Windows 8 failed

I’m upgraded since a month to Windows 8 and I tried to give it a real chance, but I need to say : It failed… I missed the start button, I hate the Modern UI, the App store is full of crap. Windows 8 is a mixture of good old Windows and iOS, but nobody needs a mixture. Well, iOS is build on top of Mac OS, but it’s even _not_ a mixture of MacOS and just a couple of touch elements. It’s a pure Touch UI (same for Android).

The Metro Modern UI try to combine both, but that doesn’t work for me. When I try change some settings in an App it’s sometimes hidden in the Charms bar, but the Control panel itself is a classic Windows styled UI, how awful must this work on the Surface Pro ? I often need 2-3 seconds to remind how I can go back to the Control panel, did you every try this when you work with a dual monitor setup (and work on the left monitor) ? Yes it works, but I missed often the upper edge.

The app store could be a real benefit , better than Steam, better than the iOS App store, cause we have so many games played in the past on Windows, search for a good classic point and click adventure…. nothing. Ok, I admit, the store needs some more time. but I don’t need that tiny silly iOS games which I played on my first iPod Touch back again, not on a Full HD desktop PC (and please no more Star Trek Angry Birds). AND a simple mail/browser/calendar app program needs to be open instantly.

My biggest issue : I need to work in my daily business with Windows 7 (Visual Studio will _never_ Metro / Modern / Touch UI friendly), so a switch between old/new UI is horrible when you return to your home computer. I missed the start button, I forgot about the Charms bar and other shortcuts…

Microsoft should cut off (and even improve) the good old desktop UI from the Touch UI, both are ok, but both needs their own devices.

Slowdown

Now a half year later…

Snow, snow, snow

Back from my ski trip, now back to work.

Release of NextGEN Gallery 1.9.0

WordPress 3.3 is coming with big steps, so it’s time to update NextGEN Gallery. As said in my previous posts, I’ve included Plupload to this plugin as soon as you jump to WordPress 3.3 version. Moreover I fixed a couple of bugs. Here is a short list :

• NEW : Keep images transparency for PNG and GIF format
• NEW : Switch to Plupload, support now HTML5 Upload (only with WordPress 3.3)
• NEW : Added client side resize feature (only with WordPress 3.3)
• NEW : Support for gallery templates in album shortcodes [ album id=x template=”name” gallery=”templatename” ]
• NEW : Added new hook ngg_delete_picture
• Changed : Updated to jQuery Cycle Version 2.9995
• Changed : Always cache the single pictures, remove option
• Bugfix : Couldn’t use bulk operation for serach results
• Bugfix : Bugfix for Edit thumbnails under IE 8 + 9
• Bugfix : Allow empty altext in ngg.editImage
• Bugfix : Various PHP notice fixes
• Bugfix : Resize fix for Shutter effect and mobile Browser
• Bugfix : FTP Import missing slug field into database
• Bugfix : Check also EXIF field “DateTimeOriginal” for timestamp

Download NextGEN Gallery Version 1.9.0
Release Version @ wp.org

30 years later…

Today, the IBM-PC has his birthday ! I’m too young for MS-DOS 1.00, but I remember very good the time when I first time “work” with a PC (Think it was Larry 1 ). My own first computer was a Amiga 500, and stand up : After one year I owned my first 512 Kbyte memory extension…! What was your first computer ?

Greets from Andalusia

Back from a great vacation, I’m now starting to finish the next release of NextGEN Gallery

Next round S95

After 5 years my Powershot S2 IS goes into retirement. I’m very happy with my first digital camera, but during the last year I need a camera with a better result at low light. All the time I’m looking for a DSLR, but I’m just a hobby photographer and so the form factor is at the end more important then the possibilities. Today I receive my second camera : Powershot S95 with HD video and (again) RAW images…

80.000 Blogs

The people behind the WP.org introduced a new pie chart. It returns a percentage breakdown of the versions being actively used by that plugin’s users. I’m very surprised how many user are currently uses (or activated) NextGEN Gallery. It’s more than 80.000 blogs worldwide… More over I’m astonished how many user are not updating to the latest version, only 18% installed the latest version….

WordPress 3.0 Memory Requirements: 256 MB

In the last weeks after the release of WordPress 3.0 I got again a lot of failure reports in the forums like :

I am getting the following error on a fresh install. Any idea why?

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 16777216 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 58368 bytes) in /vservers/mysite/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/nextgen-gallery/widgets/widgets.php on line 308

The reason is the increased memory needs for WordPress itself, a developer noticed that they raised the requirement up to 256MB ! Although this value is currently absolute unrealistic for a shared hosting, it means you need to increase your memory limit. I tested my plugin here with 48MB and 64MB limits and it works fine… If you can use the plugin but you are not longer able to create thumbnails, please remind my blog post two years ago, it’s the same issue…

New antenna ?

Back from my vacation, I found a interesting new antenna ( is this the 5G network ? ):