Category Archives: Tech stuff

Iframes not refreshing in WordPress pages

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I run a couple of WordPress sites that contain IFRAMES.

The problem I had was that the content of the IFRAMES wasn’t updating when a visitor arrived at the site.  They would see content that was hours or even days out of date.

In each of my sites I was generating files which updated every ten to fifteen minutes.  This was done using a small programme that I wrote which generated small HTML files on the site itself.  The IFRAME was then used to display that HTML file.  However, caching in the site prevented that and insisted on dishing up a cached version which was out of date.

I took a two pronged approach.  

The first objective was to tell the IFRAME to load a different filename each time the page was loaded.  Obviously I couldn’t rename the origin file, so I added a parameter to the file request in the form “file.htm?t=X”.  Now X had to be different each time the page was loaded so I had to enable PHP on the page and then create a timestamp date(“U”) so that X would change every second.  

The resulting code appears as follows:

<?php
$cacheN=date('U');
echo("<iframe style='background-color: white;' src='/file.htm?cache=$cacheN' height='300'></iframe>");
?>

This will force the IFRAME to search for src=”/file.htm?cacheN=1534593560 or similar where the number changes every second.  The parameter “cacheN” will be passed to the file but as it is meaningless it will be ignored and file.htm will be loaded.

Naturally to run PHP on a WordPress page will require a plugin or a facility within the theme being used.

The second method I used (a belt and braces approach) was to add a line to the head of the page (which can either mean another plugin or manually editing your theme’s header.php file)

<link rel="preload" href="/file.htm" type="text/html">

Examples in action (on the righthand sidebars) –
https://martinscriblerus.com
https://headrambles.com/

Thunderbird mail link opening new browser instance

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

For a while I have been having an irritating problem where I would click on a link in Thunderbird and instead of opening in a Tab (which I wanted) it would open a new blank browser.

Some time ago I wrote about a similar problem but this time that solution didn’t work.

After much searching and head scratching I found the solution….

Open the Menu editor.

(Right-click Menu -> Configure… -> Select Menu tab -> Click on “Open the menu editor”)

Select your browser entry ( click Internet to find the list)

Click on Properties, and in the pop-up screen that opens add ” %u” at the end of the command as shown –

Launcher Properties

This will work for Firefox or Waterfox.

Click OK and the job is done.

 

 

Stylish

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

One of the greatest irritants (for me) on the Internet is the site that somehow thinks it is being trendy when it uses pale text on a white background.

Generally when I come across such a site I get out of it fast unless the information is important in which case I struggle on and curse the designers.

I use ManageWP to manage (!) several web sites.  As this is a tool I use very frequently, the contrast is important, particularly such information as how many sites require updates.  However, they are sadly being ‘trendy’ and feel obliged to display such information in light grey on a white background:

Grey text on white

Now apparently there is little I can do about this short of complaining to the crowd who run the site.

But then there is Stylish.

Basically Stylish allows you to apply CSS styles to any or all of the sites you visit.  Naturally it only applies on my browser so it entirely a personal preference thing.  Unfortunately (for some) it requires a fairly good knowledge of CSS and how to discover which selectors on a web page you want to modify, but there are a load of styles already to download for the most popular sites if you so wish.

I applied the following snippet of code to my ManageWP Stylish:

@namespace url(https://www.w3.org/1111/xhtml);
@-moz-document domain("orion.managewp.com") {}
body {
color: black !important;
}
.dashboard {
color: black !important;
}
span.filter-count.badge {
color: black !important;
}
.custom-checkbox {
border: 1px solid #999 !important;
}

This is applied automatically to the web page and this is the result:

Black text on white

There was also a problem with my WordPress editing pages which I have been trying to solve for some time.  It was the same sort of problem – writing or editing text in the Post Editor was difficult as the text appeared grey on a white background.  It took me a long time to realise that it wasn’t the font colour that was the problem but actually the font itself.  Once I had worked that out, I thought about changing the font face on all the sites I edit but that would have been tedious, so I just applied a modification using Stylish.

body#tinymce.wp-editor,
.wp-editor-container textarea.wp-editor-area {
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}

Now any site that I edit will have a nice clear font.

Text samples

Click to enlarge

It’s a handy little gizmo!

Incidentally, this is not a sponsored post – I just thought it might be of some help….

 

Firefox 57 – moving those tabs

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I recently upgraded to Firefox 57.

The first thing I noticed was that half my add-ons had disappeared and the layout and font had changed.  The most irritating one was the tabs on top, and no way to move them down.

I eventually found a fix for the tabs.

Create a file called userChrome.css and paste in the following –

/* Puts tabs on the bottom */
#TabsToolbar {
-moz-box-ordinal-group: 2;
border-bottom: 1px solid #888 !important;
}
#nav-bar{ border-top-width: 0px !important; }

Find your Mozilla default ‘profile’ folder and move that file into a sub-folder ‘chrome’.  If ‘chrome’ doesn’t exist, then create it first.  Close and reopen Firefox and the tabs will appear below the other toolbars.

However that still didn’t resolve some other issues I had with the new release.

I discovered Waterfox!

I downloaded it and ran it.  I was impressed to say the least.

It doesn’t interfere with Firefox and its settings and includes the options of importing all Firefox’s settings.  When the browser opened after the import, there was the familiar screen and I had to check that I was in fact running Waterfox in the ‘Help -> About’ menu.

Not only was it exactly like Firefox but it had imported my theme, bookmarks, tabs, add-ons, passwords and all the rest.  Even better, it had restored a load of add-ons that had become redundant in Firefox 57.  The only strange anomaly was that the actual contents had reverted to the tabs and pages that existed on the 1st July, but that was no bother whatsoever.

I haven’t yet found any problems with Waterfox.  It uses the same add-ons and themes repository as Firefox, but now virtually all are now compatible instead of the ‘chosen few’.  I still have Firefox installed as an emergency backup but for the foreseeable future, Waterfox will be my default browser.

 

Prevent page caching on a development server

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I do a fair bit of PHP coding on my local machine here.

One of the most irritating aspects of that is when I change a bit of coding and run the browser, the modification fails to appear, as the browser shows the old cached version.  This is particularly irritating if the code takes a length of time to run.

There is a very simple and effective fix.

Open php.ini and change the line opcache.enable=1 to opcache.enable=0

Problem solved.

I just wish I had found that years ago!