And with that, per my preparation plans, I’ve released BoltPress 2.1 (complete with a little stamp over the blog title)! It’s been six months since BoltPress’s redesign was launched, and I feel great having graduated to 2.1, heh.

First off, threaded commenting, a new WordPress 2.7 feature, is now present, but I’ve had problems with IE7 handling the placement of the comment form. All other browsers are OK.

Something else you’ll notice besides the introduction of threaded commenting (and the 2.1 branding) is that if you use Windows Vista (or XP with Vista fonts), you’ll find that the theme text is set in Segoe UI and code in Consolas. If you’re using Mac OS X, you’ll see Lucida and Monaco respectively. On Linux, you’ll find DejaVu fonts. This is experimental.

Please don’t report to me about IE7′s problem with the comment form until I’m done fixing it because I know about it already. However, if you find any other problems, feel free to let me know via the comments and I’ll fix it when I can.

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.

I tried a few plugins like WP-Syntax and SyntaxHighlighter Plus, however they were too complicated and feature-rich for my needs, and recent versions of WP-Syntax, which I’d been using for the past year, were beginning to mess with my styles. That annoyed me real good. Plus, GeSHi colors were getting a little boring for me.

There was WP-Syntax Colorizer, but it didn’t quite satisfy me.

That does it, I thought. So I set out to put together a simple plugin which would fulfill my needs, using PHP’s humble highlight_string() function (PHP manual page).

And Phi was born.

I might release Phi soon. I believe there are others out there who share my opinion about the bigger syntax highlighting plugins. Besides, this is my first, so for additional kicks I’d like to see what it’s like to be a proud developer of my very own WordPress plugin (heh).

Here’s an excerpt of Phi’s source code, highlighted using Phi itself of course:

Example 1: Phi’s source code, highlighted using Phi

<?php
    
    // PHP 4 coughs up <font> tags - clearly highly undesirable behavior
    if ( version_compare(phpversion(), '5.0.0', '<') ) {
        $php = preg_replace(
            array('@<font color="(.+?)">@', '@</font>@'), 
            array('<span style="color: $1">', '</span>'), 
            $php
        );
    }
    
?>

See also, at dev.NOVALISTIC, Phi in action.

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

I’m going to start hosting my WordPress themes at the new theme directory. If you’re interested in hosting at the new site as well, here’s some stuff you’ll want to know.

By themes, I mean complete themes. My Sandbox designs (Potassium and Bromine) will not be available there. EDIT [7/19]: At least, not yet, until what Adam hypothesizes in his comment comes to light.

And along with this piece of great news, I have also put together Thistle 1.0.2, ready for download now. EDIT [7/19]: It will be available in the theme directory It is now available in the theme directory, and of course it’ll remain hosted here at NOVALISTIC as well.

Here’s what’s new from 1.0.1:

Changelog

• WordPress 2.5 visual editor CSS classes are now present, and thus:
  • The visual editor will be happy.
  • I’ll be able to host Thistle at the new WordPress Theme Directory.
• Thistle 1.0.1′s static Meta widget was not updated to reflect the credit to me. Ouch.
• Images now overflow the left column if necessary and are now visible over the sidebar.
• Corrected inconsistencies in a couple other templates.
• The theme’s PHP code has been edited to adhere to WordPress’s coding standards.

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

Like Potassium, Bromine will be a variable-width design. Unlike either the distributed Potassium or Thistle, Bromine will consist of three columns, and I will be using NO images, only CSS for it! Interesting, eh? As well as having no images, I’ll also be going for a darker color scheme this time, so the orange and brown bromine-like hues will be a bit darker as well.

At Sandbox’s home page, Scott quotes Andy (both are Sandbox’s creators) as follows:

Given straightforward markup with plenty of selectors, there isn’t much that can’t be accomplished with CSS and a decent browser.

Bromine sets out to prove just that. Oh, and speaking of decent browsers, be reminded that Bromine will not support IE6. Neither will any more WordPress themes I make. There may be minute effort to get themes to display reasonably and perhaps up to the point of readability, but I guess that’s about it. I even almost called that too much. That’s how much I detest IE6.

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

I decided to bump the version up to 1.0.0 despite problems with Internet Explorer and me saying I’ll continue supporting IE6 till the end of the year, because I simply couldn’t wait to release the theme any longer.

Since I’m still new to WordPress themes, if you encounter any issues with Thistle that I don’t already know of please let me know via comments or something else.

Download and enjoy my new theme!