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  • Restoring the Side Panel button in Google Chrome

    Restoring the Side Panel button in Google Chrome

    A recent update to Google Chrome has got rid of the side panel button and added a new “pinning” feature instead.

    The side panel button opened up the bookmarks sidebar and, from there, you could switch it to one of the other sidebars. In particular, I use the Reading List feature, so this was how I accessed it.

    The idea now is that you open whichever sidebar you want and then you can pin it into place – multiple ones if you wish. Google have said, “You can open most side panel features through the Chrome menu”. Which is true. But the reading list is a number of clicks deep, and not obvious as to where it is (Chrome Menu -> Bookmarks and lists -> Reading List -> Show Reading List). I kinda don’t understand why they got rid of the side panel button, but also add in the pinning feature.

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  • extract() usage is highly discouraged

    extract() usage is highly discouraged

    In 2012, the much loved and much missed WordPress developer Alex Mills raised a WordPress Trac ticket…

    extract() is a terrible function that makes code harder to debug and harder to understand. We should discourage it’s use and remove all of our uses of it.

    As a result, use of the PHP functions was removed from WordPress and was added to the coding standards (which, in turn, made it into the WordPress sniffs for PHPCS).

    But why, and what should we do instead?

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  • Create a live preview of your WordPress plugin using Playground

    Create a live preview of your WordPress plugin using Playground

    WordPress Playground, if you’ve not tried it already, is a browser based instance of WordPress, operated by WordPress.org. Essentially, you can create a temporary version of WordPress for use in trying things out.

    And developer, with plugins in the official directory, can now add a button to their plugin page, with a direct link to Playground, allowing an instance installation and demonstration of your plugin.

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  • ShareOpenly: Now for WordPress

    ShareOpenly: Now for WordPress

    Ben Werdmuller, a developer and startup founder, has recently launched ShareOpenly, a method of adding sharing links to your website content but for the modern, open, social web.

    You know all those “share to Facebook” / “share to Twitter” links you see all over peoples’ websites? They’re all out of date.

    Social media has evolved over the last year, yet nobody has “share to” links for Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, etc. There have been a few attempts to create “share to Mastodon” buttons, but they haven’t taken the larger breadth of the new social media landscape into account.

    So I’ve built a prototype, which I’ve called ShareOpenly.

    ShareOpenly announcement

    Now, a WordPress plugin is available to add this feature quickly and easy to your site. Indeed, scroll down to the bottom of this post and you’ll see it in action!

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  • My contribution to WordPress 6.5

    My contribution to WordPress 6.5

    I was on vacation last week so wasn’t around for the release of WordPress 6.5.

    Look closely at the long list of contributors and you’ll find my name. And, once, once more, my change was related to inclusionary language.

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