kag's tech blog

There are countless tooltip plugins using jQuery. But not many of them use title attribute. I couldn’t find what I was looking for, so I based myself on vTip and added live() support and tweaked a thing or two.

Download it here (2.25 KB)

By default, it will only show custom tooltips for images, but you can tweak the jQuery call on line 74 to suit your needs. You can also edit lines 40-42 to change its appearance.

Last but not least, you can also edit line 17 to edit the default values for the delay and offset position.

A new release just in time for Christmas.

• Added the instructions to the configuration page.
• The published date format can be customized.
• Added a link to view the slideshow provided by Picasa.
• Added the Fancybox engine. Video playback is buggy, but someone requested it.
• Other miscellaneous internal changes so it’s more self-contained. Not that it was spreading accross your WordPress install, but it’s even cleaner.
• Now connecting to Picasa the WordPress way.
• Uninstalling kPicasa now deletes the configuration settings. Nothing should be left behind.

Upcoming features:

• Multiple unlisted albums.
• Switch to Shortcodes.

Remember to vote for kPicasa Gallery in the WordPress directory!

Posted from Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.

Although this is a maintenance release, there are quite a few changes in the code:

• Moved the configuration page under the Plugins sub-menu
• Added the Shadowbox picture engine, which works like a charm for both photos and videos.
• The album summary, location, published date, and number of photos can now be shown or hidden on an individual basis
• Added the possibility to play a slideshow when using Highslide
• Made the plugin ready to be translated (using _e() and __() functions)
• Thickbox can now play videos, although it’s a bit buggy under IE. It was clearly not made for this, it needed a little hack to even work. There’s not much more I can do.
• Including SWFObject and all the CSS files with the proper WordPress functions (cleaner that way)
• Fixed a HTML validation problem (minor)
• Fixed a bug where Thickbox was always called on my server

I’d like to hear what picture engine you’re using. Lightbox and Slimbox 2 can’t display videos. Video playback is buggy with Thickbox as it was not made for this, it only works after a bit of hacking. I wonder how many of you are using them.

In an attempt to resolve a conflict many people are having with other plugins, kPicasa Gallery is now loaded differently by WordPress. Thanks Salman for the solution!

If you have Google Analytics for WordPress, Digg Digg or TweetMeme installed, please let me know if my fix resolved the issue for you, or if you notice anything else unusual.

For the technical people, add_filter() is now called with priority 9 instead of default priority 10. I’m not sure if I should have went lower than 1 below the default priority. I’m very open to your comments on this!

I also applied Simon Foster‘s correction to diminish the chances of failing to load an internal file.

If your current installation is already working correctly, there’s nothing new for you this time.

Don’t forget to rate kPicasa Gallery on its WordPress plugin page. All votes are appreciated!

Here are the cameras I had in the past:

• FujiFilm Finepix 1400 Zoom bought new for $500 in 2000. I also got myself 32MB SmartMedia card for $100. What a deal! It had a whooping 1.3 megapixels. Although it had shining reviews from multiple sites, I was never really satisfied with the quality, all the pictures were a bit too red. Went on a trip to California and brought back crappy pictures. I told myself I would NEVER go on a trip with such a crappy camera again.
• Canon PowerShot A60 bought used on eBay in early 2006 for around $70. The quality was MUCH better than my previous camera. It had a manual mode that was really helpful.
• Canon SD700 IS bought new for $370 at the end of 2006. I wanted a small camera that I could carry in my pockets all the time. It served me well for years.

I loved both of my Canon cameras, but I found myself too limited in some situations. Particularly in low-light situations. At ISO 800, there was a lot of noise with my SD700.

I always loved photography, so after looking around for months, I finally found a great deal and bought myself a Canon EOS Rebel XS. It’s an entry-level SLR, but the level of control you have is simply in another league. I understand pretty much all the theory, but I need more practice.

For now, I only have the 18-55 IS lense that came with the body. But I might buy a 50mm f/1.8 prime lense sometime in the near future, it’s helpful in these low-light scenes such as weddings and all.

I have a few pictures in the « Experimentations » album in the kPicasa Gallery demo.

Here’s a list of my favorite applications:

• Road Trip ($4.99) keep track of your car’s fuel economy and maintenance expenses. The reason why I bought this one was because you can import and export all of your data. I was able to import my Excel data from the last 4 years!
• Skype (free) I used it to call my girlfriend home on a trip to UK last summer. I would connect to some random WiFi network and call home. It worked much better than I expected!!! And best of all, the calls were free since my girlfriend was also on Skype at home.
• WordPress (free) I used it to update my personal/travel blog while I was on my trip to the UK. Unfortunately at the time OS 3.0 wasn’t out yet, so you couldn’t cut/copy/paste so sometimes it was annoying.
• Kijiji (free) a front-end to the Kijiji classified. Works really well.
• eBay (free) also a front-end to eBay, it works well too.
• Facebook (free) how could I live without this one! The new version that came out a few weeks ago really kicks ass. Can’t wait for video support.
• FlightControl ($0.99) cool little game where the goal is to route planes to the correct landing zones. Sounds easy but when you have 10 planes to manage on the screen at the same time, it’s stressful.
• Bejeweled 2 ($2.99) I think I bought this one on nostalgia alone. You can play for free on the web site, but the application lets you play offline. Truly a classic in its genre.
• Boxed In (free for a limited time) one very cool logic-based puzzle game with 50 different levels. The goal is extremely simple, yet it takes so much thinking. I was really addicted, but it took a few nights to complete it.
• YP.ca (free) the canadian version of the Yellow Pages application. It works really well and you can even run a reverse lookup, which you can’t even do on the website!

And now a list of nice/useful applications that need improvement:

• eBuddy (free) I use this application to connect to MSN. I think the interface needs a bit more work. But I really wish it would support connecting from multiple locations, that way my computer woudln’t get disconnected from MSN when eBuddy goes online.
• craigsphone (free) it’s a useful application but it’s so slow. It seems that it does not cache the results, each time you open an item it loads for a few seconds. It seems to me that they could prefetch the items to open more quickly.

What are your favorite applications?

This new version fixes one very minor bug, one minor CSS annoyance and is a little bit more flexible with those with very custom installations:

• Was not using the PHP function defined() correctly. But this is more of a cosmetic bug fix, as this wasn’t causing any trouble;
• Removed « !important » from one of the CSS rules, as requested by Ted Thompson;
• For those using WordPress 2.6 and higher, it now tries to use the WP_PLUGIN_URL constant, instead of hard-coding the plugins directory path. This allows people who moved the plugins directory somewhere else to use kPicasa Gallery. No impact on people who are already using kPicasa Gallery. Requested by Martin.

Hello everyone,

I just released a new version of kPicasa Gallery. This new version brings a much requested feature, video support.

For this first release, selecting the Highslide engine will integrate the video on your site. Other engines will open a new window to the video on your Picasa account. This is because only Highslide provides an easy way to play videos in a popup.

For an example, check out the « Expérimentations » album in the demo. The last thumbnail on the page is a video.

Don’t forget to rate kPicasa Gallery on its WordPress page!

It seems I’m the last person on Earth to get an iPod. I’m still discovering how it works, but one thing’s for sure: it’s really cool.