Even though versions 6 and 7 of IE will continue to decline, we still need to test in 8, 9, and 10. Last year we got a some great new tools for doing just that.

My favorite is Microsoft’s virtual drives preconfigured with the aforementioned browsers. But to really take advantage of this you can use the free software, VirtualBox, on your Mac or Linux box. Here is tutorial on how to set this up.

A github user by the name of xdissent has created some scripts that make the job of setting these up a little less painful.

http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/

I have used Stack Exchange for years but it is great to see a corner dedicated to my favorite CMS system.

The next step is to add ‘has_archive’ => true in your arg variable.

Here is my code for the work section

add_action('init', 'my_custom_init');
function my_custom_init()
{
$labels = array(
'name' => _x('work', 'post type general name'),
'singular_name' => _x('work', 'post type singular name'),
'add_new' => _x('Add New', 'work'),
'add_new_item' => __('Add New work'),
'edit_item' => __('Edit work'),
'new_item' => __('New work'),
'view_item' => __('View work'),
'search_items' => __('Search work'),
'not_found' =>  __('No work found'),
'not_found_in_trash' => __('No work found in Trash'),
'parent_item_colon' => '',
'menu_name' => 'Work' );

$args = array(
'labels' => $labels,
'public' => true,
'publicly_queryable' => true,
'show_ui' => true,
'show_in_menu' => true,
'query_var' => true,
'rewrite' => true,
'capability_type' => 'post',
'has_archive' => true,
'hierarchical' => false,
'menu_position' => null,
'supports' => array('title','editor','author','thumbnail','excerpt','comments','custom-fields','revisions'),
'taxonomies' => array('post_tag','category')
);
register_post_type('work',$args);
}

One final hint is that you will need to flush the cache the first time if this is a change. Add this after the above code and then delete it after you load the page.

add_action('admin_init', 'flush_rewrite_rules');

“Pseudo-elements create abstractions about the document tree beyond those specified by the document language. For instance, document languages do not offer mechanisms to access the first letter or first line of an element’s content. CSS pseudo-elements allow style sheet designers to refer to this otherwise inaccessible information”

If you develop websites, as I do, you most likely have been using them for years as well. Does this look familiar:

1. a:link
2. a:visited
3. a:hover
4. a:active

So the state of the link is not itself in the document tree (the html), but we can reference it in our CSS.

So why is it time to explore these very nifty developments in CSS now? Two reasons:

1. As we can see at CSS3.info the number of selectors that are available to most browsers has grown in recent years.
2. And the IE7/IE8 project, spear-headed by Dean Edwards, which in their words is – “A JavaScript library to make Microsoft Internet Explorer behave like a standards-compliant browser. It fixes many HTML and CSS issues and makes transparent PNG work correctly under IE5 and IE6.”

A quick look at this page of examples will show you how many more pseudo selectors this tiny bit of javascript code can add. I have used the code for years, and there is a google group available for bug reporting and support.

Learning to use pseudo classes not only will add more ways of reaching items on your page, they will also help you get more out of the powerful javascript library jQuery.

In the past I decided not to dive too deeply into learning new CSS tricks that I could not make much use of due to IE5.5 and IE6 limitations. However with IE6 in it’s waning days, and the ability to shore up some of it’s short comings with the IE7-Javascript code, now is the time to jump in and an make us of these tools.

Most of my WordPress theme work has centered around hand crafted solutions for each client but this has meant I have started from close to scratch for each project. Over the next couple of months I plan to evaluate a variety of frameworks to see what I can learn and how much I can package to speed up some of the production work.

I am not sure if I will find one that fits my needs or if I will blend a few together to make my own framework but I anticipate learning a good bit about customizing the entire theming experience.

My goals include:

• Creating a theme option page to allow user customizable options such as a header graphic
• Exploring the new version of Flutter
• Integrate it with my CSS reset and general styles
• Allowing widgetized sidebars if it will not break the design

Some frameworks that I will be exploring:

• Thematic
• Sandbox
• Theme Hybrid
• WP Framework

And here are a few useful tutorials about theming:

• Building Custom WordPress Theme
• Frameworks, Child Themes, Filters and Hooks?
• How to make a child theme for WordPress: A pictorial introduction for beginners
• Justin Tadlock explaining his reasoning behind creating Hybrid Theme