Here is the first release of my first freely available WordPress theme, Muggles.

This theme was originally designed for a client, who decided it wasn’t what they wanted. I spent a bit of time working on this particular theme and wasn’t about to let that be wasted, so I hope you find a use for it.

It features bright yellow, pink and blue and nice curves.

Stay tuned, as I have already started working on some new WP Themes that are destined straight for the website (not through potential client filters), which will be available free too.

This theme (as with most of this website) is released under a Creative Commons, Share and Share A Like license. See my Legal Information for full license details.

Download Muggles v.1.0

What tools do you recommend to help other Website Developers?

This is a particular tough question. My background is in UNIX administration, and all my web and development work is performed using Firefox and Vi¹.

However I have come to rely on a few tools in particular, and found some others very usefull on occasion. All of these tools are browser based (and therefore cross-platform) and more importantly freely available. Please contact me if any are broken, shouldn’t be here or you have suggestions.

Standards Compliance

• HTML/XHTML Validator
  http://validator.w3.org/check
• CSS Validator
  http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator

Site Layout

• Browsershots - Auto Screenshots from multiple browsers
  http://browsershots.org

Search Engine Optimization

• SERP Checker and other Free SEO Tools from SEO Company
  http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/serp-checker.php

Spelling, Links etc.

• Site Check Spell Checker
  http://www.siteowner.com/sitecheck.cfm
• Link Validity Checker
  http://www.siteowner.com/system/linkcheck.asp

I finally bit the bullet today and re-worked the entire CSS for this site, which I hate to admit had become quite a mess.

The new CSS has been completely re-formatted and duplicate overriding options mostly removed, and cleaned up. I am also working on removing some other slight inconsistancies to keep the site look and feel uniform.

The CSS code was standards compliant previously, but now it will be alot more managable. I do intend to do a few more slight changes to the layout over the next few days. I haven’t tested the new CSS in Internet Explorer yet, but I am waiting on a result from browsershots.org. If you notice browser-wierdness, please let me know.

My CSS rework was inspired by a lot of CSS i’ve seen lately where each individual property is grouped together. This way at a glace all objects who share a property are grouped together and shown with the appropriate value. I think writing a small php tool to process a CSS file and allow varying ‘views’ of it may be something to work on in the not so distant future.

The CSS can be found here.

Testing is now underway on the new layout for the site which is a pure CSS based, 2 column, content first layout.

It involves the usual struggle with browser compatibility issues all of which as usual are caused by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Once testing of the new layout is completed and i’ve finished tweaking it full details of how it was achieved will be posted.

The site is tested most with my browser of choice, Firefox 1.0.6 under Linux.

“I’m wondering if you could help me. I have an image and i need to give it this as it’s link <input type=submit value=Login>, how can i do it, any ideas? Is there any chance i can get it so it opens in a new window?”

Firstly, without me ranting, I really do not like anything that opens in a new window, unless it is part of an web based application, has a good reason to do so and the action is not unexpected for the user. Apart from that on with answering your question.

The first part is easy, standard HTML, something like the below code snippet should do exactly what you want.

Now to open your form in a new window. I personally think using JavaScript is the best way to do this.

Let’s define a function to do it. This can be inserted anywhere in your HTML.

Now we put our form together, noting that the form’s name is the same as the one used in our function.

I hope this answers your question sufficiently.