i7 Version 0.9.6.1 – [download] – 563kb 7zip file

A list of the quick fixes after the jump…

Download now! – [download] – 562kb 7zip file

This will most likely be the last Beta. I can’t think of anything else to tweak or add. Please, download this, test it out and let me know how it works on your live blogs. If this version is good, I’ll rip out the “Theme Version” widget, skip RC and go straight to RTW.

Read on for what’s been updated…Updates

• New Name: changed name from Inanis Seven to i7 to comply with WordPress theme name requirements.
• Lots of engine changes: all for compliance with new WordPress theme requirements and guidelines.
• CSS and HTML validation fixes
• some more theming fixes and cleanup
• added a new filter to finally, once and for all, fix “float” issues with embedded video. (All the code samples on the net tried to be smart and efficient, but broke on implementation. Funny how a simple old school string replacement can fix things where regular expressions cant. Simpler is better!)
• Full testing on IE7, IE8, IE9 Beta, Chrome 9, FF3, Opera 10 on multiple operating systems.
• Probably a whole bunch of other minor tweaks I’m not aware of.

New widget: theme version widget. It displays the vital stats of the currently installed theme. I created this so I can just upload new versions of the theme to the Sandbox without having to update the widget in the upper right corner. This will get pulled from Inanis Seven proper and be available as a separate download, probably.

Styling updates: fixed some styling inconsistencies, and added styling where there wasn’t any, but should have been. Also fixed some glaring bugs with multi-page controls and IE7 issues.

Attachment pages bug fix: when you created a page with attachments (think gallery), and clicked on the attachment, when WP sent you to the attachment page, the page would bomb. Faulty code in the breadcrumb dumper caused this.

Functions.php line 7 bug: some people were reporting functions.php on line 7 sending headers a second time. Nothing in there should have caused this, but just in case, I removed whitespace and other things that might print to screen and cause this. It never caused any problem on inanis.net, sandbox.inanis.net, or either of my VMWare devel servers. Odd.

SysTray general widgets: added some code to create a mouse hover tooltip based on the title of the widget to which the button belongs. Now, when you have widgets down there, you can tell what they are before clicking on them.

Other fixes: I’m sure there were other fixes… but I can’t think of them right now!

I’ll do some more refinement to ready this thing for launch and have 0.9.5.8 up for download in a couple of days. Maybe tomorrow – who knows!

Inanis Seven 0.9.5.5 beta – [download] [561kb 7-zip file]

REMEMBER – this is BETA. It has a high chance of breaking your blog. Use it ONLY on 2.9 or higher.

UPDATE: Readme and download, after the jump!

Inanis Seven 0.9.5.0 Beta – [download]

If you have questions, leave them in the comments below, or hit the Contact Me page. (If you don’t know the answer to the secret question, just Google/Bing it.)

Features
1. Options Menu
The options menu is the brain of your Inanis Seven themed blog. It contains
several very common items, including
# Pages List
# Tag Cloud
# 50 Most Recent Posts
# Login/Logout options
# When logged in, you will get extra options, like Site Admin, Write a
Post, Write a Page, and more. Of course, the buttons you get depend on
your user permissions level.
The Options Menu combines the features of the Meta widget, plus Tags,
recent posts and other widgets so that you don’t have to place these
widgets in your layout.

2. Child Page/Category Popup Menus (plus “overflow button”)
On the taskbar, you will see buttons for all of your pages or categories,
depending on the options set (see Theme Options below). When you hover over
these buttons, a preview dialog will swing open, showing you all of
the child pages/categories of that page/category. If you have too many
pages or categories to fit the width of the taskbar, don’t worry! The
theme will dynamically adjust for this and put any overflow into a special
pop up menu that can be accessed when clicking on the “up arrow” button to
the right of the rest of your buttons. Make your browser window smaller to
see the effect (or just create a whole bunch of pages…).

3. Hide All/Show All Button
In the lower right corner of the blog, next to the clock, you will see the
Hide All/Show All button. Clicking this toggles the state of all of the
gadgets and the middle column. Try it out!

4. Look Behind
If you hover over the Hide All/Show All button, all of the page content will
fade to transparent, allowing you to see the blog background image.

5. User Selectable Sub-Themes
There are multiple included Sub-Themes, not just the default “Seven”
theme. You can see these by clicking the arrow next to the login/logout
button on the options menu. If your viewers change this theme, that change
only appears for them, and reappears each time they visit, that is if they
allow cookies.

6. Theme Options
By using the Theme Options page (Site Admin, Appearance, Inanis Seven Theme
Options), you can make some really cool modifications to the theme. Here’s
the rundown of all that can be done:

# Custom Blog Icon: Choose between one of six supplied Blog Icons, or pick
your own. 128px by 128px please.
# Header Drop Shadows: Turn on Header Drop Shadows for header text. Useful
if your Custom Image Header has lots of color and contrast variation. May
not work correctly in Internet Explorer.
# Menu Display: Determines whether the “Taskbar” shows Pages or Categories.
# Menu Child Popups: Enable or Disable the “Taskbar Live Preview” style
feature.
# Time Display: Select 12-hour or 24-hour display in the clock and posts.
# Gadget Sidebar Width: set the width of the Gadget Sidebar
# Copyright Gadget: determine if you want to show the copyright notice
or not.
# Options Menu Throb: Choose to show the Options Menu for a short period
when a new user first visits your ‘blog. Handy if your users might not
know what the little orb at the bottom is for.
# Default Page Width: Choose the default page width when users first visit
your blog. Select between Minimized (730px), half-width (mathematically
halfway between minimized and maximized), and Maximized.
# Default Sub-Theme: Select which Sub-Theme users see on the first visit.
This does not prevent the user from changing the Sub-Theme.
# Display Random Sub-Theme: … this is pretty obvious!
# Stretch Background: Determines if the background image should be stretched
across the entire display, or simply repeated.
# Enable Custom Theme: Setting this allows you to customize many aspects of
the theme and override all Sub-Themes. These customizable items are:
= Background Color
= Background Image
= “Window” Color
= “Window” Opacity

7. Sidebars Galore
The theme includes eight fully widgetable areas, and one special area. All
areas are visible everywhere unless otherwise noted. These areas include:
# Gadgets Sidebar: emulates the familiar “Gadgets” feature. These widgets
are user minimizable, and their state is saved in a cookie.
# Top Sidebar: Sits between the Page Header and page content
# Right-Content: Hangs on the right side of content. Good for Skyscrapers or
Recent Comments style widgets.
# Pre-Comments: Sits between Post/Page Contents and Comments – Only shows on
Posts and Pages. This is great for advertising.
# Bottom Sidebar: Shows after all page content. Great for advertising, link
units, custom menus, context widgets, etc.
# Bottom Left/Middle/Right Sidebars: A sidebar trio that acts just like the
Bottom Sidebar, but fits three to a page – side-by-side. Good for “About”
blurbs, Meta links, context widgets, etc.
# System Tray: AH HA! Magic occurs here. See the next section.

8. Magic: System Tray Sidebar
The “System Tray” is a special sidebar that creates “System Tray” buttons
for any widgets placed there. These will show as a button that your user can
click on to pop up the widget as a dialog box. Additionally, you can place
a special System Tray Widget type in there and get different results.

# i7: SysTray Link Widget: this widget allows you to link out to an outside
site, a different place on your blog: really anywhere you want it to go.
You can select one of several theme-included icons, or point the them to
your own icon. Please keep icons to 16×16 graphics please. It won’t look
pretty if you don’t.

And, now for a warning:

DO NOT PLACE SYSTRAY LINK BUTTON WIDGETS IN NON SYSTEM TRAY SIDEBARS.
WEIRD THINGS WILL HAPPEN.

Don’t worry. It won’t keep your blog from loading – it will just look
funky. Maybe in the future I’ll add code that prevents System Tray
widgets in Non-System Tray Sidebars.

Reading a book by Joe Haldeman called Starbound. It was suggested by someone, seems to be the second in a series but I’ve really not looked into it. Interesting book. Difficult read – the author uses narrative in a peculiar way and sometimes it’s hard to identify who is speaking. Otherwise, a neat book. Should have that finished in a couple weeks – I only read for about an hour before bed and I have to keep going back and rereading to figure out who is speaking…

Maybe if I read more books, I would get an iPad or a Kindle…. unlikely.

Ever feel like you might want to beta test something? Now’s your chance! Drop me a line in the comments (be sure to add your email address to the comment form!) and I’ll forward you a completely free copy of the Inanis Seven WordPress theme for your own personal (or professional) testing.

I’ll limit the number of people who get a beta copy,  but I’m not sure what that limit will be – I’ll just set it arbitrarily when I feel there are enough copies in circulation.

When you submit your comment, give me a quick, two line synopsis of why you would like to beta test the theme and why you feel you would be a good candidate. I would like to limit the beta to those with some WordPress or web design experience so they can help me root out obscure bugs, but everyday bloggers are welcome to try it out too. If you just want to see the features and play with it a bit, check out the sandbox instead.

The theme is compatible with WordPress 2.8 and up, but works best on 2.9 variants. I have tested it to be compatible with WordPress 3.0, but it doesn’t support any new 3.0 specific features. Those will come in a later release after the feature set is locked down and bugs are squashed.

The theme is NOT IE6 compatible. It won’t be. I will never make it to be. Don’t ask for me to make it so, because I won’t dignify you with a reply.

If you are chosen to test out the theme, be warned – I (inanis) CANNOT AND WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE IF THE BETA THEME PULVERIZES YOUR POSTS, PUMMELS YOUR PAGES, OR OTHERWISE KILLS YOUR BLOG, YOUR FIRST BORN CHILD OR YOUR LAWN. IT’S BETA. YOU ASSUME ALL RISK BY INSTALLING BETA CODE ON YOUR WORDPRESS WEBLOG.

Phew, enough nastiness. In all reasonable reality, you shouldn’t have any blog killing, world ending problems. I’ve been running older versions of it on Inanis.net for months without issue, and I easily get 200 hits a day. (I remember when 10 hits a day was alot…)

Throw your requests in the comments and we’ll have some fun!

Here’s the (almost) complete list:

• Changed some sub-themes to be creative commons compliant
• added the ability to plop regular widgets into the “System Tray”
• Implemented stretched backgrounds and “Peek” as suggested by “Long P” in the comments here. Go over to the sandbox and hover over the “Show All” button in the lower right corner – I dare ya. (And no, it didn’t bloat the code, it was actually fairly easy to implement. It also has a function: so you can peek at the background image since it’s usually all buried behind the window content and stuff.)
• Added drop shadow support to IE for the Custom Image Header area. This really is a vital feature if you are planning on having a custom image header that has plenty of variation in color and contrast. Without it, you can’t read the text. The drop shadow option in the theme options gives you the ability to put a soft shadow around the custom image header text so that the text will be visually separated from the header picture.
• Changed some theme options stuff – cleaner now.
• Confirmed positive functionality with WordPress 3.0. It doesn’t support the new 3.0 features, but it loads and works correctly. A future version of the theme will add full 3.0 support.
• Lots of tiny little tweaks noone will notice.

I think this is going to be my last major revision before I throw it out for beta testing.There’s lots to see. Go on over to the Sandbox and check it out. Like always, leave me comments and input so I can make it better!

It looks much slicker now, the min/max button fits better, and there is more physical space inside each Gadget/Widget.

Also changed are some minor things with the Custom Image Header. You can see some of those changes now right above. The theme really starts to shine when you have a great custom header in there, plus you can see the application of a custom Blog Icon.

Anywho, go check out all the new stuph on the Sandbox.

I hope to wrap up feature adds, bug fixes and optimization by version 0.9.5, where it will then be beta. I’ll open it up for beta testers at that point, and then we’ll be well on our way to version 1.0. More stuph to come, so stay tuned!

Give me your thoughts and comments on what’s been done, and keep dropping me suggestions – they only make the theme better!

Notes on Inanis Seven User Suggestions

System Tray Icons: Implemented! This is now a widgetable area, and the theme includes widgets specifically designed for that area. Two are available by default, one that allows the blog admin to create a link with a custom icon to anywhere he wants, and another that creates a pop-up box when clicked that can have any desired text or HTML code. Check it out on the Sandbox to see how it works.

Peek: I don’t see a need for this feature, unless I modify the theme to allow multiple AJAX loaded content boxes. If I ever do that, (which I might in a future version) Peek could be useful, but until then – it’s just overkill.

Explorer Bar: An unnecessary feature. It simply takes up screen real-estate and doesn’t provide a function that isn’t provided somewhere else. Besides, I already tried styling something similar to this for a different feature and getting the columns to line up correctly with this design is a nightmare that would probably require a complete ground-up redesign (just Google ‘holy grail 3 column layout’ and you’ll see what I mean). This will not be implemented.

Icons on the Taskbar Buttons: WordPress doesn’t have a nice built in function to attach thumbnails to pages, posts AND categories. This would making implementing this a pain for me, and even harder for blog admins to use. This will not be implemented unless WordPress implements a thumbnail feature for posts, pages AND categories.

Colored Taskbar hover effects: Doing it manually requires a custom graphic to be built for the custom color you want, and doing it automatically is very difficult to do correctly, quickly and reliably with current technology. This will not be implemented.

Individually Styled pages/posts/categories: doable, but out of the scope of this theme, and of my capabilities. This will not be implemented on this iteration of the theme, but I’ll leave it open for future consideration.

Stretched Backgrounds: doable, but it’s very dirty. The proper way to do it, by using CSS3′s background-size property, isn’t supported by just about everything. The “fudge” way of doing it is fairly elegant, but changing the background when changing the sub-theme requires JavaScript and that’s semantically very bad. Additionally, adding support to the custom theme options for this just complicates it more. This will not be implemented on this iteration of the theme, but I’ll leave it open for future consideration.