Meteor Slides in your language?

If you would like to volunteer to translate Meteor Slides into your language it would be a big help!

You can download the PO file if you know how to use it, or grab the plain text file and I’ll take it from there. Please email your translation to: mail@jleuze.com

Meteor Slides 1.2

This release adds support for multiple languages and contains two translations. If you have any problems with this version please let me know.

Localization support

Updated plugin to support translation. Two members of the WordPress community have kindly translated Meteor Slides, thanks for contributing!

Translations:

• Indonesian: Translation by gustulank
• Turkish: Translation by ercani

Meteor Slides 1.2.1

Added two more translations courtesy of Eugen and Florent, thanks for helping!

Translations:

• French: Translation by Florent Quiquandon
• Romanian: Translation by Eugen Paun

One of the features on my to-do list is adding support for localization so that users can translate Meteor Slides into any language they choose.

I held off on this feature in the initial release, because there just isn’t that much text in the plugin to be translated. But my goal with Meteor Slides was to make it easy to use with an intuitive interface, and a big part of that usability is being able to read the interface!

To help meet that goal, translation support is the next feature I’ll be releasing for Meteor Slides.

Translators needed!

However this feature isn’t very useful without some translation files, and my high school french isn’t going to be of much help.

If anyone would like to volunteer to translate Meteor Slides it’d be much appreciated. I can provide you with a POT file if you have the software to use it, or I can send you plain text and create the file from your translation. Just leave a comment or email me: mail@jleuze.com

Meteor Slides 1.1.1

I released an update for Meteor Slides that fixes a few bugs. If you find more bugs, please let me know.

FEatured Image Array Conflicts

A user reported a conflict with a theme that disabled the featured image functionality for slides.

The theme was enabling featured images for just posts, and my plugin enables them for just slides. This creates two arrays for the featured image option, and whichever one runs last wins.

Turns out that it is tricky to add featured image support for a specific post type that doesn’t conflict with themes and other plugins that are doing the same thing.

I was stumped, so I stopped by one of my favorite WordPress haunts, WP Tavern, looking for help. Rarst kindly shared some code that gracefully merges the featured image settings of Meteor Slides with those of other themes and plugins.

Slideshow Stylesheet and markup tweaks

A few users were having problems with a “flash of unstyled content” that was revealing all of the slides before the slideshow was fully loaded. I fixed this by styling all but the first slide to be hidden until everything loads.

I also expanded the markup so that the slideshow and each slide have a unique ID and generic class, this should give users more options when trying to style their slideshow.

Again, if you have questions about using Meteor Slides, try watching the screencast that I recorded.

I was really surprised that almost 400 people watched the Meteor Slides screencast that I recorded, I hope that video makes things easier for some users. I will definitely be making some more screencasts related to theme development in the future.

Meteor Slides 1.1

The latest version of Meteor Slides now includes a slideshow widget, an easy to customize stylesheet, and an update for the jQuery Cycle plugin that powers the slideshow.

Meteor Slides Widget

A few users had asked me how to add a slideshow to a widget, so I added a widget for the slideshow. Now there are three ways to add a slideshow: the template tag, shortcode, and a widget. The widget is easy to use, just grab “Meteor Slides Widget” and drag it to any sidebar. Make sure the dimensions of your slides fit that sidebar though!

Slideshow Stylesheet

Some people have been running into conflicts between their theme and the slideshow. An unwanted border around the slide images, or dropdown menus hidden behind the slides.

Meteor Slides is intentionally minimalist; there are no frames or buttons and you’re free to make it match your theme as you see fit. To help keep the slideshow from conflicting with themes, I have added a stylesheet to the plugin.

The stylesheet basically acts as a reset, making sure that no borders, margins, or padding are unintentionally added to the slideshow. It also sets the z-index of the slideshow to 1, which should put it below the dropdown menus. But every theme is different, so you may have to bump it up or down to get the correct layering.

When I added this stylesheet, I switch the meteor-slideshow div from a class to an id. If you have already added your own CSS for the slideshow, sorry for breaking your styles! I shouldn’t be doing any more tinkering with the markup in the future.

Adding your own CSS styles to the slideshow is simple. Just copy meteor-slides.css from /meteor-slides/css/ to your theme’s directory to replace the default plugin stylesheet.

JQuery Cycle

I updated the jQuery Cycle plugin to version 2.88.

What other features should I work on? I’m thinking multiple slideshows, since I can’t actually think of any other slideshow plugins that can handle more than one.

Nearly 600 people have tried out Meteor Slides so far which is just awesome, thanks everybody! If anyone uses my plugin on a live site, be sure to leave a comment with a link, I’d love to see it in action.

A couple of sharp-eyed users have spotted bugs in my plugin and were kind enough to report them. If you spot any more bugs, please let me know.

Meteor Slides Bugs

There were two bugs that I have fixed and released updates for.

Meteor Slides 1.0.1

The first was because I had added a specific position to the slide post type using menu_position. This was conflicting with the position of another plugin. I had assumed that WordPress would automatically resolve these conflicts by sorting the menu items alphabetically or something.

I was wrong, it just doesn’t add one of the plugin menus. I removed this menu position from Meteor Slides and it resolved the conflict. I’m not sure what value menu_position has if it doesn’t play nice with other plugins, so I’m just going to avoid using it.

Meteor Slides 1.0.2

The other bug that I ran into was with the loop that the slideshow uses to display the slides. The loop works fine with the template tag, but the shortcode, which uses the same loop, was having problems.

I checked out a few tutorials on adding a loop within a loop using a shortcode and I learned that echo and other techniques insert the contents of a shortcode above the post or page’s content. Thanks to Chris Coyier, I learned that I need to use return to get the shortcode’s contents placed properly. The loop within a loop was also giving me problems, one loop seemed to be bleeding into the next, I added wp_reset_query after the interior loop like Chris’ tutorial and the bleeding stopped.

Aside from bugs, I have also heard from a few people who had some confusion about how to use Meteor Slides, or add a slideshow to their site. Some of the plugin’s functionality, like the featured image, is fairly new and I’m thinking that some users might not have run into it before.

Meteor Slides Screencast

To make using Meteor Slides clearer, I have recorded a short screencast which explains how to set up Meteor Slides, create new slides, and add the slideshow to your site using the shortcode or template tag.

There are many slideshow plugins to choose from, and I have a few good ones that I like to use. But each one seems to have some issues.

Constructive Criticism

The biggest issue is that some of them only have one transition. Personally, fade is the only transition I need. But when you have a slideshow all set up, and the client decides they want they want a diagonal wipe transition, you want options!

Many slideshow plugins also have usability problems. Some add a panel to the post or page editor and you have to dig through them to update the slides. Some are consolidated, but hidden somewhere obscure. Worst of all, some slideshows work with just posts, leaving out pages or other content completely.

I am also bothered by the aesthetics of most slideshows. I just want a nice clean slide that I have designed myself; No distracting text overlays, image thumbnails, or arrow navigation.

Solving Problems

So I designed Meteor Slides with plenty of options in the backend, but no distractions in the frontend. You can link a slide to any page, post or external link, or nothing at all. And there are over twenty transitions to choose from.

I also built this plugin with usability in mind. I wanted Meteor Slides to use native WordPress functionality and feel fully integrated to the end user.

Please give my plugin a try and let me know what you think.

Giving Props

I read through so much documentation and plugin source code to make this plugin and I never would have been able to pull it off without these valuable resources.

• Got off to a great start thanks to kovshenin’s post on Extending Custom Post Types and learned a lot from his sample podcast plugin.
• Found some good ideas in Nathan Rice’s WP-Cycle plugin for using jQuery Cycle in a WordPress plugin.
• Had a tough time getting custom meta boxes to work, but Spencer at wefunction.com broke it all down for me.
• Vladimir Prelovac’s post on adding JavaScript code to plugins was a huge help, particularly for passing options on to my JavaScript.
• Otto’s tutorial on the WordPress settings API was invaluable for figuring out how to add a settings page the right way.

I’m sure to have missed some well deserved props, so I want to extend my gratitude to the entire WordPress community. Thanks!

Inspiration

One of the things that I love about WordPress is the easter eggs, haiku, and jazz musicians. These tidbits really help add character to the project.

I don’t think a mere plugin warrants a musician or even a full album as inspiration, so Meteor Slides is named for a song.

Stones From the Sky by Neurosis seemed like an appropriate choice.

There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t wish I had a robot minion. Some droid as smart as a dog that could pull weeds and help me water the garden.

And on the Net, I need even more help—there just isn’t enough hours in the day! So I built Ampersand here to help me out with some of the grunt work: cleaning up spam, moderating comments, and squashing spider bots that have overstayed their welcome.

I have always been a doodler and a science fiction fan, so Ampersand will give me the opportunity to dust off my Wacom tablet and add some futuristic illustrations to my site.

Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for Ampersand lurking in the background keeping my outpost running.

Since 2004 I have switch domains and domain registrars once, switched webhosts three times, and went through several design incarnations of my site.

Learning the fundamentals

Those first few designs were crude affairs that, thanks to many hours in Photoshop, looked fine but were poorly coded using just HTML and relying far too heavily on sliced up images and inappropriately used tables.

As I mastered HTML and learned to use it correctly, I started to figure out CSS and incorporate that into my designs.

For the first 3 or 4 years as I was learning and experimenting, my site was being used as a portfolio for my photographs, illustrations, or other graphics. Sadly, I didn’t have much actual content on my site and it was rarely updated.

What can I say, managing the content of your site and making regular updates is a struggle when you have to manually edit the code for every change!

Choosing a platform

I had been tinkering with Drupal, Joomla!, PHP Nuke and other content management systems for different projects and I knew that I needed a CMS for my site to help keep it current.

After trudging through the convoluted template files and obtuse control panels of these “full-fledged” content management systems, I knew I wanted a CMS that was fresh, nimble, and easy to use.

So two years ago I switched my site to WordPress. Sure, there are other decent lightweight CMSes out there. But they are either commercial products, or suffer in obscurity. WordPress is just about the only publishing platform of its kind that is free of charge, Open Source, and has a large, active community of users.

Joining the conversation

WordPress has made it easier to keep my resume and portfolio updated, and I have gotten some good feedback through the comments in my portfolio, but I still haven’t been actually blogging with WordPress.

For the first couple of years that I was on the Net, I was mostly a lurker.

I really had no interest in getting into a flame war like the nasty comments on YouTube unless it is with close friends who won’t mistake my nihilism and sarcasm for some kind of personal attack. Shouting into the wind also seemed like a waste of time—or maybe I just don’t like crowds—so I didn’t bother posting on sites with hordes of comments like Slashdot.

But over the years I’ve warmed to the idea of the Net being an interactive medium and started to de-lurk a bit.

I’ve joined a few quieter forums and started to comment on some of the blogs that I read. I even started “micro-blogging” on Twitter.

As I began to participate in conversations, I noticed that my comments were growing far too long and that I could never convey an idea in a mere 140 character tweet.

So I redesigned my site yet again and decided to start blogging.

Going all meta

My blog is going to stick with the topic of web design, primarily about WordPress. I’ll be writing about the themes and plugins that I am developing, projects that I am working on, and various meetings and conferences that I go to.

I am a volunteer on the WordPress Support Forums, where I try to answer at least one question every day. I often run into the same questions consistently, or questions that are hard to answer in a basic forum post. So I am also planning to make some screencasts and blog posts with in-depth tutorials that address these problems.

If these topics are of interest to you, subscribe to my feed or follow me on Twitter.

This WordPress powered website places an emphasis on the social networks that Hal is using to reach voters.

The website is powered by WordPress and features a multimedia center with video, photo galleries, and soon audio. I provided technical assistance to Imitsu Media regarding WordPress development on this website.

Jennifer has the ambitious and inspirational goal “to draw every kind of mammal on earth”—in color no less!