The Chromium Blog has also posted some initial results among the top web browsers for Windows (emphasis is mine).

In this example, when running Sputnik on a Windows machine, we saw the following results: Opera 10.50: 78 failures, Safari 4: 159 failures, Chrome 4: 218 failures, Firefox 3.6: 259 failures and Internet Explorer 8: 463 failures.

An experimental plot to illustrate how the latest stable browsers compare.

Putting that into terms of 100% conformance rates: Opera 10.50: 98.5% successful, Safari 4: 97.0% successful, Chrome 4: 95.9% successful, Firefox 3.6: 95.1% successful and Internet Explorer 8: 91.2% successful.

Running the test myself in the latest Opera 10.50 snapshot for Linux (Build 6242) I’m seeing a solid 77, proof that Opera 10.50 is progressing still!

As explained in their post, the goal of this test is not related to Javascript performance in terms of speed, but in terms of conformance to the spec. Ideally all browsers would be in the center of the bullseye, meaning they all conform and behave (nearly) identically.

The Sputnik tests have been released as an open source project, so if you’re interested in providing conformance test cases to improve the future web..now is a perfect chance to get involved.

To run the test yourself or learn more about it, visit: http://sputnik.googlelabs.com/

Warning: getimagesize(/home/.some-dir/example.com/folder/httpd.www/wp-content/uploads/some-image.jpg) [function.getimagesize]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/.some-dir/example.com/folder/httpd.www/wp-content/blah/blah/blah.php on line 123

I noticed that some pages that generated image information were printing errors out on my pages with private server file structures included. Generally you don’t want to see this printed out to the public.

I’m not guaranteeing a fix for you, but rather what worked for me.

If you are getting an error link the one that I’ve listed above, more specifically the “failed to open stream: No such file or directory,” then you may be about to fix it in only a few minor steps.

Things you will need:

• FTP (I use FileZilla)
• phpMyAdmin
• Ability to add a new plugin to your site
• Patience

Procedure

Single quotes must be the normal ascii quotes. Chances are, if you copy and paste from my blog, they will be the wrong type so double check that as it could give you problems.

1. First and foremost, make sure to backup your entire database to a safe place. I’m not liable in the case that you don’t backup your database and this procedure borks your blog (or any other case for that matter).
2. Create a new file named “abstest.php” and upload it to your blog’s root directory after entering the following code into it:
   <?php define('ABSPATH', dirname(__FILE__).'/'); echo ABSPATH; ?>
3. Open a new browser tab and navigate to “http://www.your-website.com/abstest.php“. You should find a short page with the printout of your servers absolute path.
4. Check that the path provided by this test file matches the base path printed out by the getimagesize() error exactly. In my case, my server had changed slightly so the differences were similar to the following:
   /home/.some-dir/example.com/folder/httpd.www/
/home/example.com/folder/httpd.www/
5. If you find a mismatch, then you’ve found your problem and the rest is simple. If not, then my tips will most likely not solve your particular WordPress error(s).
6. If you’ve found a mismatch, then continue: Open a new browser tab and navigate to your phpMyAdmin interface. Select your WordPress database, then click Search. I searched all tables for a match of the path that was different, in my case it was “.some-dir/“.
7. If there are matches found then you need to click the SQL tab at the top (preferably in a new tab) and paste the following (making sure to edit it to match the table and fields you need) and run it to find and replace that changed part of the path.
   update TABLE_NAME set FIELD_NAME = replace(FIELD_NAME, ‘find this string’, ‘replace found string with this string’);
   For more information on SQL find and replace, either search Google or read this.
8. After replacing all of the affected tables and strings, your images should be properly address. You’re not done yet though.
9. Open WordPress Plugins and add/install a plugin named “Regenerate Thumbnails“. After installing it, make sure to activate it.
10. In your Admin panel, find the Tools menu and expand it. You should see a menu item labeled “Regen. Thumbnails”…click it. This will open a page with a start button. Clicking this button will begin the process of correcting your thumbnail dimensions as well as other metadata. It will take some time depending on the number of thumbnails you have accumulated.
11. After the progress bar reaches 100% it will notify you that it is complete. You’re all done! You may need to clear your cache to refresh any pages that still generate the previous error message.

If you had any problems with the above mentioned procedure, I would suggest restoring your database using your backup copy and either trying again, paying someone to do it for you or just forgetting about it.

If it works then great! If not then sorry you’ve wasted your time. It worked for me, so maybe it will work for you as well.

…so, all I did was write a script that will insert a link to a style sheet that’s stored here at kyleabaker.com which overwrites these empty styles with the correct ones.

If you’ve never used scripts before then you should first learn how to setup UserJS. After you’ve setup Userjs, you may need to enable UserJS for secure pages (https) in Opera’s internal configuration page….”opera:config#UserPrefs|UserJavaScriptonHTTPS“. Just check/enable that option. Make sure to click save!

Lastly, save the “Twitter-Rounded” script to your UserJS folder that you setup in the steps above.

Now you have a more pleasant looking Twitter page in Opera 10.5.

If you’re not using them yet, feel free to browse around and check into them!

After getting several comments about users experiencing errors with this plugin while using IE6 I finally gave in and patched the little bug. Why are they still using IE6?

…well, it works fine now…as far as I know. I’ve had a few people test it with no errors as well as myself, so hopefully if you couldn’t use it before it will work fine now.

To find out more about this WordPress plugin, go to it’s main page. You will find all released versions there (past and present) as well as a link to the official WordPress Plugin page. Feel free to leave feedback!

v0.9

• Added detection for Venenux GNU Linux and Oracle Linux.
• Added detection for Laconica and MovableType trackbacks.
• Cleaned some of the code for trackback detections.

You can find out more about WP-UserAgent as well as a download from the main page.

So far I haven’t had enough time to make the script Greasemonkey compatible, but it should be shortly. For now, it works great with Opera.

Thanks to @fearphage for helping me get this sorted out with Greasemonkey as well!

Head on over and grab the script so you can keep tabs on how much time you spend watching tv…online…on netflix.

I’ve not been very impressed with phpBB since I first started using in way back when the 2.x branch was the latest stable.

Now that phpBB3 has been bombarded with spam, I’ve been forced to try new anti-spam measures.

I’m very disappointed in their community support for this issue, but I was able to find a great post that covers several options. It’s entitled Preventing Spam in 3.0 and it’s been the best sort of spam solutions I’ve found for phpBB3.

If you’re having problems with spam bots on your phpBB forums, then I would highly suggest that you look into these solutions and pick one that works for you.

In the meantime, I’ll be waiting for phpBB to release some sort of solution to all of this and become as reliable and stable as WordPress has been.

Easy theme and plugin (a.k.a. mod) installs, updates and uninstalls would also be highly appreciated. As well as a one click automatic update system for phpBB itself.

phpBB still has a long way to go before it will be as friendly as the current WordPress admin panel, but all of this manual work isn’t enough to convince me that a better solution is available…so I guess I’ll be sticking with phpBB3 for a while.

While browser sniffing may seem like a good idea at first, you may be setting yourself up for problems later.

The biggest problem with browser sniffing is that it is usually relied on far too heavily to even consider removing later. The inner workings of a site can be based (unknowingly sometimes) around working specifically for specified web browsers and nothing more.

One poor use of browser sniffing that I came across today was for EyeWearSelect.com and it just so happens to be an easy fix.

On one of the EyeWearSelect pages, they show a thumbnail preview of a pair of glasses. Below the image is a link entitled “Click to Enlarge”, which uses some javascript to show you a larger picture in a pop-up window. Here’s how they begin the pop-up script..

if (parseInt(navigator.appVersion.charAt(0))>=4){
var isNN=(navigator.appName=="Netscape")?1:0;
var isIE=(navigator.appName.indexOf("Microsoft")!=-1)?1:0;}

Basically, the script says…true or false…this is Netscape? Also, true or false…this is Microsoft (Internet Explorer)? ..but what if you’re not using Netscape or Internet Explorer? What if you’re using Opera? or Konqueror?

If you’re using a browser that doesn’t match Netscape or Internet Explorer, then the future checks for isNN and isIE will never match and your browser will be “incompatible” with the scripts. In this case, the incompatibility is that the author never made it possible for those that are compatible.

A simple fix for this would be to change that bit of code to the following, which would basically check for Internet Explorer and then treat all others differently..

if (parseInt(navigator.appVersion.charAt(0))>=4){
var isIE=(navigator.appName.indexOf("Microsoft")!=-1)?1:0;
var isNN=!isIE;}

They won’t always be this easy for developers to correct, but this script could actually be cleaned up much more than just that.

In most cases, browser sniffing isn’t needed. The more efficient method to follow is capability testing.

If your code requires a web browser with capabilities that others (or not all web browsers) have, then you can use browser sniffing which is a form of hard coding the compatible web browsers…or you can test the browser’s capabilities and see if the javascript that you need to use will be supported.

By using the second method, you make your script much friendlier to the future of both the web and it’s browsers. You will also save yourself some work by not having to update the script each time you want to support another browser that would already be capable of using your script if it weren’t blocked in the first place.

If you run compatibility tests and find that a certain feature will not be available, that’s the time to announce that the user should update their browser or use a different one all together.

Of all of the times that I’ve seen browser sniffing, only a couple have every been properly used. One of those was a browser sniffer that would display instructions and images explaining how to download and save a file to your computer. The images were of course specific to the browser that I was using for a more useful set of instructions.

If you should happen to come across a web site that suggests that your browser is not compatible, fire off an email and let them know that you would appreciate more accurate scripting and detection for your web browser let them know that you would appreciate more accurate scripting!

After a quick look at the source code of the page, I had decided to build a quick plugin for WordPress to insert the same code. So the plugin process began.

I didn’t want to hard code it into the footer of my K2 theme, because I frequently update to the latest K2 theme nightly builds. This way would save me a lot of trouble and even make this neat little Twitter Badge available to thousands. And so…WP-TwitterBadge was born.

I traced the code back to an embeded script from go2web20.net and realized how n00b friendly this script would have been to install anyway even without an easier plugin to install it for you, but the fact that it would save me time in the future was well worth it.

Basically, if you’re not using the WordPress plugin, you just link the script and set a few variables. This made it very easy to make it customizable as well!

Just mimicking their own setup page, I was able to make a quick Options page featuring a live preview (as all of my plugins have so far ). I even coded the preview with way less script than they used on their own page since extreme error checking is really not needed (everything is live so you can see the problems there).

At a rate of 20-30+ new downloads per hour I would say that this plugin is by far my most favored project…considering that it hasn’t been reviewed yet (no trackbacks thus far) by anyone whereas others already have.

If you’d like to checkout this little Twitter Badge on your own site, just head over to the plugin page or search for “WP-TwitterBadge” from your “Add New Plugins” page in WordPress and install it from there. If you like it, pass it on!