blog.NOVALISTIC

No, there will be no revamp of the current design because I simply find it too awesome to be replaced (as yet). However, to harness WordPress 2.7′s new theming features, especially threaded comments, which I myself will take a while to adjust to, I will be substantially refactoring the theme and release blog.NOVALISTIC 2.1 as soon as WordPress 2.7 RC1 is out the door.

I have a feeling this design will live through the launch of NOVALISTIC 4.0 “Sarathos”.

dev.NOVALISTIC and Thistle

Like what will become blog.NOVALISTIC 2.1, Thistle 1.1 will also be worked on to welcome WordPress 2.7 and I suspect Thistle should be out at around the same time frame as when RC1 arrives. Don’t worry though: rest assured that Thistle 1.1 will remain backward compatible with WordPress ≤ 2.6, and you can upgrade painlessly. Of course, dev.NOVALISTIC’s WordPress setup will be upgraded to the release candidate, and the theme will be updated.

Potassium

Potassium will be updated, as Potassium 1.0.6, to go with Sandbox 1.7, the version of Sandbox that should be made for WordPress 2.7.

Phi

Phi is not affected in any way by WordPress 2.7. Although that means Phi is already WordPress 2.7-ready, that doesn’t mean I’ll only support use of it on WordPress 2.7 when I release it. All versions from 2.0 onwards are supported. I believe Phi will be ready for release shortly after 2.7 rolls out.

Changelog

• Potassium does not depend on an external file for layout structure anymore. This should satisfy both Sandbox 1.5 and 1.6, and possibly any older or newer versions.
• Changes made to the CSS of the blogroll widget list items.

Download Potassium 1.0.5 at its theme page.

MD5 (.zip) 0b501cbe77c258c9f3c80aca6fe8e46b
MD5 (.tar.gz) 5bb3075e5a581f285aa5c0cfbb7d5079

In this Potassium release, among other changes I also now allow it to deal differently with certain other widget options. See what you get for lack of extensive testing? Yes, I forgot

Changelog (Potassium 1.0.4)

• Made compatible with Sandbox 1.5 by altering some theme-specific CSS classes.
• Hence the introduction of Gravatar support!
• With some new CSS classes being introduced in newer versions of the Sandbox theme, Potassium’s use of attribute selectors has been cut slightly. That means a bit more IE6 support – but who cares?
• Adjusted display for some widget options, like displaying categories or archives as drop-down menus.

Download Potassium 1.0.4 at its theme page.

MD5 (.zip) 4f1a5fc4b4c90235d1963c20c9d27e43
MD5 (.tar.gz) 5a59bd45b86fd483466aa3a69a928f61

The new Thistle release convinces IE6 and IE7 to display the above tabbed navigation properly and parts of it have been refactored for use with WordPress 2.5. Backwards compatible code will still be present, so whether you’re using WP 2.5 or older, whether or not you’re concerned about readers using IE, I suggest you upgrade.

Changelog (Thistle 1.0.1)

• Fixes IE’s problem with the tabbed navigation – mad props to Justin Tadlock!
• If an author doesn’t have a web site, Thistle won’t convert the author’s name to a link in the author display page.
• Moved the designed-by information to the Meta widget as it seems to be a somewhat more suitable place than the footer.
• Extraneous template markup removed from a few areas.
• Some other very tiny fixes here and there.
• Updated for WordPress 2.5 (with backwards compatibility still in place):
  • If the blog is running WP 2.5, use is_front_page(), otherwise fall back to is_home()
  • If the blog is running WP 2.5, use get_avatar() for Gravatars, otherwise fall back to gravatar() if a Gravatar plugin is installed.

Download Thistle 1.0.1 at its theme page.

MD5 (.zip) 1a1a5e50152e1df4a306016a8ddfda8c
MD5 (.tar.gz) 9bff91c66d82a3e298db7dfcefab7b5c

I realize that Sandbox has advanced through a few minor version increases all the way to 1.5 since the last time I kept updated with it which is many months ago, but I will soon seek out any changes that I need to make to Potassium to cater to Sandbox 1.5′s new/updated/deprecated CSS classes (with Scott’s help if I need it). The only bad thing is that I’m still unsure which versions of Sandbox to support and which not to. I think I’ll really need to ask Scott about it.

See? I still love Potassium and Sandbox

Changelog

• Cut down blank lines wherever I could but still left the code readable.
• Included <pre lang="mysql"> GeSHi syntax for SQL highlighting.
• Made compatible with Sandbox 1.0.0 by altering some theme-specific CSS classes.

Download Potassium 1.0.3 at its theme page.

MD5 (.zip) aea9023cda19bfd193f52e83077c78f6
MD5 (.tar.gz) b80a05274e4c5be983c07bb0b2090ac4

To accommodate a typo being fixed for the widgets CSS class in 2.3.1, Potassium 1.0.2.1 has been released. It only contains this typo fix for WordPress 2.3.1, along with the erroneously-spelled CSS class for backwards compatibility with WordPress 2.3. Download it now!

Changelog

• Altered the stylesheet description to remind you that Sandbox is required.
• Support for tag cloud widgets introduced – the tag icon should now appear in these widgets as you can see in my own blog.
• Added .left and .right CSS classes… just in case.
• Tweaked .center so text in paragraphs and such are centered as well.
• Padding added to <div>s inside sidebar widgets.

Download Potassium 1.0.2 at its theme page.

MD5 (.zip) 5643fa7a55225778ae2bb65ac9f083bd
MD5 (.tar.gz) de60ac6bea58753f96629f20e35848c3

Now to rant about my tag cloud and IE’s job of messing it up.

Apparently WordPress 2.3′s tag system changes all whitespace in tags to non-breaking spaces  . I don’t know why WordPress 2.3 developers chose to do that, but unless it’s considered a defect worth rectifying, I can’t do anything about it except hack WordPress on my own (which I’ve never done before and pledge never to do unless under perforce) because WordPress 2.3 has been feature frozen.

Why am I complaining about the whitespace entitizing? Because IE6 AND IE7 both exhibit the Expanding Box Bug upon encountering non-breaking spaces, which, unfortunately, my workaround is unable to fix.

A standards-compliant browser does this (screenshot from Opera 9.50 alpha 1, still world’s most compliant browser):

IE6 and 7 respectively do these (IE7 screenshot courtesy of Nicole, both taken on different dates):

Right now I’ve implemented, under my conditional-commented <style> tag, Microsoft’s proprietary word-wrap CSS property to at least tame this in IE6 (currently thinking of a way to fix it in IE7) but you’ll see pathetically broken words. Still, being the standards advocate and shameless link plugger, I suggest you get Firefox or Opera.

I’ve made my own copy of Potassium’s sidebar split into primary and secondary sidebars, but still kept them packed to the right and rearranged some widgets, and thinned them a little to give the content column as much space as possible. This is to improve readability of the content column (easier on the eyes) and make BoltPress look a tad more hip

Also, since I’ve recently decided to leave the 800 × 600 users in the lurch and move on to 1024 × 768 users for NOVALISTIC 3.0′s layout, I figured it’d be appropriate to do the same for Potassium.

But don’t fret, all you 800 × 600 users, you can enjoy BoltPress in your smaller screen resolution when I’m done with my very first publicly released full WordPress theme. I’m not revealing anything about it yet, you’ll have to wait for it EDIT [6:25 pm]: Right now there’s always Kubrick

Changelog

• Added a font size and line height to #footer because that gloss line in the background can serve as an interesting line margin.
• Added more margin between posts.
• Fixed .nav-previous going over and knocking down .nav-next, occurring most frequently with long post titles. It’ll still not work on IE6 though.
• Fixed .required so it inherits the background color instead. Didn’t seem necessary since Potassium has a white content background, but if you think about it a little longer…
• Fixed lists inside comment/trackback lists so they display as normal lists instead of looking like comments or trackbacks.

Download Potassium 1.0.1 at its theme page.

MD5 (.zip) cd6fa549eabad3b41668c898d220b4fd
MD5 (.tar.gz) c1e6a6dcaf0bac54e0a406a3387a6bf8