iLEMONed

Introduction

Lightview is similar to Lightbox yet superior to Lightbox. Since version 2.0, Lightview has been able to overlay not only images but also videos, iframed webpages, and almost anything! It works with all popular browsers. The original Lightview JS is a project by Nick Stakenburg.

Demonstration

The first photo is an individual one, while the rest four are grouped together.

The above three images are linking to: 1). A Flash color scheme generator 2). A QuickTime movie trailer 3). A webpage.

Installation

1. Download the WordPress plugin, extract the "lightview" folder somewhere.
2. Download the Lightview script from its official website, put the 3 folders "js", "images" and "css" into the "lightview" folder from the WordPress plugin. Choose to replace if asked.
3. Upload the "lightview" folder to /wp-content/plugins/, then activate it.

Why so complicated? Please understand that Lightview is no longer free. Nick Stackenburg was generous enough to approve the redistribution of this WordPress plugin, so please respect his decision and pay for it like I did. Go to the official Lightview project page and you'll find the way to purchase a license and download the script.

How to Use

• For a single image:
  <a href="foobar.jpg" class="lightview">foobar</a>
• For a set of images:
  <a href="foo.jpg" class="lightview" rel="gallery[foobar]">foo</a>
<a href="bar.jpg" class="lightview" rel="gallery[foobar]">bar</a>
• For a QuickTime movie:
  <a href="quicktime.mov" class="lightview" title="">QuickTime</a>
• For a Flash video with title and size limits:
  <a href="flash.swf" class="lightview" title="Title::::width:320,height:240">video</a>
• For a webpage (iframe) with title and description, in fullscreen:
  <a href="http://www.google.com" class="lightview" title="Title::Description::fullscreen:true">Google</a>

Download

Lightview for WordPress (v2.41, 2009-09-07)

For the full documentation (more options, custom events, keyboard shortcuts, etc.) as well as the changelogs, please visit the official Lightview project page.

The 5-year-old BlogBus is the earliest and most reputed blog service provider in China. Their 5th anniversary ceremony will be staged this weekend in Wuzhen, an ancient water town south of the Yangtze River. Congrats to them! It's my great honor to be invited to the event but my schedule wouldn't let me fly to Shanghai for a weekend. Definitely my regret of the year.

Last week, a very famous technical expert Chedong, who served Yahoo China as a senior product manager, announced his job-hopping to BlogBus. I would say that the 4 chief officers of BlogBus now forms an all-star team. I'm looking forward to seeing new actions from them in year 2008.

Back to the topic, I was also asked by their COO Mr. Wei Wuhui, a man of wisdom, to make a WordPress theme as a birthday present for his company. Hence this 3-column, right sidebar, neat and elegant theme.

Theme requires WordPress 2.3 or above, tested in Firefox / IE6 / IE7 / Safari. Oh, and it's widgets-friendly.

Download English version (v1.0)
Download Chinese version (v1.0)

What do you use for enhancing the navigation in your admin center? The ancient thing, Admin Drop Down Menu by Ozh, has always been my choice. This plugin is simple yet very useful, it saves you a lot of clicks! But the plugin was designed for WordPress 1.x, and is too old to get along well with others nowadays.

For instance, if I activate too many plugins that have option pages under the "Options" tab, the "tail" of sub-menu items annoyingly protrudes from the left border (see screenshot). And the CSS style doesn't suit the updated menu in WordPress 2.x (see screenshot). I fixed the errors mentioned above, now it looks beautiful in my admin center (see screenshot). If you also want a copy of my fixed version, you can download it here. But please note this is not an official release.

A couple days ago I discovered Admin Supermenu by Chris Messina, a jQuery version of Admin Drop Down Menu, but it is still buggy. I think until Chris fixes the bug under the post-editing page and implement some more improvements, I will not switch to his jQuery version.

btw I already tried Admin Drop Down Menus, but it wasn't what I expected, though it exactly says the word "drop-down".