yunck

I have experimented a bit further, and found that it is really easy with CSS to make this calendar responsive, and to highlight the current day (three css rule changes) as the code already adds a class to the current day. Could I make a request for the benefit of future users and ask that you incorporate these really minor css changes as part of the package – you then end up with a much better plugin with the smallest effort – a responsive calendar with the current day highlighted. To be honest I originally thought it would be excessive mucking about with css to get these things to happen, but it is so ridiculously simple I cant believe you guys have not incorporated it! Quite a good plugin in hindsight! You could propbably incorporate in the settings to govern appeoarance options i.e. if multiple calendars, one calendar month per row at full width, or multiple calendars on the same row (i.e. 3 columns setup) by making the css percentage divisible by 100% width as required etc etc

I would have thought you could just leave it as preview on click like it already does, which caters for touch devices, and add the preview on hover capability to it as well, so it reacts to both. I dont see why click and hover need to be mutually exclusive. Unless the issue is that you hesitate to introduce jquery into the equation, which I imagine you would have to do to make that possible? Anyway, if there is any way you could make so the choosing of a font can allow quick and rapid browsing, such as a select list already preformatted with the styles (this could be another solution) then I am sold!

I have been trying every solution I can find out there when it comes to incorporating google fonts into the customizer and this is close to being the best. I especially admire that you guys are smart enough to use sliders for the numbers for easy mouse use and also like how every setting respects a theme default and can be turned off. Unfortunately I found one thing that made it a no go for now – having to select each font one at a time to see what it looks like. I ended up going with a paid plugin which allows mouse wheel scroll (like you mentioned in your roadmap) but the hover effect over the select list as you scroll with the mouse wheel allows it to flicker through real time previews as you go. In other words, it previews the font in real time on hover, rather than on click. this allows you to much more effectvely use the mousewheel and glide down the select list at great speed as you check out the ever changing font in your website as you go. Unfortunately the other plugin was not as well presented as yours, and made too many assumptions about how I want to group my options but this particular factor was too important to ignore and was the deal maker / breaker for me. if your plugin did this I would happily donate and even toss the paid one in favour of this.

Some thoughts:

a) when adding a new font there is a wordpress failure notice. I found the problem in fonts.php line 29 where there is a typo in the wp_nonce_field function that says:
“simple-customizee-add-font” instead of “simple-customize-add-font” which works fine after that.
b) there is also another typo in line 105 of the same file “siomple-customize-plugin” which doesnt seem to affect anything, but why not let you know anyway.
c) ability to edit customisation entries in settings page, and somehow manage their order. This is a real piece of useability that needs to be added, imagine needing to fine tune selectors – at the moment you can only delete and enter it all again, and when doing so have no choice over putting it back in the position it was before, or having any choice over the priority order. (ajax drag and drop would be super cool, but entering a priority number would do the job)
d) you already have developer mode – just extend that a little bit more so the developer can enter the selector in the customiser view. THe field is already there, so I gather it wouldnt be too much trouble to add another checkbox to expose it.(I know I said this before – just adding it here for the sake of consolidating).
e) not that important, but the ability to export the css (not quite the same as import / export of settings which it already does so I dont mean that) but by being able to export the css means you can have a reliable “backup” of what the plugin was doing – if it ever becomes obsolete in future as the website gets older, exporting the css means you always have a plan B to reinstate what was achieved with the plugin (more the requirement of a web designer with clients than the one off users concern of course). This is just cherry on top stuff, not overly crucial.

Please excuse my long winded successive comments building up here – I am very excited about the potential of your plugin in terms of what a web designer with clients can achieve with it, and it falls short by about 2% of being absolute genius perfected.

I am happy to email you privately about what my donation for this would be if you are interested in doing the above.

I totally understand that plugins are often installed by novice users with no real css understanding and the selector field may confuse them. On the other hand, hiding it is removing a very useful function for someone who actually does know what they are doing and it adds real power to the plugin. There you have a conundrum – who do you try to please? Without the field, the problem is that selecting elements is rarely accurate. If I want to change a background and I click to select an area, it may think I want to chage an element that is infront of the containing div – next thing you know the user is confused because the color picker is changing the paragraph text colour and not the background. How can they amend this? WIthout the selector field, they cant. How many times can a novice user stab in the dark trying to get the background to change colour before they mistakenly think your plugin is no good? Could I suggest an approach that will satisfy both sides? A checkbox setting in the settings page which allows the field to be exposed. By default it is off, so you still are in the situation you are in now, but people like me can turn it on and make good use of it. This way you are not “dumbing your plugin down” when it is so useful to web designers like me who can seriously benefit from it. I have been an application development manager and in IT for about fifteen years – please believe me when I say that you are on to something here – I have been looking absolutely everywhere for a way of using the same theme for every job I do, but with a really versatile and fast customising function. I have tried the microthemer plugin – good, but yours is faster and more to the point.

If you can do this, make the settings page entries editable so they can be fine tuned (their only option at the mo’ is delete as you know) and somehow address the very long url strings on save when in the customizer page, this would be a revolutionary plugin with no other one like it out there.

There are other ones, but they only work with certain themes (in other words, their selectors and choices are hard coded) – with your ability to choose any css element, yours can customize anything.

If this did the above, and this was on code canyon for $50, I would buy it without a hiccup. I have looked for premium plugins that do this, and there arent even any. Microthemer is $99 or summink and I prefer this.

The closest match to this I can find which is currently being supported is font customizer, but it only does fonts. As I said, yours does ANYTHING. Please dont throw away one of the most useful fields that allow it to do this really effectively because someone (who I bet does NOT design sites like me) didnt know what to do with it!

Lets also remember that while some people did not know what to do with it, plenty would. Please dont ignore that audience.

hmm – unfortunately cant edit or fine tune any of the entered selectors in the settings page – if anything is not right the whole entry has to be deleted and re-entered.
I also noticed that on the customizer page (after exposing the hidden fields via css) that upon saving, the url generated is so long it violates server limitations on url length. Maybe not with all hosting providers, but it did no my local xampp install, and again on my live site with (cringe) Crazy Domains.

this plugin is most of the way to being a well oiled solution – these are just cobwebs. I beg you to clear these cobwebs and sell this thing – I WILL PAY!!

actually I took a further look with firebug and noticed all the fields are there, but some are missing and set to “display:none” by the plugin. Is there a reason why they are set to display:none or is this simply the issue and needs to be set to display:block or summink? I dont have styling that is interfering, as the styling seems to be applied as inline styling by the plugin itself. Are you able to clarify what is going on?

I have been watching woocommerce videos since my last comment so Im there baby. You know, the BIG clincher for me already is that a real sticking point with WPEC is that it does not have a widget where the shopper can sort by price-asc or price-desc, and I have seen that feature on stores everywhere. You can specify this in the admin, but that is too static. The shopper needs to be able to sort the results while shopping – it is a pretty basic need that people want to suss out their results with a bit of sorting such as cheapest to most expensive or vice versa.

Strangely, there is no widget for it, or any advice anywhere and people on elance are asking for it everywhere. I asked the WPEC team for it once and it went no where. I found someones code that did it, but only on the main prod page, not when sorted by category. Aaah.

Then walla – woocommerce has it. I think I am about to be converted. This might seem like a minor feature to make a big deal about, but when you think about it, it is quite a major part of useability.

Thanks again ricky88 and justin for your advice on both situations.

HI Justin,
If you read my first comment around line 7 you will see that I applied your fix and thanked you because it worked. My issues are about the bigger picture with wp ecommerce and how i hesitate to offer my clients a plugin that is just not proving itself sufficiently stable despite my hopes over a two year period that it would become so.

Going forward, I dont want to keep googling advice like yours to put the fires out as it is too risky – one day I just might have an angry client with a fire, and your advice just might not be there then.

That is where I am really coming from.

@ricky88 – It seems that Woocommerce does do variations, and I think I will download it and really suss it out fully. Thanks for your advice.

I did look at woocommerce once – I watched a video comparing woocommerce vs WPEC, and the problem was that woocommerce did not have the same capabilities as WPEC when it came to product variations.

@ricky88 – would you agree that variations are a limitation in woocommerce compared to WPEC?

I have tried really hard to like wp ecommerce for a couple of years now, as it has so many features compared to other shopping cart plugins, and have constantly hoped that it would get better. I have persisted with hacks and spent countless hours learning how to modify it, as I always thought that it was only going to be a matter of time before the bugs get blown out and it cleans itself up. I really thought it was getting better, but when I install the latest version of it and get a fatal error on every page which is clearly the fault of wp ecommerce, then find your fix (thanks by the way, it worked) and your comment shows that this error has been known about for a month, I start losing faith again.

Are you guys introducing new bugs at the same rate as you are getting rid of the old ones, or is it actually getting better? I am not trying to make a joke – I am actually confused about where it is going.

If you can suggest to me a paid plugin that does pretty much what wp ecommerce does I will gladly pay. the problem is, I actually cant find one. No matter how hard I google, as soon as I think I have found an alternative, someone in the discussion highlights a big functional hole that it doesnt have and I go dang! Looks like I have to keep sticking with wp ecommerce.

Do you konw of any other alternative? Pleaaaase?

As soon as I got this error immediately on install, I just went back to thinking this plugin is not getting any better.

Tell me, seriously, what else is there that I would gladly pay up to $200 for which does the same thing? Anyone?

Hi Dan,

I really want to use your plugin which is why I am still responding to this thread, as it really fills a necessary space, so I wish to further address your responses to the points I first raised.

a) all I know is that on wordpress 3.51 on the latest firefox, choosing to hide this option has no effect. I go back to edit the page and refresh it etc, and the image edit is still there. When I go back to settings, it still says the option to hide is effective so it is saving the option, just not delivering the outcome.

b) having a custom image size plugin is not meaning your plugin has a dependency. As you know, custom image sizes can be defined manually in the functions.php file. Whether it is by plugin, or manually, the fact is that many people use custom preset image sizes other than just thumbnail, medium, large and full. I am not asking your plugin to have any dependencies. All I am saying is for it to recognise when custom image sizes also exist, and to include those as well.

As for your point about not needing to adjust the crop if the aspect ratio is already correct – what post thumbnail editor does is still allow you to adjust the crop from the original image should you want to select a different part of it. Eg. If your preset size is very “landscape” in its ratio, and it has cropped so that someones head is missing at the top, you can go in and re-position the “crop rectangle” more sensibly and “re-save” that particular image size.

the “crop rectangle” respects the aspect ratio of your preset size, so stays fixed at that aspect ratio, but you can slide the “crop rectangle” around until you capture the best parts of the image, then save. this means your saved image is still the same aspect ratio, but this time the persons head is in view, if you know what I mean.

It is great that post thumbnail editor does this, because the native one doesnt. Bummer that post thumbnail editor is poorly explained and you have to fart with it a bit before you grasp what is is doing, but no other plugin does what it does that I have found.

Anyway, you dont have to agree with any of my recommendations on how the editor should / shouldnt work – that is fine, but what would be great would be to have the ability to hide this option. The option to hide is there, but it doesnt work, as per previous point.

c) thanks for deciding to add the labels. If you want to add a customisable message function well that surely is superceding my expectations and wouldnt argue with that at all, but I am fine if you just decide to clarify about what to do. yes it is obvious, but some people just have no idea and no, I didnt see any message explicity mentioning the dragging of the dashed box.

d) cool.

e) good luck with this. I noticed once that Ultimate Tinymce Pro version has the ability to add a full blown editor to the image description field in one if its config options, so there is proof of concept there, so I hope you can work it out!!

f)all I now is that with wordpress 3.5.1 using the latest firefox, the fields dont allow direct interaction. I tend to delay upgrading to the latest wordpress by a couple of months, that way I know all the plugins can catch up, so I will hang with 3.51 a wee bit longer. If you feel like addressing the issue for 3.51 thats great – if not, then fine, will try it again when I come to use 3.52 because I gather that is what you tried it on and you see no prob.

Hi – great work on one of the most useful wordpress plugins. I am trying to call it from the page template using:
echo do_shortcode('[gallery size="Slide" link="none" template="slideshow-plain"]');
which works fine when I manually call the .js script from the footer. Is it true that it doesnt automatically enqueue the script if it is used within the page template?

I ask because on other pages, the order of the scripts causes an issue with shadowbox, which must be enqueued before this. As shadowbox also dynamically adds itself to the footer I cannot control where I paste the call to the js script for this.

I believe if I could have it automatically enqueue like it would if I pasted the shortcode within the editor then it would work. It would also mean the script would only enqueue on the relevant pages, rather than occur in the footer of all pages if I paste it there.

Any help would be appreciated.

cheers.