If you’re planning to use javascript on your WordPress blog or website, there is one function with which you should become intimately familiar. That function is wp_enqueue_script(). It will also be helpful if you do a little bit of research into the wp_deregister_script() function, though, the only official information you’ll find about that function is in the codex information about the wp_enqueue_script() function.

Basically, this function keeps a log of all of the javascript files and libraries you want to use in your theme, makes sure you aren’t duplicating any, and then outputs them in the right order. I would recommend setting the $in_footer parameter to boolean true for all of the scripts you enqueue, as that causes WordPress to add the javascript calls to the footer of your pages rather than putting them in the header. In order to do this, though, you need to make sure that you include the wp_footer() function inside of your theme (preferably just above the closing </body> tag).

If you’ve used Windows 7 at all, you’ve probably noticed that the taskbar is completely different than it has been in previous versions of Windows. Instead of seeing a long information bar with a small icon and the title of the program you have open, you just get the little icon of the program next to your start menu. The taskbar is now extremely similar to the old-style quicklaunch menu.

If you have more than one instance of a program open, instead of seeing multiple separate taskbar entries, or a taskbar entry with a number inside of parentheses indicating how many instances you have open, you simply see slightly offset versions of the icon layered over top of each other (as shown in the image below).

Although there was initially a lot of fanfare over the new “thumbnail” features that were added to WordPress when version 2.9 was released, the documentation for the various functions related to post thumbnails is still severely lacking. In this article, I hope to shed a little light on the subject, as far as I can understand it. There are four new functions related to post thumbnails. Following are some short explanations about what the functions do and how to use them.

DrupalCamp is coming back to NYC this summer. Registration opens on May 24 and the event will be held on Saturday, July 24th and Sunday, July 25th. DrupalCampNYC will be held at the NYU/Poly campus in Brooklyn – it’s just one subway stop from Manhattan.

If you would like to submit a session proposal, you can do so on May 24th. Here’s a list of the topics:

• Site Building with Drupal
• Design/User Interface/Theming
• Programming and Module Development
• Site Showcases
• Drupal for Business
• Drupal for Non-Profit

DrupalCampNYC costs $10 and includes admission for both days plus breakfast and lunch.

Google announced today that it will issue Google Voice invitations to any and all students that want one. All you have to do is visit the special form set up for students, provide your .edu e-mail address, and Google claims you’ll have a Google Voice invitation in your mailbox in less than 24 hours.

This evening, I found myself in the unique position of needing to display a list of PDF files at the bottom of a WordPress page. At first, I attempted to simply upload all of the PDF files using the WordPress image uploader, and then inserting a “gallery” at the foot of my post.

Unfortunately, I soon figured out that the “gallery” only displays images. In my case, that meant a blank space where I wanted the list of PDF files to appear (since, obviously, none of them are images).

Anyone who’s used WordPressMu for a while has probably noticed that the standard WordPress theme editor (and the plug-in editor, for that matter) isn’t available in the administration area. There are some very valid security reasons for disabling the theme and plug-in editors by default, but, for those of us who keep pretty tight reigns on the admin area, the disadvantages of not being able to edit themes from within WordPress outweigh the security advantages of having the editor disabled.

For those people, there is a plug-in available that re-enables both editors. Simply download the plug-in, unzip it and upload the “enable-theme-and-plugin-editor.php” file to your mu-plugins directory. Once you’ve done that, the theme editor and plug-in editor will both be available from the admin menu again.

For about the past six months, I’ve been trying on and off to get Cisco VPN Client to run successfully on my computer. As you may or may not know, Cisco has no plans to ever update the VPN Client software to work on 64-bit Windows systems. Instead, Cisco chooses to strong-arm its clients into purchasing a Cisco AnyConnect. AnyConnect, from what I can tell (I am by no means an expert, so please forgive me if I’m wrong), is a new VPN server that deploys its own client whenever someone connects to it. The catch is, of course, that the entire network needs to be updated and reimplemented in order to use AnyConnect; it’s not something that one or two users can do on their own computers.

Since AnyConnect didn’t look like a viable option in my case (after all, there are only about 5 of us using 64-bit systems, and the current VPN setup works pretty well for everyone else that’s using it), I started looking for other solutions.

When using WordPress as a content management system, you may find yourself in a situation where you want a parent page to show snippets from each of its child pages. There are a few ways you can go about this.

To begin with, obviously, you need to create the page that will show the list. This should be a standard WordPress page. For purposes of this article, let’s say this page has a title of “Parent.” Once you’ve created the “Parent” page, you can create each of the child pages. Make sure that you indicate each of those pages has “Parent” set as its parent.

This will be a quick post mentioning some of my favorite extensions for the Google Chrome browser.

1. Web Developer – The classic Firefox extension has been rewritten for use with Google Chrome. This is an absolute must-have for any Web developer, allowing you to disable CSS, images, javascript and more, view important information about a page, manipulate forms and more.Edit – The developer’s website does not seem to currently include a link to the Chrome extension. It can be downloaded from the Chrome Extensions gallery.
2. Feedly – I’ve explained feedly in detail in the past, but it’s worth another mention, here.
3. Google Account Switcher – adds a link to all of your Google pages, allowing you to easily switch between multiple Google accounts. Unfortunately, at the moment, this extension doesn’t seem to be working for me in Chrome 4.1. I’m not sure if Google made changes that stopped it from working, or if it only works in the latest development versions of Chrome but, at the very least, this is a good extension to keep an eye on.
4. BuiltWith – allows you to view information about the various libraries and technologies used to build specific applications and Web pages.
5. HTML Validation – adds an icon to your extension toolbar, indicating whether or not the page you’re viewing is coded with valid HTML. If it’s not, the icon shows the number of errors/warnings. It’s not as good as the HTML Validator/HTMLTidy plug-in for Firefox, but it’s definitely a good start.