No programming blog is complete without decent syntax highlighting so it seemed reasonable to expect there to already be a good plug-in available to provide the functionality I need. Sure enough, a quick search resulted in finding WP-Syntax. The plug-in is based on GeSHi which started as the syntax highlighter for phpBB and is now a fully independent project with support for most major languages.

As a demonstration (and a test) here’s some PHP:

public class Foo {
   public function __construct($bar) {
      echo 'Hello World!';
   {
}

and some CSS (with line numbers):

1
2
3
4

   .foo {
      color: #FFFFFF;
      height: 100px;
   }

I think that’s enough of a demonstration and promotion of the previously mentioned projects but expect to see some code related posts in the not-to-distant future.

You may have noticed that I have just launched a new, improved site design. I decided on a new look in order to accomodate the changing direction of the site and my future plans for its content.

Before

After

The first thing you might notice is the wider layout (see the before and after screenshots) which allows for both a wider reading area and more content in the sidebars (more on that in another post). The shorter header section is more streamlined too which also gives over more space to content. The emphasis on content is also echoed by the new location of the sidebars on the right. Content is king!

So, what will all this space be used for? Well I am hoping to keep the content updated much more frequently and with much more of a technical emphasis. I have been working as a professional web developer for over a year now and it’s time I started documenting some of my experiences. Maybe somebody somewhere might find it useful as well as it being a good record for me in the future.

Any feedback or bug reports on the new design are more than welcome. I know its far from perfect but I hope to iron out all the major problems over the next few weeks.