Sticki Widgets

A small bug was discovered in the Stickam WordPress Sidebar Widget. During our efforts to improve the back-end systems, we overhauled parts of the data mining code. The performance updates resulted in a slight change in the data structure which broke the ability of the widget to match Live user data. We have made the necessary change to the WP widget and fixed the problem. The bug did not break the widget per se; it just failed to display Live friends for the Friends Tracker function.

Go to the appropriate page for details and the latest download file. The Stickam WordPress Sidebar Widget is currently on version 7.

We apologize for any inconvienence this may have caused. Thank you for your support and understanding.

Chris Pirillo posted about some WordPress Plugin Ideas a few days ago. One of his requests seemed relatively easy and was already 99% available. We figured we could finish that 1% pretty quickly, so that’s what we did.

Here is the original request.

“…WP plugin for Bookmarking the post in the multitude of social engines (on hover, add to del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, etc.). I don’t wanna clutter my posts with hundreds of icons…”

Now for the solution… The ability to display icons for various Bookmarking engines is already available in the WP plugin Sociable. Sociable provides a handful of setting and 25 Bookmarking engines. After looking at the code, we only had to make a few changes to provide the specific functionality that Chris wanted.

First, we need to edit the output of the HTML a bit from the plugin.

On line 235 of sociable.php change

$html .= '<span>These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.</span></span><ul>' . "\n";

To

$html .= '<span><ul>' . "\n";

And on line 255 change

$html .= "</ul></div>\n";

To

$html .= "</ul></span></span></div>\n";

Now that is done, you just need some basic styles to enable the hover/mouseover. Replace the original sociable.css file with the following CSS. Of course, you would/could edit the style to your liking so it fits in with your own design.

New CSS

div .sociable { margin: 1em 0; }
/* width of mouseover hot zone */
span.sociable_tagline {
position: relative;
width: 10em;
}
/* position and style of hidden block containing icons */
span.sociable_tagline span {
position: absolute;
display: none;
width: 0;
top: -4em;
left: 0em;
background: #ffe;
border: 1px solid #ccc;
color: black;
line-height: 1.25em;
padding: .25em;
}
/* display hidden block on hover and set desired block width */
span.sociable_tagline:hover span {
display: block;
width: 12em;
}
.sociable span { display: block; }
.sociable ul {
display: inline;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
.sociable li {
background: none;
display: inline;
list-style-type: none;
margin: 0;
padding: 2px;
}
.sociable ul li:before { content: ""; }
.sociable img { border: 0; }

Finally, if you want to enable the feature for Internet Explorer, you will have to make the following change.

On line 233 of sociable.php change

$html .= '<div class="sociable"><span class="sociable_tagline">';

To
Note: you will want to change 12em below to define your hot zone width

$html .= '<div class="sociable"><span class="sociable_tagline" onmouseover="this.childNodes[1].style.display =’ . “‘block’;this.childNodes[1].style.width =” . “‘12em’” . ‘;” onmouseout=”this.childNodes[1].style.display =’ . “‘none’;this.childNodes[1].style.width =” . “‘0′” . ‘;”>’;

Upload, activate and configure the plugin as normal.

You can see an example on this post.

Today’s hump day and we ran across an old post by Peter Harkins (Sociable WP plugin author) that we found strangely profoundly inappropriate.

Programming Is Like Sex (by Peter Harkins)

because…

• One mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life. (Michael Sinz)
• Once you get started, you’ll only stop because you’re exhausted.
• It takes another experienced person to really appreciate what you’re doing.
• Conversely, there’s some odd people who pride themselves on their lack of experience.
• You can do it for money or for fun.
• If you spend more time doing it than watching TV, people think you’re some kind of freak.
• It’s not really an appropriate topic for dinner conversation.
• There’s not enough taught about it in public school.
• It doesn’t make any sense at all if you try to explain it in strictly clinical terms.
• Some people are just naturally good.
• But some people will never realize how bad they are, and you’re wasting your time trying to tell them.
• There are a few weirdos with bizarre practices nobody really is comfortable with.
• One little thing going wrong can ruin everything.
• It’s a great way to spend a lunch break.
• Everyone acts like they’re the first person to come up with a new technique.
• Everyone who’s done it pokes fun at those who haven’t.
• Beginners do a lot of clumsy fumbling about.
• You’ll miss it if it’s been a while.
• There’s always someone willing to write about the only right way to do things.
• It doesn’t go so well when you’re drunk, but you’re more likely to do it.
• Sometimes it’s fun to use expensive toys.
• Other people just get in the way.