Download Tarski 2.5

You can also get this release as a Git tag or a Subversion tag or branch.

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.

Fixes & enhancements

Tarski 2.5 fixes a number of bugs, most of which were very minor. Its widget code has been extensively overhauled to meet the new standard interfaces introduced in WordPress 2.8.

The Recent Articles widget has been almost completely rewritten. Not only can it now be used in multiple widget areas, but the title it displays and the number of articles listed are now customisable.

Support for right-to-left languages has improved again, thanks to mark-k on the forum. I hope to build on this for 2.6 and improve the way the options page displays for RTL language users as well.

In the spirit of progressive enhancement, users with more recent browsers such as Safari, Firefox and Chrome will hopefully notice the improved styling of form submit buttons.

Deprecations and diminishment

As many of you noticed, this release has taken a lot longer than usual to come out. This wasn’t because it was an especially complex release (it wasn’t; despite the length of the changelog, the changes in 2.4 were much more substantial), but because I no longer have as much time as I once did to work on Tarski.

As a result, I’m rethinking how I approach the upkeep of the theme. I’d rather spend my time as a programmer than a janitor, so the changes I’m making ought to ensure that Tarski continues to be updated with each new version of WordPress, while eliminating a few of the headaches that have built up over the years.

No more default widgets

In the last version, I added a set of default widgets to Tarski’s widget areas. This was, I thought, a nice piece of functionality; the only problem was that it relied too much on private WordPress internals, rather than the public API. Unsurprisingly, the internals changed (for the better—these changes were at the heart of the improved widget support), and my code no longer worked.

Rather than rewrite it, with the possibility of it breaking with the next WordPress release, I’ve removed it altogether. If a new, approved, public way is added to allow this functionality then I’ll reinstate the defaults, but until then, new users will just have to put up with things looking a bit bare until they add their widget selections.

User sidebar file deprecated

Because widgets are now settled as the way to customise WordPress sites, I’ve deprecated the user-sidebar.php file. Support for it will be removed entirely in Tarski 2.6.

Constants file deprecated

Considered a legacy API since the introduction Tarski’s extensive hooks API (a far superior way to extend the theme), the constants file is now deprecated entirely. Support for it will be removed in Tarski 2.6.

Subversion repository no longer maintained

Tarski 2.5 will also be the last release available from the Subversion repository. Again, I have a limited amount of time, and I’d prefer to spend any time I do have to work on Tarski writing code, rather than keeping two version control repositories in sync. Anyone wanting to maintain a public Subversion repository is, of course, entirely welcome to do so.

Support forum hanging on, for now

The forum is probably the most time-consuming thing of all. I’m not planning on shutting it altogether, but my activity there will drop a bit further. Tarski is an exceptionally well-documented theme, and there are literally hundreds of forum discussions covering a vast number of user questions. For those who want to make changes, there is example code in abundance.

As always, hope you enjoy the new version.

Please post bug reports and suggestions on the forum.

Recently I’ve been contributing the odd patch to the WordPress core, and coupled with the many other huge improvements in WordPress 2.5, the result has been that I’ve been able to remove a few things from Tarski. The ability to choose which feed type is linked to by default, for example, has been added to WordPress, and so it’s been dropped from Tarski.

Widgets

I also decided to finally give in to the inevitable, and drop Tarski’s native sidebar implementation in favour of the widgets it’s had since version 1.1.2. If you’re using the Tarski sidebar, don’t worry: your settings will be automatically converted into widgets. If you’re using a custom sidebar file, that will be picked up too: if it’s there it’ll be used, overriding the widget sidebar, and if it isn’t, it won’t.

The main footer area is now a widget field, too, and Tarski’s recent articles code has been rewritten as a widget, so you can either keep things as they are, or start customising madly. Tarski’s hooks system has received a number of additions, so anyone building their website on top of Tarski should find it that much easier to make adjustments. Some 2.1 developer notes will be forthcoming once I find the time to finish writing them up.

Avatars & icons

After being absent for a few versions, avatars are now back, courtesy of the native WordPress implementation in 2.5. You’ll be able to see them in action by commenting on this post.

I’ve also taken the opportunity to freshen up the theme with some new icons. Obviously if you want to use them in any other GPL-compatible project then you’re free to do so.

Options page

Obviously the biggest change in WordPress 2.5 is the new admin interface, and Tarski’s options page has received a thorough overhaul too. The last time we made such a big change was in version 1.3—almost a year ago. Things have come on a fair bit since then. Enjoy the new version.

Bugs and suggestions on the forum please.

WordPress 2.4 has been cancelled, and we’ll be going straight to 2.5 in early March. Tarski 2.1 is being written for compatibility with that next version, and hence will be delayed until then too. Keep track of our plans for the release on the roadmap page (which has just moved from the ‘Help’ section to the ‘About’ section).

The major feature of Tarski 2.1 thus far is the move to entirely widgetised footers and sidebars. I’m in the midst of writing and testing an upgrade script to convert people’s current options to the new widget-based ones. If you have any comments or suggestions about that, please post on the forum. Patches, bug reports etc. should be posted on the issue tracker ticket for the changes.

I’ve updated the website with a link to the Tarski Subversion repository, specifically to the latest stable branch (which is what you should be using; 2.0.5 is the latest release from that branch). Hopefully more people will try using svn to keep their WordPress and Tarski installations updated; it’s a little more work initially, but it makes maintenance far, far easier, as well as allowing you to take advantage of the latest security fixes, general bug fixes, and other improvements with the minimum of effort. There are a bunch of tutorials out there on this subject (for example, this one). If people are interested I can write up a quick tutorial on how I keep things up to date on this site.

I’ve just updated the code again to make it compatible with WordPress 2.1. Let me know if there are any issues.

New Features

We’ve expanded your options again with a new header, the imaginatively-titled Spots. If you go to the Tarski Options page and scroll down to the Miscellaneous Options, you’ll see the option to display your site’s tagline or description below the title.

If you don’t have a site description, don’t worry, there won’t be a huge and annoying gap between header and navigation.

Tweaks

This is mostly pretty dull stuff: some minor adjustments, rewriting a bit of CSS for the widgets plugin and whatnot.

The most obvious thing is probably the reworked Asides; I think they’re a lot more elegant like this, and these are fewer lines breaking up the flow of the page, which is how I originally envisioned things.

I’m going to do a more major rewrite of the code for the next major version, including a standardisation of the code for content areas and columns. This means two things in practice: some of your alternate styles will need rewriting, but it should be much easier to write them in future.

Tarski has a fair bit of legacy code and is much like a city that has had new buildings plonked down on old streets—it’s not broken as such, but future town planning will be a lot easier once we rip out some old foundations.

Keep an eye on the roadmap for the lowdown on the changes as I start to work on them.

As always, let us know if you run into any problems using the theme.

Image classes

Image classes should allow you to include images in a reasonably elegant fashion, without having to write your own additional styling code. Admittedly using image classes does require adding a smidgen of code when you post an image, but it’s very minor, and should make your pictures look as good as your words.

Widgets

Widgets are basically drag-and-drop code blocks that let you include various things like text, blogrolls, feeds and so on in areas of blog pages set up to allow them. There’s some documentation on using them with Tarski here.

Currently you can only add them to your sidebar, but we plan to overhaul various bits of the rest of the theme to allow them to be added (or removed) in other places, such as the footer. Chris didn’t think much of the default links widget, so he made a new one.

Miscellany

A rudimentary print stylesheet has been added, so if you print out a page from a blog using Tarski, it should be a bit more readable than previously. The print stylesheet eliminates all the redundant page data like the header, the sidebar and the footer, leaving just the important bit—the content. Additionally, per a user request, you can now enable comments for pages should you wish.