2.2 Release

July 19, 2008 by Benedict Eastaugh | 16 comments

Tarski 2.2 improves Tarski’s compatibility with WordPress 2.6, tidies up various parts of the hooks API, improves performance, and adds a much cleverer navbar link selector. Details are in the changelog as per usual.

In my view, the best part of this release is a vastly improved navbar selector. It’s a major improvement over the old implementation for a few reasons, firstly because it actually shows you the structure of your pages: they’re not just a big long list, but a properly indented tree that allows you to see just where in the overall structure of your site a given page fits.

Secondly, some people have a lot of pages. Until now, if that was the case, the navbar selector would utterly overwhelm the options page. Now it doesn’t have to: each sub-list is collapsible, so you can reduce the list to just what you need to see at any one time. I’ve found it a great help . Which lists are collapsed and which aren’t is saved in the database, so if you collapse a load of menus you won’t find them expanding out again next time you visit the Tarski options page.

Performance improvements have been gleaned by only loading Tarski’s library of administrative functionality when you’re actually using the WordPress admin page, not for every visitor hitting your front page. In addition to this, paginating archive and search pages is now the default, and the code that removes pagination and shows all the results for a given year, tag or search query has been reimplemented in a more optimised way that generally reduces the number of database queries required to generate the page by a significant number.

Additionally, changes in the WordPress core in version 2.6 has allowed me to deprecate a large chunk of Tarski code in favour of simpler and more elegant WordPress API calls. This makes the Tarski codebase more maintainable and also helps with performance. Removing a few unnecessary Tarski API hooks also helps with this.

Lastly, I’ve tidied up Tarski’s gallery and image support a bit so it fits in better with the gallery functionality added in WordPress 2.5 and updated in 2.6. Galleries should now be styled a little more nicely, and individual image pages are cleaner. Hope you enjoy the new version.

Support requests should go in the forum as usual.

Tags: 2.2, compatibility, gallery, navbar, optimisation, options page, performance, WordPress 2.6

16 comments

Kevin on July 19, 2008 at 4:19 pm

Awesome, iv already upgraded on my blog and it works like charm!
Vyoma on July 19, 2008 at 6:27 pm

The upgrade went smoothly without a hitch. My wordpress installation is currently on the latest 2.6 and the earlier Tarski version was 2.1.4.

Thanks a ton for a great theme!
Pingback from BTW · Tarski 2.2 on July 19, 2008 at 7:09 pm
blue-green on July 19, 2008 at 7:11 pm

Ben,
upgrade went flawlessly. No problems detected whatsoever. Currently running WP 2.6, upgraded from 2.1.4 to 2.2

Thanks for all your work!
Doug Smith on July 19, 2008 at 10:02 pm

Fatal error: Call to undefined function tarski_should_show_authors() in /data/5/0/138/118/301933/user/306961/htdocs/dougweb/doug/wp-content/themes/tarski/library/classes/options.php on line 60

Got this when I clicked on teh theme in 2.6. I used the new upload utility to uplaod it and remove it frokm the archive. Have to try again.
Ben Eastaugh on July 19, 2008 at 10:04 pm

Yeah, I’m sorting that one now.
Ben Eastaugh on July 19, 2008 at 10:15 pm

Should be fixed in 2.2.1 which I’ve just tagged. You can just get the updated Options class so as to save you re-downloading the whole thing.
Pingback from dies & das · Tarski 2.2.1 released on July 20, 2008 at 5:21 am
Ben Eastaugh on July 20, 2008 at 9:27 pm

2.2.2 fixes a bug in the Links template. You can grab the new file and just tweak the version number in style.css to get rid of the nag.
Martin on July 21, 2008 at 9:16 am

RSS logo and other small logos are missing from the theme….?

I just get the text without the logo:

-Subscribe to feed
-Comments feed for this article
Ben Eastaugh on July 21, 2008 at 9:20 am

Try re-downloading it. The images are on a sprite, images/icons.png.
Martin on July 21, 2008 at 9:22 am

Yep icons are in the file and uploaded but are not showing up like the previous version.
Martin on July 21, 2008 at 9:29 am

Now that’s weird. The icons show up for the classic.css but not the default.css.
Ben Eastaugh on July 21, 2008 at 9:34 am

That is odd, given that the images are only referenced in the main stylesheet. Can you open a thread on the support forum with a link to your site?
Rosemary on July 25, 2008 at 1:36 am

I have a small problem: I’ve updated to 2.2.2, but I still get this message:
“A new version of the Tarski theme, version 2.2.2 is now available. Your installed version is 2.2.1.”
Is this a known issue?

Thanks Guys!
Ben Eastaugh on July 25, 2008 at 7:25 am

I just forgot to bump the version number when I initially released 2.2.2, you must have one of the copies from before I fixed it. Just change the version number in style.css to 2.2.2.