Why use free software, write free software but conform to non free web design?

Consider a font style like this one:

font-family: "Helvetica", sans-serif;

On a freshly installed GNU/Linux system this will use the fallback « sans-serif » default font, which is most likely Bitstream Vera Sans. Although Bitstream Vera Sans is a very beautiful font, it is really much bigger and wider than Helvetica or Arial. Some designs may not fit anymore or lose their particular character, when viewed on systems without the « right » font.

The preinstalled fonts that come with both, the Windows and the Mac operating system, are : Arial, Arial Black, Comic Sans, Courier New,Georgia, Impact, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS and Verdana, as you can see in the « safe list » on the indispensable typetester.org website. However, none of those fonts is preinstalled on a free operating system.

Included in free operating systems, you will most likely find the following typefaces, released under a free licence:

• Bitstream Vera
• DejaVu based on Bitstream Vera
• Liberation metrically compatible with Arial, Times New Roman and Courier New
• Nimbus Sans L based on Helvetica
• Nimbus Roman No9 L based on Times
• Nimbus Mono L based on Courier
• GNU Free Fonts based on Nimbus

I have created a comparison chart – which ou may visualize here in screenshots [sans-serif | serif | monospace] or download  [HTML | PNG]. It basically boils down to the following replacement suggestions:

* different line-height, that should probably be adjusted.

In conlusion, the example CSS of the beginning could become :

font-family: "Helvetica", "Nimbus Sans L", "FreeSans", sans-serif;

So, if the client has Helvetica installed, we use Helvetica, otherwise, we try Nimbus, then FreeSans.

Another example: A stylesheet like this:

font-family: "Verdana", "Arial", sans-serif;

could become:

font-family: "Verdana", "Bitstream Vera Sans", "Arial", "Liberation Sans", sans-serif;

You could also write this the other way round, if you prefer the GPL fonts on free operating systems…

var $j = jQuery.noConflict();
$j(function(){
    jQuery('.scroll-pane').jScrollPane({scrollbarWidth:10});
});

However, the client also wanted the horizontal scrollbars customized…

It took me several hours to stumble upon the modification of Luck’s plugin by Threeformed, a canadian media company.
But I ran into problems integrating their plugin with WordPress’ noConflict function and had to modify all the calls to « $ », into « jQuery ». It then worked out, but I needed to be able to design it via CSS independently of the vertical scrollbars. In order to do that I added a second CSS selector, through which I was then able to design the horizontal scrollbars using other background images than for the vertical ones.
One strange thing however is that this plugin expects the element you want to add scrollbars to to be set to « float:left », otherwise it has problems calculating the initial width of the horizontal scrollbars.

You may download my modified jQuery plugins here.

I am calling the plugin the following way :

var $j = jQuery.noConflict();
var originalSizes = new Array();
$j(function(){
    jQuery('.scroll-horizontal-pane').jScrollHorizontalPane({scrollbarHeight:10});
});

The corresponding CSS could look something like this :

.jScrollPaneContainer {
    position: relative;
    overflow: hidden;
    z-index: 1;
    outline: none;
}
.jScrollPaneTrack {
    position: absolute;
    cursor: pointer;
    right: 0;
    top: 0;
    height: 100%;
    width: 10px;
    background: url(track-vertical.jpg) repeat-y;
}
.jScrollHPaneContainer .jScrollPaneTrack {
    left: 0;
    bottom: 0;
    right: auto;
    top: auto;
    width: 100%;
    height: 10px;
}
.jScrollPaneDrag {
    position: absolute;
    background: url(cap-vertical.jpg) repeat-y;
    cursor: pointer;
    overflow: hidden;
}
.jScrollHPaneContainer .jScrollPaneTrack {
    background: url(track-horizontal.jpg) repeat-x;
}
.jScrollHPaneContainer .jScrollPaneDrag {
    background: url(cap-horizontal.jpg) repeat-x;
}

In order to do this I added the following lines of code to the showNavigation if-loop :

if ( $showNavigation == 1 ) {
  // code..
} else {
  // autoplay
  jQuery(window).load( function() {
  timerID_$galleryID = setInterval( \"jQuery.galleria.next( 'stage_$galleryID', '$galleryID' );\", $intervalMilliSec );
 });
}

So, if one unselects « show navigation » in wp-galleria’s admin panel in WordPress, the slideshow will autoplay.

I made a nice and sober theme for Mailboy, a webinterface for Postfix and Amavis written by Emmanuel Revah. Mailboy is available as a beta-version for the moment but will be published soon under the GPL-License.
As you can see, I even use the software myself and am very happy it exists. :)

• title and description
  
• search engine friendly permalink support (thank you Manu)
  
• defining the number of entries in RSS feed
  
• modify style to your needs
  

php-indexes is distributed under the GNU Public License (GPL), version 3. Use at your own risk.

I’m happy with feedback & criticism.

Try a demo here.

download php-indexes-v1.1.tar.gz | php-indexes-v1.1.zip (mai 2010)

However here is genethumb.sh v0.1.2_u.

You can program stream recordings with it, and it works pretty well. It uses the GUIless interface of VLC, cVLC. Probably you could do the same with mplayer/mencoder. The scripts are published under the WTF Public Licence.

• Video Recorder: video-stream-recording.sh
• Audio Recorder: stream-audio-recording.sh