A few users of vSlider have noticed recently (mainly due to Google Analytics) that the 404 page of the theme was creating problems for them. This is because it doesn’t actually return the 404 code, but a normal 200 (the code of OK) instead.
The reason for this goes back to Internet Explorer 6 - I’ve blogged about this issue back in 2005 (see a complete description here.
In a nutshell, IE6 didn’t show the custom 404 page without a bit of hacking from my side, and at the time IE6 was the most popular browser, so this seemed like a good idea. But with more and more people moving to Firefox (yupee!), and with IE7, this is not such a big problem anymore. So, I will remove this dirty trick from the next release (whenever that happens ). In the meantime, if you are having problems because of this, edit the 404.html page and remove the first 4 lines.

Tags: 404,vSlider
Categories: Maintenance, Tips 4 Geeks
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Ok, some bugs/issues/problems have been found in vSlider 3, none of them too critical. I don’t want to just jump to version 3.1 already just to fix this (I rather do it later, with a few improvements). Instead I list them, with hotfix instructions. If you find some more, add comments here and I’ll keep the text updated.


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Categories: Maintenance, Tips 4 Geeks
18 Comments »

Finally, after a few months in the making, here is the new 3 series! Yes, it look a very long time, more than I thought at the beginning, but a lot of stuff happened in the meantime, and one can only go so far without proper sleep
What’s available now? New and improved cool stuff for latest & greatest versions out there:

• vSlider 3 for WordPress 2.2
• vSlider 3 for Gallery2 2.2.1 (using WPG2 2.x and 3.0 beta)
• KBurnalizer 3 javascript library
• KBurnalizerG2 module for Gallery2 2.2.1

See? Can’t be more up-to-date than this!
You see it running on this website, so I guess its working…

So, what’s new? Tons of things. For a complete list, check the specific download pages on Cool Stuff, but here are the highlights:

• New and expanded Theme Administration page
• Full pixel-precise control of the width of theme
• Option for fluid layout! Fills your entire browser, whatever the dimensions. Everything resizes automatically (this one was tough… )
• Complete control over colors without coding. You can use one of the provided color schemes, or create your own. You can create as many as you like, and select individual colors for every visual element.
• Place the sidebar on left or the right of the page.
• Administration page for all the nice little icons - sliders, RSS feeds, quote symbols, etc…
• Several options for the header, including auto-rounded border. Yes, that’s for all the people that kept asking for the Header template Now you can just use normal rectangular images and the theme will create a nice round border for you
• The Gallery2 theme has been redesigned with a more consistent look and LightBox support.
• Everything done using CSS and Javascript - no images used for either layout or graphical backgrounds. Not even for the rounded borders. This gives you the most flexibility for customizations without coding.
• Aahh… just check the download page for the full list….

I tested as much as I could, but there were so many changes and new features, a few bugs are bound to appear. If they do, please let me know and I’ll try to fix them ASAP.
Also there were a couple of other features suggested by some of you that I thought would be cool, but didn’t make into this version (you have to draw the line somewhere). They might make it into version 3.1 later on…

I also take this opportunity to present another side project I started with my wife - OneWorldToSee.com. No, it’s another WP theme or another nifty tool. It’s kind of a “life project” - a plan to travel around the world and see *everything* worth seeing. The OneWorldToSee.com website is a blog about this plan and the passion for exploring in general. I invite you all to become members and even post your own texts about travel experiences.
It is also a way to finance it, since we decided to “sell” the world in order to see it - you’ll understand once you see it

All the stuff I’ve been making here in iRui.ac is free and will continue to be. I used to have a donation page and even an Amazon wish list, but that’s all gone now. Instead, if you feel compelled to show your appreciation and help us in process, hop over to OneWorldToSee.com and see how you can contribute.

Have fun with vSlider 3!

Categories: Maintenance, Tips 4 Geeks, Way of the web
9 Comments »

Messing around with the Windows registry is usually not the brightest idea. But sometimes, there isn’t any other way – the Windows interface alone doesn’t allow you to do everything the operating system as to offer.
In this post I mention two ticks that I’ve used frequently. Nothing really dangerous… just fun cool stuff that sometimes comes in handy


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Tags: Registry,WindowsXP
Categories: Tips 4 Geeks
2 Comments »

I’ve been dealing with Java for many years now – both as a programmer and as an end-user. Several times I’ve found compatibility issues with Win32 systems at graphics level – screen corruption, redraw problems, slow response, you name it. From my technical experience, I’ve known for a long time that this is mostly caused by the usage of DirectDraw inside the Java Virtual Machine. Typically, I would solve any problem with a specific application by providing this parameter directly to the JVM:

-Dsun.java2d.noddraw=true

This disables the use of DirectDraw for that application, and problem solved!

But ever since I got my new computer, I’ve had problems with practically ALL Java applications, including applets and such. At the first I didn’t care much, but lately it started to bother me a lot the way that applications were completely “freezing”. So, what I needed was a way to disable DirectDraw automatically for all applications automatically – a kind of “system wide” parameter. I found some people suggesting to disable video hardware acceleration completely on Windows. But, c’mon, I’m not going to lower the performance of my machine just because of a few measly applets!
Finally I found what I think it’s the perfect solution. I added a System Environment Variable named _JAVA_OPTIONS and provided the value -Dsun.java2d.noddraw=true. Every time the JVM starts, it will look for this environment variable and pass the provided parameters automatically. I can tell you that it works great!

Tags: Java,Win32
Categories: Tips 4 Geeks
1 Comment »