2.6 Release Candidate 2

December 21, 2009 by Benedict Eastaugh | 13 comments

With WordPress 2.9 out of the door, I figured it was time to get the ball rolling on the latest Tarski release. There are some fairly extensive improvements to some areas of the internals, so I would very much appreciate some testing before I release the final version.

Highlights of the changes include drawing header images and alternate styles from child themes, support for the new post thumbnails, and a switch to the HTML5 DOCTYPE.

If you test it, can you send me the string of your tarski_options option both before and after the upgrade? You can get it from your database by running the following SQL query on the database where WordPress is installed.

SELECT option_value FROM wp_options WHERE option_name = 'tarski_options';

Thanks!

Update

Found some bugs in the upgrade routine already. RC2 is now out, use that instead.

Tags: 2.6, release candidate, WordPress 2.9

13 comments

Tiffany on December 26, 2009 at 12:44 am

I was wondering if there is in existence a plugin or tutorial-specifically for this theme-that explains how to create alternating backgrounds for the comments. I want to be able to change the background of every other comment to a designated color. I also want to be able to change the color of MY comments as an author and add a REPLY function/link that will quote the comment in which the link was clicked. That is, if the comment I am leaving were to have a REPLY tag and if another visitor were to second my inquiry, they could simply push said REPLY tag and quote my entire comment then say something like “ditto”. Does that make sense?

I’ve seen several tutorials explaining how to add alternate styling but the phrases they say need changing do not exist in your comment.php file. Can you help me?
1. Ben Eastaugh on December 26, 2009 at 2:17 pm
  You don’t need to write a plugin, just add a couple of rules to a custom stylesheet. The requisite classes (odd and even) are in there already, so you just need some CSS like this:
```
#comments .odd  {background:#D4E5EE;}
#comments .even {background:#EAEAEA;}
```
DouglasVB on December 26, 2009 at 6:40 pm

Thanks for putting out another great release Ben! I didn’t see any mention of a fix for this problem: http://tarskitheme.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=1049 Is a fix going to make it into the final release?

Thanks!
1. Ben Eastaugh on December 26, 2009 at 6:53 pm
  
  I haven’t fixed it yet. There were some fairly serious changes in this version, so I want to give the bugs a chance to surface. My plan is to do another round of bug fixes before releasing 2.6, so I’ll address this then.
hellohunter on December 28, 2009 at 6:10 pm

Hi, I just wanted to say thanks for inventing Tarski. It’s like, my favorite theme! It’s real fresh and clean, and it fits my blog really well. Thanks again!!
Brandon on December 31, 2009 at 3:04 pm

You’re switching the doctype, but not any of the markup? I’m looking at the source for this site and it is still using XHTML. So why switch the doctype without changing the markup?
1. Ben Eastaugh on January 4, 2010 at 9:39 am
  
  All the markup generated by Tarski has changed; the markup generated directly by WordPress hasn’t. Fortunately, HTML5 is broadly compatible with XHTML-style markup, self-closing tags and so on.
  
  I made the DOCTYPE change in order to support new HTML5 features, in compatible browsers. There aren’t too many at the moment, but I anticipate more in the future. It seems fairly likely that WordPress core will make the change at some point in the not-too-distant-future.
  1. Brandon on January 4, 2010 at 3:16 pm
    
    Here’s what I mean, and again I’m just looking at the source for this page.
    
    You are not using the following HTML 5 tags: header, hgroup, section, article, time, address, nav, aside, figure, footer.
    
    There are a few themes out there that do use the tags I just mentioned in conjunction with the DOCTYPE. I’m curious why, when to my eyes all of the layout and structure code is still XHTML, you would switch to HTML 5.
    1. Ben Eastaugh on January 4, 2010 at 3:28 pm
      
      Those elements aren’t widely supported yet, and adding them in a way that’s compatible with older browsers (particularly Internet Explorer) would take more work than I have time for right now (patches to improve the markup are welcome). This will be an incremental process; Tarski contains several thousand lines of code, and big changes don’t happen overnight.
      
      To nitpick slightly, the code isn’t “still XHTML” (although I do understand what you’re getting at)—it’s valid HTML5, albeit not as semantic as I would like. My personal site is a better demonstration of where this is going.
Andreas on December 31, 2009 at 4:07 pm

Please, don’t forget to address the wp-caption issue in the upcoming release.
1. Andreas on January 1, 2010 at 10:57 am
  
  Oh, and Happy New Year, by the way.
2. Ben Eastaugh on January 4, 2010 at 9:40 am
  
  I’ll try to sneak that one in too. Cheers Andreas.
Abdullah ARIK on January 10, 2010 at 9:43 am

Hi,

You can find Tarski 2.6 Turkish Language Files here: http://abdullaharik.com/tarski-temasi-turkce-dil-dosyasi/