and Aen’s opening posts is an awesome surprise!

There are many people who have been asking me what this Widgeous thing is about. Some ask me why I do it. Some ask me what it hopes to achieve. If I actually wrote everything out, I think I’d be able to publish a book. So let’s start slowly yeah? I’ll spend this post introducing myself and a tad about Widgeous before we head on towards heavier stuff. Besides, it’s Christmas!

I’m Ridz and like Aen said, I’m the one that’s metaphorically the guy in the suit (Though I hope I won’t have to wear one too often). I’ve spent much of my time trying to create projects that add value to some small pockets of society. I was born in a hospital called “Kandang Kerbau” (translation: Cow Pen) after which I spent the next 20 years growing up learning how to be a true blue Singaporean. In the Widgeous team, I’m handling most of the business development concerns alongside the rest who are focusing on the technical development and design issues. I’m really proud to have such an awesome team with me on this one.

Why Widgeous?

All of us know how important communication is to building healthy relationships. Yet, increasingly, despite the availability of many forms of communication, each channel is rather isolated. This causes things to become rather complicated when we try to contact another person, or a group of them because we’d have to contend with the question of, “How should we communicate with them? Which channel should be best used?”

Humans are social creatures who were born to communicate and because of that I only have one thing to say about the above situation, “Communication should NOT be that complicated.”

And this is where Widgeous comes in. We want to empower people with a platform that allows communication to take place across communication channels (phones, social networks, etc). Beyond that, we’ll also empower users to create and share tools that will harness the platform’s ability.

The philosophy is simple:
You should be able to communicate with your friends easily.
And you should be able to have access to applications that will make that communication effective.
…and if the applications aren’t there yet, we’ll give you tools to build em.

All that said, I’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a superb

Merry Christmas!

Regua has just released a new version of his Ajax Comments Posting WordPress plugin. The latest version 1.2 release on 21 December, 2007 fixes a bug where WordPress 2.3.1 server-response errors are not posted and also resolves jQuery’s conflict with Prototype. The changelog can be found at http://regua.biz/acp/.

I am actually the one who got the plugin working for WP 2.3.1. The plugin was originally only meant for older versions of WordPress. When I used it for this blog, I did not realize the incompatibilities until everything was in place and response errors like duplicate comments were not fetched. I spent quite a few hours customizing the plugin before that so going for a different plugin and wasting that few hours wasn’t a good idea. After some Googling and looking at the source codes of other jQuery-based commenting scripts I managed to get it to work with WP 2.3.1 and resolved the conflict with Prototype.

As I am not that good with Javascript, Regua has optimized the code and released the plugin as a new version. You can grab it from the WordPress plugin directory. I highly recommend it. Post a comment on this blog to see a demo.

They were actually printed 2 months ago but I reckoned I’d show them here since we now have an official blog.

The logotype is set in a modified version of the well-known Sans Serif typeface — Helvetica™ Neue Std Medium ITC Franklin Gothic®, for a casual, relaxed appearance. The idea behind this business card design is to pack as much relevant (only relevant) information as possible into a compact card without clutter. I was able to do it by separating the various elements (logo, particulars, description, etc) into boxes and applying some clever typography principles. Colors are meant to be fresh and free from corporate cliché.

Readers, both imaginary and non-existent. I am excited to be the first to write on this blog. No, actually the others are all too busy with their work and I had just finish mine — designing and coding the theme for this blog. I have even bought a WordPress Navy Blue Hoodie to reward myself for the time I have spent with WordPress for the past one week.

I think it’s a nice and good-looking thing to wear since it’s getting cold here and I get to show people how much I love WordPress. Another thing about WordPress that gives me a good feeling is how each release is named after a famous jazz musician. I believe developers who love music and jazz are able to build genuinely good products with a passion like the kind they have for music. I have been using WordPress since version 1 and prior to that, b2\cafelog, its precursor.

For a quick introduction, I am Aen, the Art Director and UI Designer of Widgeo.us. Being the creative guy and a WordPress junkie, I designed the blog and made myself its blogmaster and now this blog is like my flesh and blood.

What is Widgeo.us? In a nutshell, it is a tool we are building to allow people to build tools which unify multiple communication channels into one central core. I know this description sounds rather vague and geeky and you can barely picture the actual product in your mind. If you want to know more, this blog is where you should be checking for news and updates. Subscribing to our RSS Feed is a good idea. You can also hop on to Widgeo.us and sign up our newsletter for a chance to become a beta tester.

This is my short introduction of the Widgeo.us blog. As for other stuff like development updates and Widgeo.us related news, I’ll leave it to U-Zyn and Kah Wee, the programmer guys and Ridzuan, our man in the suit, metaphorically speaking… I have never seen him wear one.

Updates

[Dec 21, 2007] We are on Web Creme!
[Dec 23, 2007] We are featured on W3C Sites as “Editor’s Pick”
[Dec 26, 2007] Featured on CSS Mania
[Others] CSS Designed Gallery, CSS Mess, Most Inspired, Link Creme, Ultimate CSS Gallery, Ala Brasil, Web Doctrine, My3W CSS Genius, The Daily Slurp, CSS Vault