Tarski » child themes

3.1.3 Release

Benedict Eastaugh — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:52:32 +0000

Tarski 3.1.3 is now available. It fixes some minor bugs and improves compatibility with WordPress 3.3. A full list of changes can be found in the changelog.

Please note that WordPress 3.2 is required for this release.

Download Tarski 3.1.3

You can also get this version as a Git tag.

We strongly recommend following the upgrade guide. Always back up your files and database before running a WordPress or Tarski upgrade. Please ensure that you upgrade WordPress before installing the new version of Tarski.

WordPress 3.3 compatibility

Tarski 3.1 was released to add support for new features in WordPress 3.2, but WordPress 3.3 didn’t add many relevant features so I haven’t done a new major release, but merely fixed a few niggles. This includes fixing a few warnings, removing some invalid HTML, and making the host site name in the footer work correctly when the multi-site functionality is engaged.

Developers working with Tarski—for example, anyone writing a child theme—will be happy to know that the TARSKI_DEBUG constant can now be set by external code such as child themes or plugins. Amongst other things, this should make it easier to debug issues with Tarski’s JavaScript and CSS when writing code that interacts with it.

2.7 Release

Benedict Eastaugh — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 17:42:19 +0000

Tarski 2.7 adds compatibility with many WordPress 3.0 features, including custom backgrounds. A detailed list of changes is available in the changelog. Please note that WordPress 3.0 is required for this release.

Download Tarski 2.7.1

You can also get this version as a Git tag.

We strongly recommend following the upgrade guide. Always back up your files and database before running a WordPress or Tarski upgrade. Please ensure that you upgrade WordPress before installing the new version of Tarski.

Overriding templates

Child themes can now override many of Tarski’s built-in template fragments. Simply create a file of the appropriate name in the app/templates directory of your child theme (you’ll have to create this) and add a file of the appropriate name—Tarski will use it automatically. For example, you could replace the template Tarski displays when there are no posts by adding a no_posts.php file.

Compressed assets

There are also some client-side performance improvements: the theme’s graphics are slightly better compressed, and minified versions of Tarski’s CSS and JavaScript are served by default. The full stylesheets and JS files are of course included with the theme download, so there’s nothing stopping you changing them and then re-minifying (although I would in general recommend using a custom stylesheet or child theme rather than making changes to the theme directly, as this will hamper your ability to upgrade it).

This release also contains numerous small improvements and bug fixes. There are a lot of WordPress 3.0 releases I just didn’t have time to add support for, but hopefully those can be added before too long. If anyone would like to contribute those changes, please take a look at the outstanding issues and fork the project on GitHub. Hope you enjoy the new version.

Please post bug reports, suggestions etc. on the forum.

A basic Tarski child theme

Benedict Eastaugh — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:57:04 +0000

If you want to make a child theme for Tarski, perhaps taking advantage of the new functionality added in Tarski 2.6, I’ve put together a few lines of code that you can start with.

The important thing that this code does is use the main Tarski stylesheet as well as the child theme’s stylesheet, so you don’t need to copy that over.

2.6 Release

Benedict Eastaugh — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 22:11:42 +0000

Tarski 2.6 brings support for new WordPress features, improves the API, and makes the theme far more amenable to customisation via child themes. A detailed list of changes is available in the changelog. Please note that WordPress 2.9 is required for this release.

Download Tarski 2.6

You can also get this version as a Git tag.

Better child themes

Child themes can now support their own custom headers and stylesheets. Simply create your child theme and add your new header images to the headers/ directory in the child theme, rather than in your version of Tarski. The same applies to custom stylesheets. This makes Tarski child themes far more powerful, and allows you to keep all your Tarski customisations in a child theme rather than having to worry about backing up files stored in your Tarski directory as well.

Post thumbnails & image captions

Tarski now supports the post thumbnails added in WordPress 2.9, as well as properly styling the captions added to images in WordPress 2.6.

More customisable navbar

For those of you using the Tarski API to modify the navbar, a couple of enhancements have been added. Firstly, the ‘Home’ and page links are now added to the navbar via the tarski_navbar filter, making it much easier to remove them if need be. Secondly, page and external links added to the navbar now have more meaningful array keys when they are passed to that filter, making them easier to manipulate programmatically.

Now in HTML5

HTML5 is the future of HTML, and using the HTML5 DOCTYPE in Tarski will make it easier to incorporate powerful new features in the future. There was a discussion of where this will lead in the comments on the 2.6 release candidates post.

As usual, there are many more tweaks, bug fixes and new features in Tarski 2.6 than I can go into here. Hope you enjoy the new version.

Please post bug reports, suggestions etc. on the forum.