Category: Open source / Freeware

Categories
Flash Flash experiments FlashBox Open source / Freeware WordPress Plugin

My second WordPress plugin: wp-flashbox

Update #1: There are some problems with the plugin in Firefox 2 for the Mac and Flock: FlashBox is loaded, the images are loaded into it, but FlashBox is not visible.
I am looking into it, sorry Mac users!
There is also a difference between Firefox for the PC and IE for the PC: it works perfectly, but in Firefox FlashBox will be restarted and in IE FlashBox starts where it left of (if it’s started before). These is not a bug this is a feature!

Update #2: A feature I forgot to tell about: you don’t have to change the rel="lightbox" tags, it will also work with FlashBox. If you’re planning to use both, you have to use rel="flashbox"– tag. But if you want to use FlashBox instead of Lightbox, you have te deactivate lightbox!

FlashBox is my attempt to create a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page.

Read more about FlashBox in detail, the different post about FlashBoxor you can follow my progress in the Flashbox directory where my experiments are.

But to sum it up: It had to be smaller then the other (Lightbox, Thickbox and Graybox), but with the animation (like Lightbox).
Or just another alternative for Lightbox / Thickbox / Graybox?

And because I wanted to use it on my own blog, I wrote a plugin too. And I’m not afraid to share it with you.

Download WordPress Plugin – Download FlashBox v1.0

Check the latest Flashbox version: the category FlashBox

Download wp-flashbox wp-flashbox_v01.zip (17,9 kB)

Continue reading “My second WordPress plugin: wp-flashbox”
Categories
Open source / Freeware WordPress Plugin

My first WordPress plugin: wp-downloadbtn

Yes, it had to happen sooner or later; my first WordPress plugin.

I can make it bigger then it is, but I won’t.
It’s just a download button, it works in WordPress 2.0.7 and WordPress 2.1.
I use it in combination with Download Counter WordPress Plugin

Download WordPress Plugin – Download Button v1.0

Download wp-downloadBtn wp-downloadbtn_v01.zip (9kb)
Continue reading “My first WordPress plugin: wp-downloadbtn”
Categories
Open source / Freeware

Replace commercial software with opensource/freeware

I am convinced that a lot of people don’t want to buy commercial software because of the price.
And I’m also convinced that a lot of people don’t want to use illegal software.
But they don’t know which software they can use beside the commercial program and there friends will only advise the program they (illegally) using because there friends advised them to.

Lets stop the chain, and put some opensource/freeware software against there commercial counterpart!

Commercial software Replacement software OS
ACDSee XnView UNIX, Windows, Mac OS X
Irfanview Windows
Nero CDBurnerXP Pro Windows
Winrar , Winzip , PowerArchiver 7-zip Windows
Izarc Windows
Microsoft Word abiword Linux, Windows, Mac OS X
Microsoft Office Open Office Linux, Windows, Mac OS X
Adobe Illustrator Inkscape Windows, Mac OS X
Adobe Photoshop GIMP ** Linux, Windows, Mac OS X
Microsoft Outlook Mozilla Thunderbird Linux, Windows, Mac OS X
Macromedia Dreamweaver Nvu Linux, Windows, Mac OS X

** Use Gimpshop! if you used to be a Adobe Photoshop user: it will make GIMP and Photoshop similar.

Of course this list is much longer…
So if you need to find something else; here are some places you can look
CleanSoftware.org – Free software, no nasties!
vinterstille.dk – Free alternatives to Macromedia and Adobe
Open Source…for designers?
alts.homelinux.net – Free alternatives
Free Software alternatives to proprietary applications on the Microsoft Windows OS.
Freeware programs and applications
Freeware Programs that replace Commercial Programs

Almost every commercial program has a freeware program that does almost the exact same thing, maybe sometimes better.
So drop a comment about commercial software that you want to replace.

Categories
Open source / Freeware

Today I hit the 1000+ spam stopped by Akismet

You got to love Akismet…

Today I had a peak of 72 spam massages in 1 day (which is the highest I had since I started blogging, but there are blog who laught at this number).
Which set the total counter to 1061 deleted spam massages.

So it’s a sad day that bloggers need to catch spam massages, but a good day because I didn’t have to read / select / delete 1062 spam massages myself.

I ♥ Askimet

Update #1:
Here: Miahz and Emi seems to be having the same thoughts about this subject.

Categories
Open source / Freeware

Sociable WordPress plugin

A new addition to the series of WordPress Plugins I have installed:
Sociable

Social bookmarking sites allow web surfers to save, catalog, and share interesting pages they find online. The Sociable plugin appends links for your readers to use those sites to the end of each of your blog’s posts, increasing your potential audience.

The reason for this WordPress plugin is in this article: successful-blog-launch. Go to chapter 7 “Social Bookmarking (aka Going Viral)”.

And so I started to look at a wp-plugin that includes all social bookmarking sites (and not for instants only Digg although this is also a very good wp-plugin). And that is the reason I use Sociable.

Continue reading “Sociable WordPress plugin”
Categories
Open source / Freeware

Automatic WordPress Database Backup

I haven’t installed a lot of WordPress plugin’s. And till recently I had only 3 WordPress Plugins installed.

Well this is changed: I now have more (I’ll stop counting because every time I install a new plugin I’ll have to change the number…): wp-cron is added to that list.

WP-Cron provides a rudimentary support for scheduled exection of actions; a sort of “delayed action” processing for WordPress. It is nowhere near as robust as the actual UNIX cron facility, but should be good enough to “do stuff” on a fairly regular basis

This plugin has a lot of features, but I only use the wp-cron plugin.
And the reason is backup:

…A plugin you use to backup your database. And this is the most important of blogging: the stuff you write….

Now, without thinking about it, my database is send to my gmail-acount on a daily base.

Categories
Misc Open source / Freeware

Starting with WordPress and blogging

Oke you have a fresh WordPress installed, your ready to go…

And then you ask yourself: am I ready for blogging?
Is this all I need, is there something I’m forgetting?

Well if I may give you 3 4 tips: 3 4 wordpress plugins I am using and are extremly usefull.
You could call it my “Top 3 4 WordPress plugins” and yes I know that a lot of people can come up to a total of 10 WordPress plugins but for now I’m not using more than these 3 4.

  1. Askimet
    A plugin for keeping spam from your blog. This plugin will save you a lot of time once your blog is visited (indexed) by a search-engine.
  2. WP-slimstat
    Is a statistic plugin. And I must confess: I am a slimstat junkie! This is the first thing I do when I’m logged in. And I can get this information straight from my WordPress administration interface. Read more about it.
  3. WordPress Database Backup
    A plugin you use to backup your database. And this is the most important of blogging: the stuff you write. It’s accesable from your WordPress administration interface. In WordPress 2.0 the WordPress Database Backup is include by default.

Update #1: After writing about wp-cron I came across some discussion about wp-db-backup, and it seems to be removed from the default WordPress package. Hmmm, it doesn’t matter: I still recommend this plugin!

So:
I ♥ Askimet
I ♥
I ♥ WordPress Database Backup and wp-cron

Categories
Misc Open source / Freeware

Essential Fonts for Designers – 300 free truetype fonts you should have

A while back I found (or somebody posted in a blog …) a link to a site where a designer posted 300 free truetype fonts.
I was interested so I bookmarked it, but for some reason I didn’t downloaded any of the fonts.
Probably because I have my set of favorite fonts.
But after a while a became curious if the designer had a nice set of free fonts I could recommend to my friends. I couldn’t find the site in my bookmarks but that was because the site wasn’t the site I remembered (http://www.goodfonts.org/).
And nobody on the internet could give me the list the designer posted. So after some digging in Internet Archive: Wayback Machine a found the list, but the url’s didn’t work any more.
So I did the best I could do, I made it possible to view the list en find the freeware font with google.

For this purpose I have made an oldkool frameset frameset which makes it easier to search for the fonts.

And if you want to help me to create a complete ZIP; you can find my hotmail email address here to send your files.

Remember this: I have no idea who the designer is/was, and his/her choice of font are not necessary my choice of fonts.

Update #1: Vitaly Friedman has a very good list of serious license-free fonts, check it out!.
Update #2: And Vitaly Friedman has also a very good list of 25 best license free pixelfonts, he is doing a hell of a job.

Categories
Misc Open source / Freeware

Wp-slimstat gives a fatal error

Update #1: I forgot to explain what wp-slimstat is. Wp-slimstat is a simple web statistic wordpress plugin, which means you can see how many visits you get and from where/how many/etc. But the good part is that you can see it when you login there will be an extra tab on the Dashboard to the statistics “Slimstat”.

Update #2: RTFM ….. in the README.txt (chapter 8. LOCALIZATION) there is an explanation about this “fatal error”

make sure you have set your blog’s default language in wp-config.php,
e.g. : “define (‘WPLANG’, ‘en_US’ );â€? and that the corresponding
localization file exists in wp/slimstat/lang folder.

I found my error on the wordpress.org support forum… the solution I describe here still works.

Today I tried to install wp-slimstat and all I got:

Fatal error: Cannot instantiate non-existent class: cachedfilereader in [snipped]/wp-includes/wp-l10n.php on line 67

hmmm…
I could not find the answer to this problem on the site of the creator of this wp-plugin but it seems that all wordpress-2.0.4-users have this problem!
So I try good old google …. and found the answer..
http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/topic.php?id=888

try open wp-config.php or wp-config-sample.php
edit this lines:
define ('WPLANG', '');
to
define ('WPLANG', ' ');

And now I have wp-slimstat, so I know what you did last hour!

Categories
Open source / Freeware

How to capture your screen in a movie

I use AviScreen to capture screen activity. I’ve used it to make tutorials, record google sketchup, webcam, etc.

Update #1 I have an example in this post.

With Aviscreen classic you can capture fullscreen, predefined sizes, an object or resize the capture area in any rectangle you want.
You can decide which video compression to use, framerate and a delay before capturing.
When it starts to record the program will “hide” in the taskbar so it will not show in your capture.

Did I mention it’s freeware…