Just managed to install the latest version of WordPress,Version 2.3. I’ve been running the beta for a few weeks now, due to some database problems that the upgrade solved. This is thefirst chance i’ve had to really look into the new features. There a quite a few things like increase of speed that you can really see or play with, but the main feature for me are the ability to use the TinyMCE feature that had previously been hidden away, and my favourite feature is the update alerts, not just for WordPress itself but for you plugins. the plugins do have to be on the WordPress site for i t to do this. but if the other plugin programmer are like me they’ll take this as a sign to register your plugins with WordPress.

One new feature that has a potential problem is the introduction of tags. The feature in itself is nice. But it does mean that changes have been  to the database, so some plugins may break.

All in all i’m quite pleased with it so far.

Having just finished my first theme for My Blog, I am a little more aware of some of the pitfalls of writing a stylesheet that looks well on a number of platforms. Having first designing the CSS on Firefox and checking that it validated using the W3C own checker i was a bit annoyed that it didn’t look as expected when i went to check it in IE. Okay there are a few little things that can be overlooked like the listitem bullets looked a little different but there where differences in i the layout. Having spend hours trying to come to terms with the problem i found that even though IE and Firefox both connform to the same standard ( which i take on faith ) it would appear that they both start with different defaults.

So to ensure that you CSS looks they way you are designing it across all platforms bear that in mind.  Never rely on the fact that they margins and padding on the DIV default the way you want them.

I’m and avid Firefox fan and just found out the there is a mobile PDA version of Firefox, its called MiniMo. Now its seems to be version 0.2 so there is a lot to be done to it, but for me its much better the mobile explorer all ready. For a me the feature that make it for me are.

• tabbed browsing: A very basic thing but missing from mobile Explorer and on a PDA its more important.
• Cookies: I found it a pain to keep having to log into my web based mail on my pda. on such a small keyboard, cookies are greatly appreciated.
• Upgradable: Well its version 0.2 now and its been around a while so i hope there will be updates, but since IE is built into the PDA i don’t think they’ll ever will be updated.

I’ve just finished the main work on a new theme for the site. I’ll bed in in for a few days to find the little things i’ve missed, then check that it validates correctly. So it should be available for download in about a week.

Check out the panorama, it goes on for ever, just stretch you browser as much as you can.  The wonders of Canons photostitch.

OpenDNS is a free way to improve your speed and safty while surfing the internet. It does this my replacing your ISP provided DNS with the OpenDNS servers.

So why would you want to do this and is it worth it? There a a number of reason why it would be good to change to OpenDNS.

• Its faster: That’s what they say, i can’t think of a way to show how much of a benefit this wuld be. It would only speed up resolving urls though so i doubt if you’d notice and increase in performance unless you IPS’s dns is terrible.
• Its more reliable: Again unless you have a bad IPS you’re unlickly to notice, but since OpenDNS wants to be the DNS for everyone you can bet that have an invested interest in making the servers resilient.
• Its safer: OpenDNS keeps track of all phishing sites and block them as default. Oddly they give you the option to turn this off, but why would anybody want to do that?
• More control: It enables you to block adult sites , block domains and other bad things. This is good but I found that it bases this on your IP address so if your address is dynamic it could stop blocking sites when you reboot your machine.
• Its smarter: OpenDNS will correct common spelling mistakes in domain names.

So all in all is it worth it? Yes, I’ve been using it for a while now and the performance seems to be at least as good as my ISP so any added benefit does male it worth it.

Open DNS on BTYahoo

At first i found this a little trying to configure my bt home hub to use OpenDNS, and found that in the end it is pointless to try. Yes you can configure the router, but BTs own DNS servers cannot be removed and are the primary DNSs. Adding OpenDNS would be fairly pointless.

To use OpenDNS on BT you will have to configure the dns on each machine separately.