I’ve been drafting a post about open source software being used in big ways, in an effort to dispell the idea that utilizing open source is a security risk.  The PM’s site is a big addition to the list, and should show the detractors that if the PM’s office thinks WordPress is secure, you should too.

The GIMP (The GNU Image Image Manipulation Program) is an open source image editor.  It’s almost a free version of Adobe’s Photoshop.  While it may look different, The GIMP is just as powerful as the expensive Photoshop.

GIMP Guru has a lot of excellent tutorials for The GIMP, but the one I have found the most helpful is Removing Red Eye with The GIMP.

Firefox 3 has amazingly low memory usage and loads javascript so fast.  Want that in non-tech terms?  Firefox 3 runs really fast and loads websites like Gmail, Facebook, Yahoo! Mail, Remember the Milk, ect. really fast.

See Mozilla Links 5 Minute Review of Firefox 3.

Download Firefox 3 now!

They are doing having a contest to become the most downloaded program, so make sure you download Firefox today!

PS-One of my favorite websites, Lifehacker, has lots of Firefox 3 coverage and tricks.  See here for all of the LH coverage.

BTW, Firefox 3 is absolutely amazing.  The speed is incredible, especially with the javascript heavy web applications I always use, like Gmail, Google Reader, and Remember the Milk.

And second BTW, PortableApps is amazing also.  It keeps me from having to install the plethora of open source applications I use periodically, leaving me with a slender hard drive with fewer applications installed.

Also, everyone be aware of some security issues with older WordPress versions. I have even seen first hand an attacked site. The lesson here is to stay updated with the newest versions of any software you use.

I really like the new admin panel in WordPress 2.5.  Most used items are placed prominently, while little used links are placed out of the way.  WordPress 2.5 also runs considerable faster for me, which is always a plus.

Now, if only Eng would update his Akismet Spam script to WordPress 2.5, I would be in heaven.

I regard author comment highlighting as a major feature or lack thereof for any theme. It should be mandatory, as it makes it easy to scan and find the original author’s comments. It also keeps a rude commenter from posting under your name and having readers believe it is actually your comment. You could also use colored comment highlighting on a multi-author blog to note comments by writers from the site who didn’t actually write said post.

Anyways, on to the details.

Note that my theme (MNML), uses Sandbox as a backend. This makes fixing this issue really easy.

If your theme is not based on Sandbox, use Matt Cutts’ howto to add author highlighting.

If your theme is based on Sandbox, follow along a couple of easy steps.

Sandbox uses lots of semantic markup, to make it easier for theme designers to style using only a stylesheet. This makes it easy for us to identify comments by the post author.

Each comment includes several css classes, including bypostauthor if the comment author is also the author of the post.

So, go to your theme’s style.css file and add the following at the bottom:


.bypostauthor {
background-color: #COLORCODE !important;
}


Change the COLORCODE to a six digit html color code and you are set.

Currently, I am using this code to set my own comments to have a red background:


.bypostauthor {
background-color: #FF0000 !important;
}


If editing CSS makes you queasy (hey, I understand, I was once a newbie, but editing CSS files makes for easy learning), try one of these many plugins.