op111.net

WordPress 2.7: Ten useful new features

demetris — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 12:16:15 +0000

The first public beta of WordPress 2.7 was released on 1 November 2008. This new version of WordPress comes with an extensive UI rearrangement in the administration area and with many new features. Some elements of the UI rearrangement will probably not please everyone, but most of the new features seem to be unequivocally useful. Almost all were already possible in WordPress, supplied by several good plugins. Now they are incorporated.

I have been using WP 2.7 since September 2008. There are several new features I like a lot in it, and several more that are obviously useful additions even if not needed for every installation or use of WordPress. This is a list of ten such features.

op111.net has been running on the development version of WP 2.7 since 28 October 2008, with ~~no problems so far (2008-11-03)~~ one accident so far (2008-11-04). Of the 30 installed plugins, all but two work fine. If you want to know details, post a comment to ask! :-) — If you do, don’t forget to get the RSS feed for the comments. Alternatively, you can subscribe for e-mail notifications.

THREE NOTES

Major functionality is not expected to change until the final release, but issues are fixed daily and details change.
The icon set will be different in the final version.
The final version is expected by the end of November 2008.

The ten features

1. Mass-edit posts and pages

Mass editing —or “batch editing” or “bulk editing”— of posts and pages is one of the best new features in WP 2.7, and very easy to use.

Select multiple posts or pages, edit them, save your edits:

Click Posts › Edit, or Pages › Edit
Check the boxes of the posts/pages you want to edit
Select Edit from Actions, then click Apply
Mass-edit
Click Save!

2. Modular edit/write pages

Thanks to:

the new “Screen Options” (see below, no. 8) and
the modularization/widgetization of metaboxes (boxes for medatada like tags, categories, author etc.)

… you can now have Write/Edit pages exactly how you want them, with only the elements you need, in the exact positions you prefer them.

On the first screenshot I’m moving around the metabox “Publish”.

The second screenshot shows a customized “Add New Post” page with only two metaboxes: Publish and Categories.

The boxes of the two plugins —HeadSpace2 and MiniPosts2— don’t count here: Both HeadSpace2 and MiniPosts2 work fine in WP 2.7, but you can’t hide their metaboxes or move them around, since they have not been updated yet for the new functionality.

3. Paginated comments

NOTE. If supported by theme!

Pagination of comments is especially useful in sites with many comments. With it you can show only a certain number of comments on each page, instead of serving tens or hundreds of comments (and sending tens or hundreds of HTTP requests to Gravatar servers) for every visitor who comes to have a quick look or to do a quick search for something.

Splitting comments into multiple pages was already possible in WordPress, with a plugin. In version 2.7 it is built into the core. You’ll find it in Settings › Discussion:

I think the default settings are sensible, and what most people would select. (Maybe the number (50) is a little too high for a default value…)

4. Quick Edit (Inline Edit)

Now you can edit any post or page in Posts › Edit, and Pages › Edit, without having to load individual edit pages. Except for the body and the excerpt, almost everything else can be edited.

Go to Posts › Edit, or Pages › Edit, click Quick Edit:

… then start editing:

… then save!

Quick Edit was based on the plugin Manageable by Aaron Harp.

5. QuickPress

Post directly from the dashboard. This is a great addition — except for one omission. See:

No categories!

QuickPress will probably prove even more useful as a quick sketchbook: A tool to put your thoughts, ideas, photographs etc. into drafts with as few clicks as possible. (For this particular use, the omission of categories is not a grave issue.)

6. Recent drafts in Dashboard

The new Dashboard won’t let you forget about your recent drafts, and it will keep reminding you to finish them. :-)

If you don’t use drafts, you can simply hide the module from display (see feature no. 8).

Next comes what is probably the best of the set…

7. Reply to comments from the administration area

Reply to comments from the admin panel. Not much to explain here — see screenshot:

8. Show/Hide modules and columns (“Screen Options”)

When you click on Screen Options, a panel drops down with options to show/hide individual modules (or, in pages with tabular data, columns). Combined with the ability to rearrange modules (feature no. 2), this will allow you to have in any administration page exactly what you need exactly where you want it.

9. Sticky posts

Tick a check box before you publish a post —or after you publish it— and the post will stick to the front page! As simple as that!

This feature has no options or settings and the implementation is elementary at present. For instance, you can’t make a sticky post stickier :-) than another: for two or more stickies, the top place is always taken by the oldest, and there is no way to change that.

I imagine such details will be of little practical relevance to most WordPress users (they are to me). “Sticky posts” is a very useful addition.

10. Threaded comments

NOTE. If supported by theme!

Threaded comments make discussions easier to follow by threading together and nesting replies, replies to replies, and so forth. Threading was already possible in WordPress, with a plugin. Now it is built in. You’ll find it in Settings › Discussion, above the settings for comments pagination. Both features are off by default:

11. Widgetomodularized Dashboard

Last, not exactly a new feature but a screenshot of the new Dashboard with all its new features and additions, from a fresh installation of WordPress 2.7 Beta 1, in Firefox for Linux:

The styling of the admin area is not finished yet (WP 2.7 Beta 1, 2008-11-01). The strange size differences between serif and sans-serif fonts are because of this — not a fault of Firefox for Linux :-p or of the fonts it uses here (Liberation Sans and Liberation Serif).

Notes

I know it’s not a verb!

tumblr log-in screen

demetris — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 06:45:00 +0000

tumblr log-in screen.

I love it!

:-)

WordPress: 20 answers

demetris — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 12:54:59 +0000

… to 20 questions, in alphabetical order.

How do I…

Add a category link to the navigation bar?
Add a favicon to my site?
Add a Home link to the navigation bar?
Add CSS or JavaScript to individual pages/posts?
Back up my WordPress data?
Change default category?
Change fonts/colours/layout in my theme?
Delay the delivery of my feeds…
Disable the visual editor? (WYSIWYG)
Exclude a page from the navigation bar?
Find good WordPress themes?
Make a post stick to the front page? (Sticky)
Make links open in a new window?
Make my WordPress site faster?
Optimize my site for search engines? (SEO)
Show more/fewer posts in archives/searches etc.?
Stay updated of simple solutions for WordPress?
Tag pages and have pages appear in tag results?
Use “asides” or “miniposts” in my blog?
Use PHP code in my posts and pages?

1. How do I add a category link to the navigation bar?

Top

Install and activate Page Links to
Make a new page with the title you want to appear on the menu. (The page does not need to have content, and its permalink doesn’t matter.)
Scroll down and enter the URL for the category you want to link to —e.g., http://example.net/category/food/— in the “Point to this URL” box
Scroll up and click Save

2. How do I add a favicon to my site?

Top

What is a favicon? — The tiny website icon/logo displayed in the location bar, bookmarks, and tabs of modern browsers.

Make a 16×16 icon.
Convert it to the ICO format:
- Dynamic Drive- FavIcon Generator — free good online generator/converter
- GIMP — free, open-source image editor for all platforms
- IrfanView — free image viewer and converter for Windows
Make sure it is named favicon.ico
Upload it to the home directory of your site. E.g.: http://op111.net/favicon.ico
Install and activate Extended Options
Go to Dashboard, Settings, Extended, Favicon Meta Links
Select “Favicon in root directory”
Scroll down and click Save Changes

3. How do I add a Home link to the navigation bar?

Top

Add any link to your WordPress navigation menu with Page Links To

4. How do I add CSS or JavaScript to individual pages/posts?

Top

Install and activate HeadSpace2
Go to Dashboard, Settings, Headspace, Page Modules
Enable the module you need, JavaScript or Stylesheets, if it is not enabled (by default both are, under Advanced)
Go to any page or post
Scroll down to: HeadSpace Meta data
Click “advanced” to reveal advanced modules
Link your stylesheet or JavaScript file
Scroll up again and click Save

Alternatively, you can enter CSS or JavaScript as “Raw data” — this module is not enabled by default:

5. How do I back up my WordPress data?

Top

Many hosts do this automatically. To do it yourself, you need to know where your data are.

A. Database. — The database stores all text —posts, pages, comments, tags, etc.— and all settings of plugins and of WordPress itself. There are many ways to back up a database, and there is also a convenient plugin: WordPress Database Backup. After installing it, you can make copies of your database on demand, and/or set it to send copies to an e-mail address at regular intervals.

B. wp-content/uploads. — This directory has all files you upload. If your host has cPanel, you can use this to make copies. You can also use an FTP client: connect to your FTP account, navigate to the directory wp-content, and download the directory uploads to your computer.

WordPress Database Backup
Cyberduck — an open-source FTP client for Mac OS X
FileZilla — an open-source FTP client for Windows and Linux
FireFTP — a cross-platform FTP client for Firefox

I connected to my FTP account with FireFTP, and navigated to the directory wp-content. I’m about to download the directory uploads. It has all images I upload, and also thumbnails generated automatically by WordPress.

6. How do I change default category?

Top

Make a category to use as default (I use “Misc”)
Go to Dashboard, Settings, Writing, Default Post Category
Select your default category
Scroll down and click Save Changes

7. How do I change fonts/colours/layout in my theme?

Top

If your theme doesn’t have options (few do), make a “child theme” and add your changes to it. It’s easy!

How to make a “child theme“ for WordPress. A pictorial introduction for beginners

8. How do I delay the delivery of my feeds…

Top

… so that I don’t get embarrassed by stupid mistakes that I catch right after I click Publish?

Feed Pauser

Feed Pauser is a young plugin, still in beta, but I’m keeping an eye on it. :-)

9. How do I disable the visual editor? (WYSIWYG)

Top

That’s easy but sometimes you miss it. :-) In your profile, unselect “Use the visual editor when writing”:

10. How do I exclude a page from the navigation bar?

Top

Install and activate “Exclude Pages”. It will add an option to not include individual pages in the nagivation bar and in other user menus, like the Pages widget.

Exclude Pages

11. How do I find good WordPress themes?

Top

I can suggest eight:

12. How do I make a post stick to the front page? (Sticky)

Top

Is this urgent? If you can wait, it will be part of WordPress 2.7, scheduled for November 2008:

13. How do I make links open in a new window?

Top

I believe visitors can do that for themselves, if they want. :-)

14. How do I make my WordPress site faster?

Top

Remove plugins you don’t use or need.
Compress your images: smush it!
Compress everything! This is done server-side, but at least you can check with your host or see for yourself whether your server uses compression: YSlow
Use WP Super Cache — a plugin that caches the dynamic PHP output of WordPress to static HTML pages, which are served much faster.
Move to a faster server.

More can be done to accelerate a site, but most of it is the business of the server administrator (and, in the case of WordPress, of WordPress developers and plugin developers). If you think your site is too slow, run YSlow to check. Its reports are always interesting. Here’s is what I found recently by running YSlow on a WordPress site that is always very slow when I visit it with empty cache. (I removed the site’s address.)

A long list of JavaScript files served uncompressed… The largest is Prototype, the JavaScript framework. Let’s see what would be the gain of compressing and minifying prototype.js:

Minification is the process of removing bits essential to humans but unneeded for execution, such as comments, white space, and line breaks.

prototype.js                        124 kB
prototype.js minified                72 kB
prototype.js gzipped                 28 kB
prototype.js gzipped & minified      21 kB

That’s right! The numbers are not fictitious! Since prototype.js is a large file, the gain in absolute size is impressive. But even for smaller files, numbers add up and the difference is felt by new visitors (whose browsers don’t have the files cached), even on fast connections.

15. How do I optimize my site for search engines? (SEO)

Top

Optimize it for humans, and it will be optimal for engines too:

Publish good material.
Publish good material well! Standards for online content authors
Link to good material.

OK, maybe that’s not the complete truth, :-) but it’s the truest you can get in a short answer. To quote Michael Torbert, maintainer of “All in One SEO Pack”, the most popular WordPress plugin currently:

The biggest thing, of course, for SEO [...] is content. That will never change and it’s become increasingly, more and more important [...] as the search engines get better and better determining what is on your page and parsing through all that data. So, having good content is the key.

Michael Torbert, AKA hallsofmontezuma, in: “All In One SEO To Go”, 11 October 2008. Podcast. “WordPress Weekly episode 24”. 32:15–32:36. weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2008/10/11/all-in-one-seo-to-go — Also interesting reading, from the original author of All in One SEO Pack: Modern Day SEO - What Really Counts

All that said, search engines can always use a little help to index a website better. There are two very popular WordPress plugins people use for this.

“Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress” is a must-have. It automates the generation of an XML sitemap, a document recommended by the search companies themselves.

An XML sitemap tells web crawlers (also known as “spiders”, “robots” or just “bots”) where to find the content to be indexed. So, everything is indexed, even pages with no links, internal or external, pointing to them. An XML sitemap helps crawlers in other ways too. For instance, when a crawler sees the same content repeated in the home page and in the permalink of an individual post, it does not have to work too hard to decide which to give more weight to: it just looks at the XML sitemap, and learns that the main and permanent location is the permalink.

XML sitemaps and sitemap pages in websites are DIFFERENT things. The former are unstyled XML documents meant for web crawlers. The latter provide an index, an overview of the site’s content, for human visitors.

“All in One SEO Pack”, the other very popular SEO plugin, does various kinds of optimization. One is similar in purpose to XML sitemaps: It adds noindex tags (“do not index this”) to pages that duplicate content (category pages, tag pages, etc.), so that crawlers can work better.

It can also rewrite page titles, add meta descriptions, and more — see its page for details.

As far as I understand (not very far), the benefit of such optimizations is difficult to measure (the variables are too many), but, in any case, “All in One SEO Pack” can do no harm.

Both plugins work fine in their default settings. Just install and activate.

16. How do I show more/fewer posts in archives/searches etc.?

Top

Install and activate HeadSpace2
Go to Dashboard, Settings, Headspace, Site Modules
Click the Edit icon next to “Page Counts” and enter your values
Tick the box to activate the module

17. How do I stay updated of simple solutions for WordPress?

Top

May I suggest:

18. How do I tag pages and have pages appear in tag results?

Top

Install and activate HeadSpace2
Go to Dashboard, Settings, Headspace, Page Modules
Make sure the Tags module is enabled
Tick “Pages appear in tag archives”

19. How do I use “asides” or “miniposts” in my blog?

Top

Add the feature yourself: http://codex.wordpress.org/Adding_Asides
Use a theme that has it: Tarski and K2 are two.
Use a plugin:
- MiniPosts2 — Used in op111.net.
- AsideShop — Haven’t tried it but seems good.

What are “asides”? — Short posts displayed differently than the rest.

20. How do I use PHP code in my posts and pages?

Top

Exec-PHP — executes PHP code in your posts, pages, and text widgets

A few tips that may save you trouble or troubleshooting when using Exec-PHP (all from the detailed documentation):

In your profile, disable the visual editor
In Dashboard, Settings, Writing, unselect “WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically”
By default only code by the admin is executed — but see no. 4:
Read the Security Information in Dashboard, Settings, Exec-PHP

Notes

My thanks to Philip for his help.

And my thanks to you for visiting op111.net! — For any suggestions, corrections, questions etc., feel free to post a comment. You are most welcome.

Two abstract translucent wallpapers for Linux

demetris — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 06:01:59 +0000

The two wallpapers I like most on Linux. Both are translucent and can be set to any colour. The first is SVG, the second PNG.

“Tentacles” was part of gnome-backgrounds for quite some time. It was removed in GNOME 2.24.

I have never used translucent backgrounds in Windows or OS X, and have no idea if or how it is possible. If you know, please leave a comment.

Tentacles

By: Lapo Calamandrei and Andreas Nilsson
Download: ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gnome-backgrounds/2.22

Tentacles in its default green (#366b04). Sometimes I try other colours, but I always return to the default.

Tentacles in “Plum” (#5c3566, Tango Palette).

Panels Transparent

By: Kijun Moon
Download: art.gnome.org/backgrounds/abstract/1536

Panels Trasparent in “Aluminium” (#888a85, Tango Palette).

Panels Trasparent in “Chameleon” (#4e9a06, Tango Palette).

An easy style-switcher for WordPress. How-to

demetris — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 17:20:45 +0000

UPDATED 2008-10-31

Style switchers in web sites can serve various purposes:

Accessibility
Flexibility in general
User choice
Fun

I wanted to add one to op111.net for all of the above reasons. After looking at various solutions for WordPress, I decided to use a theme switcher instead. This one:

wordpress.org/extend/plugins/theme-switcher-reloaded

You can try it here at op111.net (below the RSS links), to see if you like the way it works. If you do, keep reading! :-)

In Internet Explorer 6 you’ll only see different colours, not widths. To be fixed. Sorry!

Theme Switcher Reloaded in action: I just switched to the wide style of op111.net. The string with the theme name in it will be removed on the next page change. It is appended for XHTML and CSS validation.

CONTENTS

Why this solution, Compatibility notes
Making an alternative theme/style
Setting up Theme Switcher Reloaded: 2 methods
Notes
Links

1. Why this solution, Compatibility notes

Normally, theme switchers are used in theme directories or by theme designers, to showcase themes. So, why do I use one as a style switcher? Because I found that overall, compared to the alternatives I looked at, I liked Theme Switcher Reloaded better:

1.1. Why Theme Switcher Reloaded

It is easy to set up.
It works well.
It works fast.
It works from any page without redirecting to the home page.
It allows to check styles/themes for valid XHTML and CSS.
It comes with a widget. (Alternatively, text or image links can be used.)
It offers possibilities not available in a style switcher.

I want to thank Josh Wood of Utopian.net and Themebot of Themebot for answering my questions about the performance of Style Switcher Reloaded. This could be a concern in some cases, e.g. traffic surges, or sites on budget hosting, but the switcher does not seem to be heavy on the server.

1.2. Compatibility of Theme Switcher Reloaded

Theme Switcher Reloaded 1.0:

Works well with WordPress 2.6 and 2.7. [INFO UPDATED 2008-10-31]
Does NOT work well with WP Super Cache. To explain. Both plugins work exactly as they should, which is where the problem lies: Theme Switcher Reloaded switches the theme, but WP Super Cache keeps serving cached content, so the change only becomes visible after the next cache refresh.

2. Making an alternative theme/style

Style switchers switch stylesheets. Here, however, since a theme switcher is used, you will have to make alternative themes.

This is very easy. Thanks to WordPress “child themes”, making alternative themes is essentially the same as making alternative stylesheets: In its elementary form, a child theme is just one directory with just one stylesheet in it. See this introduction and how-to:

How to make a child theme for WordPress

An advantage of using child themes for the alternative styles is that you only have to add rules for the difference, which makes for small, clean files, easy to manage. For example, the dark style of op111.net is essentially one stylesheet with only chromatic rules in it, to override the colours of the default theme and define a dark background and light text in their place.

So, for instance, while the default theme/style has this rule for the HTML body:

body {
    background-color: #fff;
    color: #111;
    font-family: candara, "liberation sans", verdana,
        "lucida grande", helvetica, sans-serif;
    font-size:  87.50%;
    margin: 1.0em auto 0.5em;
    max-width: 66.0em;
    padding: 0 1.0em;
    }

… in the dark style the rule for the body is just two declarations:

body {
    background-color: #272727;
    color: #dfdfdf;
    }

3. Setting up Theme Switcher Reloaded: 2 methods

Unless you are a good designer, the difficult part in this enterprise is making good alternative styles. Setting up Theme Switcher Reloaded is just clicks and copy/paste.

First, download and install the plugin:

wordpress.org/extend/plugins/theme-switcher-reloaded

… and then pick one of two ways to display the style options…

3.a. Included widget

Go to Design, Widgets, and add the “Theme Switcher” widget to the sidebar. You can customize its title, if you want, and also choose between a list and a drop-down menu for the style options.

The second option of the second pair (“short name (faster loading)”) does not support child themes, but, in any case, this is useful for large collections of themes. (With 5 or 10 themes installed I did not felt any difference.)

The one problem of the widget in this implementation is that you cannot select themes to display; each and every theme you have installed is made available to switch to:

Oops!

The quick ’n’ dirty solution is to delete every theme but the ones you want to display. If I did this, I would keep a couple of themes in an auxiliary directory nearby, to be able to do a quick cut/paste in case of emergency.

3.b. Text or image links

The alternative method is to use text or image links. In this method you select just the styles you want. The links will have this form:

Blah

The URI of the href attribute is the most important part, and the name of the theme must be entered exactly as it is, case-sensitively.

To return to the example of Arietta and Arietta/dark, make two links:

Default
| Dark

… then go to Design, Widgets, add a “Text” widget to the sidebar, paste the links and click Save Changes:

For more styles, more links can be added:

… which appears like this:

4. Notes

4.1. Cookie duration

Style Switcher Reloaded stores the style preference of each visitor in a cookie, which has a life of 1000 hours, that is, 42 days. This is enough for a themes directory but maybe too short for other sites. To change the cookie duration, find this line in theme-changer-reloaded.php:

$expire = time() + 3600*1000; // cookie set to expire in 1 hour

The comment must be a left-over. (The time() function works with seconds, not milliseconds.)

… and change the value. For 1 year, use 60*60*24*365 or 31536000:

$expire = time() + 31536000; // Cookie set to expire in 1 year.

4.2. Suggestions, Ideas, Questions

Have any ideas, suggestions, questions, corrections, or objections? You are most welcome to leave a comment!

Thanks for reading and happy style-switching!

5. Links

THEME SWITCHER RELOADED

Home: themebot.com/webmaster-tools/wordpress/wordpress-plugins
wordpress.org: wordpress.org/extend/plugins/theme-switcher-reloaded

OTHER

www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/06/05/style-switchers-are-back-ideas-examples-and-a-contest: “Style Switchers Are Back: Ideas, Examples and a Contest”. Lots of ideas and examples for possible implementations of style switchers. — Results of the contest: www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/06/25/style-switchers-contest-results

Changelog

2008-10-31: Added compatibility note for TSR and WP 2.7 (works!).; Removed child themes example (unnecessary repetition of op111.net/p53).

Add meaningful tooltips to your WordPress menu links with Page Menu Editor

demetris — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 05:12:26 +0000

By default, WordPress takes the title we give to a page and uses it in four different places:

The problem

In the title element of the (X)HTML head.
In the menu link as the link text.
In the menu link as the title attribute. (The title attribute is generally recommended for usability and accessibility. In graphical browsers, it is usually displayed as a tooltip when the link is hovered over.)
As the heading of the page content.

This, re-using the anchor text as the title attribute:

is not useful in general;
is not helpful for accessibility;
is not user-friendly;
may not be search-engine-friendly either.

Currently (in version 2.6 of WordPress) it is not possible to enter manually a title attribute for page links.

The solution

“Page Menu Editor”, a new plugin by SarahG, offers exactly this option:

Home: www.stuffbysarah.net/blog/wordpress-plugins/page-menu-editor
wordpress.org: wordpress.org/extend/plugins/page-menu-editor

After installing Page Menu Editor, two new boxes appear when a page is created or edited. The second is for the title attribute of the link.

Here I’ve just entered a title for the link “Sitemap”:

The result:

The other box —“Page Menu Label (optional)”— is for changing the link text. This can be useful if, for instance, you want to use a short title in the menu link (e.g., “About”) but a more expressive heading within the page (e.g., “About this site”).

Thanks for reading!

Links

HOME PAGE OF PAGE MENU EDITOR

Page Menu Editor

20 καλά δωρεάν προγράμματα για Windows

demetris — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 14:28:39 +0000

ΕΝΗΜΕΡΩΣΗ 2008-10-24

Είκοσι ποιοτικά δωρεάν προγράμματα, με επιμέλεια διαλεγμένα, που καλύπτουν τις περισσότερες κοινές χρήσεις ενός υπολογιστή Windows. Εκτός από δωρεάν, τα περισσότερα είναι και ανοιχτού κώδικα.

Αν τα μετρήσετε, βγαίνουν δεκαεννέα. Δεν έγινε λάθος — απλά είναι δύσκολη η επιλογή του εικοστού.

ΤΑ 20 ΠΡΟΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΑ ΜΑΖΕΜΕΝΑ

7-Zip, ClipX, Firefox, Google Desktop, ImgBurn, IrfanView, KeePass Password Safe, Mp3tag, Notepad++, OpenOffice.org, Paint.NET, PDFCreator, Picasa, Pidgin, SIW (System Information for Windows), SumatraPDF, Thunderbird, VLC media player, WordWeb

Τα 20 προγράμματα ένα-ένα

7-Zip

Συμπίεση & αποσυμπίεση αρχείων

Ανοίγει κάθε τύπο αρχειοθήκης [archive] που είναι πιθανό να συναντήσετε: 7Z, BZIP2, CΗΜ, DEB, GZIP, ISO, RAR, TAR, ZIP κ.π.ά. — Επίσης, φτιάχνει 7Z, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR και βέβαια ZIP.

Εξελληνισμένο: ΝΑΙ. Έκδ.: 4.60 beta

Σελίδα: http://7-zip.org/

ClipX

Επέκταση και διαχείριση προχείρου (clipboard)

Οι επεκτάσεις/διαχειριστές προχείρου αποθηκεύουν κάθε τι που αντιγράφουμε (Copy) ή κόβουμε (Cut), ώστε να έχουμε τη δυνατότητα να το χρησιμοποιήσουμε αργότερα, ακόμα κι αν κάναμε άλλη αντιγραφή/αποκοπή στο μεταξύ. Απ’ όσα έχω δοκιμάσει, το ClipX χειρίζεται πολύ καλά τα ελληνικά και, γενικά, κείμενο Unicode.

Εξελληνισμένο: OΧΙ. Έκδ.: 1.39

Σελίδα: http://bluemars.org/clipx/

Firefox

Πλοήγηση στο διαδίκτυο

Πλοηγός με μοναδική ευχρηστία και επεκτασιμότητα. (Οι «επεκτάσεις» του Firefox είναι μικροεφαρμογές που επεκτείνουν τη βασική λειτουργικότητα του προγράμματος και καλύπτουν ό,τι μπορεί να φανταστεί κανείς, από πρόγνωση καιρού (βλ. Forecastfox) μέχρι λειτουργικότητα FTP (βλ. FireFTP). Οι δημοφιλέστερες: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/browse/type:1/cat:all?sort=popular)

Εξελληνισμένο: ΝΑΙ. Έκδ.: 3.1

Σελίδα: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all.html (Διαλέξτε τη γλώσσα που θέλετε.)

Google Desktop

Αναζήτηση στα αρχεία του υπολογιστή σας με την τεχνολογία του Google

Σε άλλους αρέσει, σε άλλους όχι. Πάντως, οι ρυθμίσεις του επιτρέπουν την προσθαφαίρεση πολλών στοιχείων και συνήθως είναι εύκολο να το φέρεις στα γούστα σου. Η χρησιμότητά του φαίνεται περισσότερο στα XP, που έχουν κακή αναζήτηση. Τα Vista έχουν καλύτερη αναζήτηση, αλλά πολλοί προτιμούν το Google Desktop και εκεί.

Η λειτουργία που μου αρέσει περισσότερο στο Google Desktop είναι το Quick Search Box: διπλοχτυπάς δεξί Ctrl, πετάγεται ένα κουτάκι, γράφεις και, μόλις φανεί αυτό που θες (αρχείο ή πρόγραμμα), χτυπάς Enter για να ανοίξει.

Εξελληνισμένο: ΝΑΙ. Έκδ.: 5.8

Σελίδα: http://desktop.google.com/

ImgBurn

Εγγραφή αρχείων και ειδώλων (images) σε CD και DVD

Ελαφρύ, καθαρό, αξιόπιστο πρόγραμμα για εγγραφή δεδομένων και ειδώλων σε CD και DVD. Βλ.: Εγγραφή δεδομένων σε CD/DVD με το ImgBurn - op111.net

Εξελληνισμένο: ΝΑΙ. Έκδ.: 2.4.2.0

Σελίδα: http://www.imgburn.com/

IrfanView

Προβολή εικόνων, μαζική επεξεργασία εικόνων

Από το 1996 που βγήκε βελτιώνεται συνέχεια. Μπορεί να υπάρχουν και καλύτερα προγράμματα για διαχείριση συλλογών φωτογραφιών και εικόνων, αλλά στην προβολή μεμονωμένων εικόνων το IrfanView είναι ό,τι ταχύτερο και ελαφρύτερο. Είναι επίσης πολύ δυνατό στην μαζική επεξεργασία.

Εξελληνισμένο: ΝΑΙ. Έκδ.: 4.20

Σελίδα: http://www.irfanview.com/

KeePass Password Safe

Αποθήκευση και διαχείριση συνθηματικών (passwords)

Εξειδικευμένο πρόγραμμα για να αποθηκεύουμε και να διαχειριζόμαστε συνθηματικά και άλλα απόρρητα στοιχεία. Προσφέρει κάποιους αυτοματισμούς, ενώ τα δεδομένα διατηρούνται σε ισχυρά κρυπογραφημένη βάση.

Εξελληνισμένο: ΟΧΙ. Έκδ.: 1.13

Σελίδα: http://keepass.info/

Mp3tag

Επεξεργασία μεταδεδομένων (tags) σε αρχεία ήχου (MP3, MP4, FLAC κλπ.)

Δυνατό, ευέλικτο και αξιόπιστο πρόγραμμα για να βάζουμε τάξη στα μεταδεδομένα των αρχείων ήχου. Υποστηρίζει όλους τους τύπους.

Εξελληνισμένο: ΟΧΙ. Έκδ.: 2.41

Σελίδα: http://www.mp3tag.de/

Notepad++

Επεξεργασία κειμένου/κώδικα

Τα προγράμματα του τύπου αυτού απευθύνονται κυρίως σε προγραμματιστές, αλλά είναι πολύ βολικά και για κανονικό κείμενο (σημειώσεις, άρθρα ή οτιδήποτε άλλο) για δύο κυρίως λόγους:

Υποστηρίζουν μόνο απλό κείμενο (TXT), που σημαίνει: ΟΧΙ μορφοποίηση. Θες δεν θες, λοιπόν, συγκεντρώνεσαι στο περιεχόμενο.
Έχουν δυνατότητες που δεν βρίσκονται σε κειμενογράφους. Ένα μικρό παράδειγμα: το Notepad++ έχει πληκτροσυντομεύσεις για: αντιμετάθεση, διαγραφή, αντιγραφή, μετακίνηση και αναδιπλασιασμό αράδων.

Εξελληνισμένο: ΟΧΙ. Έκδ.: 5.03

Σελίδα: http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/

OpenOffice.org

Σουίτα γραφείου (κειμενογράφος, υπολογιστικά φύλλα, παρουσιάσεις κλπ.)

Κάνει πάνω-κάτω ό,τι και το MS Office και είναι συμβατό με τα αρχεία του MS Office. Η έκδ. 3, που ~~αναμένεται μέσα στο 2008~~ κυκλοφόρησε 13 Οκτωβρίου 2008, υποστηρίζει και αρχεία του Office 2007. Η προεπιλογή του είναι να αποθηκεύει τα αρχεία σε μορφή ODF (Open Document Format). Αν θέλετε, ορίζετε από τις επιλογές να αποθηκεύει στα φορμάτ του MS Office.

Εξελληνισμένο: ΝΑΙ. Έκδ.: 3.0

Σελίδα: http://el.openoffice.org/

Paint.NET

Επεξεργασία εικόνας

Σαν το Photoshop, χωρίς το εκτεταμένο φάσμα δυνατοτήτων του Photoshop (που οι περισσότεροι μη επαγγελματίες δεν τις χρησιμοποιούν), ελαφρύ και εύχρηστο. Από τα πιο ευχάριστα προγράμματα στη χρήση.

Εξελληνισμένο: ΟΧΙ. Έκδ.: 3.36

Σελίδα: http://getpaint.net/

PDFCreator

Μετατροπέας αρχείων σε μορφή PDF

Κατά την εγκατάσταση φτιάχνει έναν εικονικό εκτυπωτή — έπειτα, για να μετατρέψουμε ένα (οποιοδήποτε) αρχείο σε PDF, πατάμε Εκτύπωση και διαλέγουμε τον εικονικό εκτυπωτή (PDFCreator). Εκτός από PDF, μετατρέπει και σε εικόνα (PNG, JPG κ.ά. φορμάτ).

Εξελληνισμένο: ΟΧΙ. Έκδ.: 0.9.6

Σελίδα: http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator

Picasa

Οργάνωση και βασική επεξεργασία φωτογραφιών

Από τα πιο φιλικά και προσιτά προγράμματα. Αν έχετε φωτογραφίες στον υπολογιστή σας, πρέπει να το δοκιμάσετε!

Εξελληνισμένο: ΝΑΙ. Έκδ.: 3.0

Σελίδα: http://picasa.google.com/

Pidgin

Ανταλλαγή άμεσων μηνυμάτων (instant messaging) για πολλά πρωτόκολλα

Υποστηρίζει καμιά δεκαπενταριά πρωτόκολλα (MSN, AIM κλπ.) και επιτρέπει ταυτόχρονη σύνδεση σε πολλούς λογαριασμούς. Για την ώρα (Σεπτέμβριος 2008, έκδ. 2.51) δεν υποστηρίζει εικονοσυνδιάλεξη ούτε συνδιάλεξη φωνής. Αν χρειάζεστε κάτι απ’ αυτά τα δύο, το Pidgin δεν σας κάνει.

Εξελληνισμένο: NAI. Έκδ.: 2.51

Σελίδα: http://pidgin.im/

SIW (System Information for Windows)

Διαγνωστικό υλικού (hardware) και λογισμικού (software)

Δίνει στοιχεία για ό,τι υπάρχει στον υπολογιστή σας από υλικό και λογισμικό, π.χ., τί τύπο μνήμης έχει, τί επεξεργαστή, τί έκδοση του ενός ή του άλλου προγράμματος κλπ.

Εξελληνισμένο: ΝΑΙ. Έκδ.: 2008-09-03

Σελίδα: http://www.gtopala.com/

SumatraPDF

Προβολή αρχείων PDF

Το Adobe Reader είναι καλό πρόγραμμα με καθαρή απεικόνιση κειμένου αλλά επίσης βαρύ, γεμάτο χαρακτηριστικά που τους περισσότερους δεν τους ενδιαφέρουν. Για κάτι εναλλακτικό, απλό και ελαφρύ, δείτε το SumatraPDF.

Εξελληνισμένο: NAI. Έκδ.: 0.9.1

Σελίδα: http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/

VLC media player

Παντοπαίχτης αρχείων βίντεο

Πολύ χρήσιμο τουλάχιστον ως εφεδρικό πρόγραμμα, αφού παίζει τα πάντα. Κατά την εγκατάσταση, επιλέξτε ποια αρχεία θα ανοίγουν αυτόματα στο VLC, π.χ. μόνο τα αρχεία βίντεο ή και κανένα.

Εξελληνισμένο: NAI. Έκδ.: 0.9.2

Σελίδα: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Thunderbird

Ηλεκτρονικό ταχυδρομείο

Μοντέρνο πρόγραμμα ηλ. ταχυδρομείου με ενσωματωμένο φίλτρο αντισπάμ, αδελφάκι του Firefox. — Ακόμα και σήμερα, στην εποχή του Gmail, ένα καλό πρόγραμμα ηλ. ταχυδρομείου είναι πάντα απαραίτητο στον υπολογιστή, αν μή τι άλλο, για να έχουμε αντίγραφα της αλληλογραφίας μας.

Εξελληνισμένο: ΝΑΙ. Έκδ.: 2.0.17

Σελίδα: http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/all.html

WordWeb

Αγγλο-αγγλικό λεξικό και θησαυρός

Το καλύτερο δωρεάν αγγλο-αγγλικό λεξικό για Windows. (Η άδεια χρήσεως του οποίου έχει έναν ασυνήθιστο όρο: http://wordweb.info/free/licence5.html) — Για καλό δωρεάν γερμανο-αγγλικό και αγγλο-γερμανικό λεξικό, δείτε το LingoPad: http://www.ego4u.com/en/lingopad

Εξελληνισμένο: ΟΧΙ. Έκδ.: 5.5

Σελίδα: http://wordweb.info/free/

Add any link to your WordPress navigation menu with Page Links To

demetris — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:50:24 +0000

Adding custom links to the navigation menu of a WordPress site is a common need, but not easy to do in the current version of WordPress (2.6.x). Sometimes it is done by editing template files, which is not good.

“Page Links To” is a plugin by Mark Jaquith that offers a nice and quick workaround to do this without modifying any code.

How to

Let’s say that your navigation menu does not have a “Home” link and that you want to add one:

Step 1

Install and activate “Page Links To”: txfx.net/code/wordpress/page-links-to

How to install a WordPress plugin

Step 2a

Make a new page (not post) with the title you want to appear on the menu — “Home”, “Home Page”, your site’s name or whatever else you prefer. Here I’m using the site’s name:

You don’t need to add any text to the page. You can if you want, but no one will see it. :-) Also, the permalink of the page is not relevant: no one will see that either.

Step 2b

Scroll to the bottom and enter the URL of the home page:

Scroll up again and click Save.

Done!

Refresh a page to see the menu with the new item on it:

Now, every time the new link is clicked, it will redirect to the home page. The redirection is transparent to visitors, and the permalink of the page does not appear anywhere. When the link is hovered over, the status bar of the browser displays the URL of the final target — in the example above: http://op111.net/

Notes

PAGE ORDER. If the link does not apper in the position you want, you can move it by changing the Page Order number of the new page or/and of the other pages that appear on the menu. (See above, penultimate screenshot.)
PAGES WIDGET. If you use the Pages widget and don’t want the link to appear there, go to Design, Widgets, click to Edit the widget and add the page ID number to the exclusion list. (How do I find page ID numbers?)
TOOLTIPS. ADDED 2008-10-30. If you want to change the default WordPress link description to something more useful (see above, last screenshot), see: Add meaningful tooltips to your WordPress menu links with Page Menu Editor - op111.net

A few more words

Adding links to the menu is just one possible application of “Page Links To”, which is a plugin made to facilitate page redirection in general — see its page for some other common scenarios. Once you install it, you will probably find more uses for it.

Thanks for reading!