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Thursday, December 13, 2018 10:20 PM: How to Get RSS Working in Firefox 64

As of Firefox 64, the ability to preview RSS feeds natively has been removed, which kind of sucks. I get why they did it though (or do I? Hmmm...).  Anyway, to get the functionality back, you need to install one or more add-ons.  Since Firefox 63 came out which lost the ability to detect RSS feeds, a lot of RSS feed related extensions have started appearing.

At the moment, I am using Awesome RSS to add an RSS Feed indicator to the Location bar and RSSPreview to preview the feed much like before.  For this to work, the RSS option needs to be selected in the Subscribe Using option of Awesome RSS. There might be a better option but these work for now for my needs. For those that use Feedly, Awesome RSS does have a Feedly option as well.

Hopefully this helps anyone that's missing the RSS functionality. 🙂

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Thursday, December 13, 2018 12:46 AM: Blog Updated to WordPress v5.0.1

Well, I just updated my blog to WordPress 5.0.1 which seems to be some kind of hotfix. (Further reading shows it to be a Security Release.) As always, I backed up my files and database first. I have automatic updates disabled so I can do this beforehand. As I always do, I updated the local copy on my PC before updating my blog here.

At the same time, I noticed that the TinyMCE Advanced plugin I use also had an update to version 4.8.1. It now has a Hybrid Mode where it replaces the normal Paragraph block with a Classic Paragraph block. This allows the use of the classic interface while having access to all the newer Gutenberg block editor features. I'm playing with it now. So far, the update seems to have gone smoothly. 🙂

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Saturday, December 8, 2018 3:53 AM: Blog Updated to WordPress 5.0

Well, I just updated my blog to the big WordPress 5.0 version which includes the new default editor, Gutenberg. As always, I backed up my files and database first. I have automatic updates disabled so I can do this beforehand. As I always do, I updated the local copy on my PC before updating my blog here.

Installing the update automatically disabled the separate Gutenberg plugin, which I then deleted. The TwentyTwelve theme I use also had an update to version 2.6 to become Gutenberg compatible. This update included editor styles to match how the theme looks on the front-end. There were no real code changes in the theme from the previous version that I had to include in my child theme. Just some tweaks to the style.css were needed (more on this later).

Following are some of my experiences and possible solutions to issues so far.

How to Change Inline Text Color Easier

One of the more annoying issues I've had with Gutenberg is not being able to change the color of text in a paragraph easily.  All you can do with the default tools is change the color of a complete paragraph. Luckily, someone has made the Advanced Rich Text Tools for Gutenberg which makes changing the color of words much easier within a paragraph.

Correcting Appearance of Variable Width Table Cells

The Table block currently has some real issues when using variable width table cells. If a couple columns have just one or two words and a third has a long paragraph, it will squash the other cells such that they'll have one or two characters per line.  There's an issue concerning this: Min-width needed on table columns · Issue #11266 · WordPress/gutenberg. As I mention there, the following CSS was the cause:

.wp-block-table td, .wp-block-table th {
   padding: .5em;
   border: 1px solid currentColor;
   word-break: break-all;
}

I corrected it by putting the following in my theme's style.css and my custom editor blocks.css file:

.wp-block-table td, .wp-block-table th {
   word-break: unset;
}

Oh, to load custom editor styles, create a blocks.css file in your child theme's directory and add the following to the theme's functions.php:

function mytheme_block_editor_styles() {
    wp_enqueue_style( 'mytheme-block-editor-styles', get_theme_file_uri( '/blocks.css' ), false, '1.0', 'all' );
}

add_action( 'enqueue_block_editor_assets', 'mytheme_block_editor_styles' ,100);

Stop Loading Google Fonts in Editor

So far I have not been able to make it stop loading the fonts from Google when editing a post even though I am specifying a locally hosted font (which it also loads). For now, I have submitted the following support question: Topic: V2.6, Make editor not load Google Fonts | WordPress.org. 

Anyway, these are my issues so far with WordPress 5.0 and Gutenberg. 🙂 For those that can't deal with Gutenberg now, you can install the Classic Editor plugin.

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Wednesday, November 21, 2018 12:52 AM: Happy Thanksgiving for 2018!

Wishing everyone a Happy (and safe) Thanksgiving for 2018! I’ll be spending mine with the folks and really looking forward to all the great food and time spent with family!

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Sunday, November 11, 2018 3:16 PM: Happy Veterans Day 2018

Wishing everyone a Happy Veterans Day and reminding everyone to remember our troops, past and present, and the sacrifices they and their families have made, not only on this day, but every day. 🙂 Thank you for your service!

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