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Bulletproof 1.1 released

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 3:28 pm
by yellowled
(Note: A German translation of this post is available in my blog)

The Bulletproof development team has finished the most important changes and therefore released v1.1 of the Bulletproof template framework. BP v1.1 is available for download at

http://s9y-bulletproof.com/index.php?se ... ]=download

Changes in this release are:

* added: automagic detection of additional user stylesheets (thanks to Garvin!)
* added: new theme option for alternate display of number of comments and trackbacks
* added: new theme option to suppress the display of footer and/or header for sticky entries; also added a new class for sticky entries to make it possible to style them differently
* added: Bulgarian translation (thanks to Ivan Cenov; the Bulgarian translation might not be completely up to date, though)
* added: classes to style each row of the calendar individually
* added: new theme option to display text and/or icons for the previous/next page links
* fixed: display of the BP footer
* fixed: display of counter code in BP footer
* fixed: the link to the favicon in index.tpl has been commented out due to excessive apache error logging when it does not exist
* fixed: firefox horizontal line bug
* fixed: new classes for various combinations of sidebars and content
* added: new navigation classes for first and last link
* added: new div containers at top and bottom of wrapper
* added: support for IE5 through additional IE5-specific stylesheet; BP is still not working perfectly in IE5 (and probably never will be), but at least it is usable now
* added: default style for preformatted text in entries
* fixed: the sidebar sitenav is now contained within a .serendipitySideBarContent container for consistency
* fixed: display of 2 column, sidebar left layout in IE (all versions)

BP 1.1 will of couse also be included in forthcoming versions of Serendipity. Users using BP as their blog's template are strongly encouraged to update to v1.1. Template designers are strongly encouraged to update their BP derivates to this release also.

The development team will document these changes in detail over the next couple of days in the Bulletproof documentation blog, but right now, we all could use a little break :-) We are, however, available for support in the s9y forums.

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 3:47 pm
by Don Chambers
A little break? What's that?!!! :lol:

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 8:26 pm
by yellowled
Don Chambers wrote:A little break? What's that?!!! :lol:
Actually, it's an excuse for not posting more detailed information before Monday :)

YL

Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 12:16 pm
by blog.brockha.us
How is the best way to migrate my BP 1.0 template to BP 1.1? I use a user CSS and some images, that I put into the BP 1.0 directory.

What files have changed? Are the CSS classes still named the same and so?

Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 1:22 pm
by yellowled
blog.brockha.us wrote:How is the best way to migrate my BP 1.0 template to BP 1.1? I use a user CSS and some images, that I put into the BP 1.0 directory.
You should be able to simply update BP, i.e. overwrite the template's file with BP 1.1 if you haven't changed any of the .tpl files. For starters, backup your images and stylesheet. After updating BP, copy your stylesheet and images back to /templates/bulletproof and /templates/bulletproof/img, respectively, following the naming conventions outlined in the brand new doc blog entry Additonal user colorsets.

Of course, it depends a little on how you added the user CSS - did you use an additional CSS file or modify one of the colorsets? In that case, you should be good to go. If you modified style.css ... well, first of all: bad boy! :wink: Second, you might want to compare it to the style.css, there have been some changes in that file.
What files have changed? Are the CSS classes still named the same and so?
Phew. We didn't really keep track of that ... erm, let's see: config.inc.php and the lang_* files; base.css, style.css and all ie specific stylesheets; index.tpl, entries.tpl, plugin_calendar.tpl ... I guess Don can add some things, I'm not sure I mentioned everything. Also, some things have changed in the admin stylesheet, but that's Don's thing.

We also revamped the way classes are assigned to the layout columns - if I remember correctly, we're back to just #serendipityLeftSideBar and #serendipityRightSideBar along with new classes for the various layouts. Check index.tpl for classes named layout*.

I guess that's about it.

YL

Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 1:54 pm
by blog.brockha.us
thanks yellowled. I updated successfully, it seems. I just had to repatch entries.tpl (bookmark extension I don't want to implement using time consuming plugins) and sidebar.tpl (excluding some plugins for not logged in users, as this plugin is realy traffic and time consuming..)

My colorset was completely seperated from the original colorsets, so this was not the problem.

Ah, and I noticed, you commented out the favicon. Why did you do this? At least an option would be nice for this, that would be set to true if the default favicon was found.

Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 2:13 pm
by yellowled
blog.brockha.us wrote:Ah, and I noticed, you commented out the favicon. Why did you do this? At least an option would be nice for this, that would be set to true if the default favicon was found.
Just a guess: You're a quick reader, right? :wink:
fixed: the link to the favicon in index.tpl has been commented out due to excessive apache error logging when it does not exist
(http://s9y-bulletproof.com/index.php?/a ... eased.html)

As far as I remember, testing if a given file actually exists is either not possible in Smarty or uses too many of Grandma's performance pennies (I'm sure you've heard of them :)). Frankly, I think a theme option for this would be a little over the top, although easily possible. We'll see :)

YL

Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 3:18 pm
by Don Chambers
Grischa - just looked at your template. Nice!!! As YL noted, I commented out the favicon stuff because I noticed my own personal apache error log was writing an error 3-4 times for a missing favicon for every single page view. That log file was enormous! If you have a favicon, all you need to is uncomment the line. Most modern browsers will load a favicon if it exists WITHOUT the statement anyway (I think). Template option is a possibility for the future if everyone thinks it is a good idea.

If you should ever consider releasing your template to the public (hint, hint, hint), one of the more significant structural changes was to include sidebar site navigation within the container .serendipitySideBarContent, which was not previously the case. I felt this was important for consistency with the other sidebar items. If a designer fails to style the sidebar nav container #sbsitenav, it will look like any other sidebar item by default now.

The changes you have made to entries and sidebar.tpl are obviously custom to your site.... those would not be possible in a public release of your template, but you probably know that!!! :lol: In fact, I would bet you have forgotten more about this stuff than I will ever know!!!

Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 4:39 pm
by blog.brockha.us
Hi Don.
Don Chambers wrote:Grischa - just looked at your template. Nice!!!
Thanks! :-) Was fun and interesting to do this.
Don Chambers wrote:As YL noted, I commented out the favicon stuff because I noticed my own personal apache error log was writing an error 3-4 times for a missing favicon for every single page view. That log file was enormous! If you have a favicon, all you need to is uncomment the line. Most modern browsers will load a favicon if it exists WITHOUT the statement anyway (I think). Template option is a possibility for the future if everyone thinks it is a good idea.
Firefox does load the favicon only, if the link code exists in the HTML file. I guess this is exactly because of the problem you've noticed. IE tries to load the favicon.ico no matter if it finds the link statement or not. So for IE visitors you win nothing by commenting out the link statement, IE will try to load it anyways.

About the option: I guess, it is too hard for a normal blog owner to identify why his favicon is not displayed anymore. And even harder to fix this. I guess, this will produce some discussion in this board. But on the other hand: A regular blog owner perhaps doesn't even notice that his favicon is gone.. ;-)
Don Chambers wrote:If you should ever consider releasing your template to the public (hint, hint, hint), one of the more significant structural changes was to include sidebar site navigation within the container .serendipitySideBarContent, which was not previously the case. I felt this was important for consistency with the other sidebar items. If a designer fails to style the sidebar nav container #sbsitenav, it will look like any other sidebar item by default now.
Yes, I plan to release it. I perhaps could use some new default banner. At the moment I have the puple banner greyed as default banner. :-)

Oh.. And I had to add some URLs to my blog url into my colorset in order to get the nice "external link" icons. Is there a way to have this more variable? Are the CSS files parsed in any way before they are sent to the browser? So is there a possibility to make use of smarty or s9y variables inside of the CSS file?

I will have a look at the changes you mentioned. I think this changes possibly make some thinks I had to do with the sidebar plugins easier to implement.
Don Chambers wrote:The changes you have made to entries and sidebar.tpl are obviously custom to your site.... those would not be possible in a public release of your template, but you probably know that!!! :lol:
Well.. Yes and no. Of course the special patches I did directly in the tpl files are not meant for public release. But there could be two more options inside of the templates config: A free HTML part for displaying directly below the entry and an input where sidebar plugins could be named that should only be displayed if the user is logged in. I guess both of them would not to hard to implement (I could do this, didn't yet in order to make updates more easy for me). The performance enhancement between the plugin hiding sidebar plugins and doing this inside the tpl like I did, is huge!
Don Chambers wrote:In fact, I would bet you have forgotten more about this stuff than I will ever know!!!
Well.. I guess my English is not good enough, to understand this? :-)

Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 8:43 pm
by yellowled
blog.brockha.us wrote:IE tries to load the favicon.ico no matter if it finds the link statement or not. So for IE visitors you win nothing by commenting out the link statement, IE will try to load it anyways.
Great information. I guess this means we will have to add a theme option.
blog.brockha.us wrote:I guess, this will produce some discussion in this board. But on the other hand: A regular blog owner perhaps doesn't even notice that his favicon is gone.. ;-)
I'm pretty sure people who do have a favicon will also be able to remove comments from a tpl file. We'll see.
blog.brockha.us wrote:Oh.. And I had to add some URLs to my blog url into my colorset in order to get the nice "external link" icons. Is there a way to have this more variable?
I don't understand what you mean by "variable". I use external link icons in my blog, takes about 25 lines of CSS and no Smarty code at all to get them to work.
blog.brockha.us wrote:Are the CSS files parsed in any way before they are sent to the browser? So is there a possibility to make use of smarty or s9y variables inside of the CSS file?
Don't understand the first sentence :) As far as I know, there is no way to use either Smarty or s9y variables in CSS files. There is sort of a workaround if you use inline styles in a tpl file like we do in index.tpl for the custom header.
blog.brockha.us wrote:
Don Chambers wrote:In fact, I would bet you have forgotten more about this stuff than I will ever know!!!
Well.. I guess my English is not good enough, to understand this? :-)
Well, Don's using understatement here. He thinks you know that much more about this stuff than him that you have already forgotten more things than he will ever know, which is definitely not true as far as I can tell. He's just fishing for compliments :wink:

YL

Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 9:35 am
by mattsches
yellowled wrote:
blog.brockha.us wrote:IE tries to load the favicon.ico no matter if it finds the link statement or not. So for IE visitors you win nothing by commenting out the link statement, IE will try to load it anyways.
Great information. I guess this means we will have to add a theme option.
If you do, please make sure that the user can change the name of the favicon from the default favicon.ico. Because you can put a favicon with a different name in the link, too.

Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 5:06 pm
by Don Chambers
blog.brockha.us wrote:IE tries to load the favicon.ico no matter if it finds the link statement or not. So for IE visitors you win nothing by commenting out the link statement, IE will try to load it anyways.
IE might try to load it regardless, but doing so does not write an error to the apache logfile. My personal opinion is that, if someone knows WHAT a favicon is, and HOW to use one, they probably have the skills to uncomment the line we have in index.tpl, including changing the name if necessary. I have noticed that some hosting services install a default favicon that is just a blank image - which certainly eliminates the error, I just happened to think that leaving it uncommented by default MIGHT lead to huge error logs for those who do not have a favicon.

All this being said, we can certainly make it either an admin option, or uncomment it like bp 1.0.
Yellowled wrote:Well, Don's using understatement here. He thinks you know that much more about this stuff than him that you have already forgotten more things than he will ever know, which is definitely not true as far as I can tell. He's just fishing for compliments :wink:
No - not fishing! I simply meant, as you mentioned, that Grischa probably knows more about php/css/html than I do, or ever will!!! :)

New to Serendipity

Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 7:17 pm
by Graveside Tales
Hi my name is Dale and my partners and I run a small press publishing company that specializes in horror books. http://www.gravesidetales.com. The backbone of the site is Joomla and I hate the way it handles content. It's too complicated for what I wanted to do. I have since added serendipity and wrapped it into Joomla which has solved my content display problems. I did some reading and found out that the bulletproof theme was the best solution and recently upgraded to Bulletproof 1.1.

Now if I could only get the Tinymce to work than life would be grand. I installed it and followed the directions the best I could and when I go to use the WYSIWYG function I have no icons. :(

~Dale L. Murphy