Author Archives: Peter Wilson

About Peter Wilson

Peter Wilson is a Web developer based in Melbourne, Australia, and started making Websites in 1994.

Peter co-founded web production studio Soupgiant in 2009 and forms opinions on all things web at Big Red Tin.

Behind the Websites: JavaScript Localisation in WordPress

I was asked on Twitter recently if it’s possible to pass WordPress data to JavaScript, wp_localize_script() is the tool to do it with.

Behind the Websites: Delay Print Stylesheets Plugin

A few weeks ago I wrote a post in which I adapted an idea from a zOompf article to delay the loading of print stylesheets until after a web page has fully rendered. I’ve decided to convert the code from the original post into a plugin and add it to the WordPress plugin directory.

Behind the Websites: Delay loading of print CSS

Recently I stumbled across an article detailing browser performance with the CSS print media type. In most recent browsers the print stylesheet held up rendering.

The article suggested a solution, which I decided to automate for WordPress.

Behind the Websites: Thesis V WordPress, Pearson V Mullenweg

Mullenweg believes that, because WordPress is released under the GPLv2 license, all themes and plugins developed for WordPress must also be released under the same license. Pearson disagrees. I believe that Mullenweg is wrong. WordPress themes can operate on other blogging platforms with minimal changes.

Behind the Websites: Getting the bloginfo correctly

One of the standout problems when using plugins with WordPress MS is when they define a constant for the plugin’s url as the script starts executing.

Behind the Websites: ‘Skip to Content’ Links

Josh and I were discussing the positioning of Skip to Content links on a website. In the past I’ve placed these in the first menu on the page, usually positioned under the header.

Content Strategy: Blog Post: This Tweet Looks Unloved

We had Twitterfeed set up at this blog’s old location and took the opportunity to compare click-throughs from manual tweets versus automated tweets. Manual tweets had a substantially higher click-through rate than the automated tweets.

Business: Surprise. It’s all about honesty

We were unable to help a potential client with the task they had in mind. We may have been able to fudge it but we don’t think ‘fudging it’ is the way to keep clients happy.

Design: Web 1.5

The brief for Big Red Tin and its redesigned sister site, Soupgiant, included the note “We haven’t got an exact style in mind, but something relaxed and modern without going over the top – Web 1.5 if you like

Behind the Websites: Valid Isn’t Best Practice

Not long ago, on the @soupgiant account, I tweeted “Vaild html / css doesn’t indicate your code is best practice; it may even indicate the opposite. #css3″. Neither the xHTML nor the CSS on this site validates, we consider it to observe best practices.