(via Matt Mullenweg on the GPL and WordPress)

Matt Mullenweg responds to Daniel Jalkut’s argument “that the GPL does more to harm collaborative development than it does to help it”: I’ve never encountered a serious client…

(via New Batman: Arkham Asylum dev diary gives Batman a terrible evening)

As Rocksteady’s Sefton Hill and Paul Dini eagerly explain in the video above, Batman: Arkham Asylum is a game about torturing Batman. Okay, okay, maybe not directly, but by way of Joker setting up a nasty ruse for Gotham’s greatest hero at Arkham Asylum itself. Trapping Mr. Wayne inside with all of his most fearsome enemies, when he thought he was just stopping by to deposit a criminal, leaves him at the mercy of the now-in-control Joker.

From what we played of the game’s campaign back at E3, we’re not sure exactly how Eidos/Warner Bros. plan to keep the game’s T rating, as evidenced by the few gameplay snippets you see in the developer diary above. We are, however, surprisingly excited for the game’s release in late August — and glad we don’t have to bring along Mom to buy us the game.

New Batman: Arkham Asylum dev diary gives Batman a terrible evening originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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(via You Have Got To Be Kidding Me: Sears Tower Unveils Glass Balconies on 103rd Floor)

The Sears Tower opened “The Ledge” to the public today. The Ledge is a 4-foot glass balcony that’s suspended 1,353 above the ground on the 103rd floor. It provides a panoramic view of Chicago, provided the walls aren’t covered in accidents. Fun fact: urine spilled from the 103rd floor can break concrete on the sidewalk below. And not just if you drank a jackhammer, but it helps. Hit the jump for a couple more of the NO I AM NOT AFRAID OF HEIGHTS. Sears Tower unveils glass balconies on Skydeck [yahoonews] Thanks to FDSY, who isn’t afraid of heights, but is afraid of towers. Weird.

BBQ?

[found]

(via YouTube – trouble with twitter)

(via YouTube – iPhone 3G S Compass + Accelerometer = Immersive 3D fun)

(via HTC Hero running Android and Sense UI leaks from HTC’s own website (updated, official, video))

As we prepare for HTC’s official launch event today, we’re starting to see some details appear on HTC’s own website of the much rumored Hero. Through some URL trickery, we’ve managed to unearth several details that confirm the previous rumors. Hero includes the new HTC Sense widget-based interface that puts at-a-glance info right up front on the home screen where it belongs. A new Scenes profile feature lets you transform your phones focus from business to weekend mode. Viewing your contacts shows the usual data in addition to the interactions you’ve had through social networking status updates and photos from the likes of Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and Twitter. A dedicated search button searches the phone as well as services like Twitter. In fact, like Palm’s Pre, the HTC Hero seems ready to fully integrate your local data with all your subscribed social media sites. The biggest deal here, however, might just be that HTC is touting this as the first Android device to support Flash out of the box.

Inside you’ll find Qualcomm’s MSM7200A proc running Android at 528MHz, 512MB/288MB ROM/RAM, 3.2-inch TFT-LCD with 320 x 480 pixel rez, 900/2100MHz HSPA and Quad-band GSM, trackball, GPS, 802.11b/g WiFi, 3.5mm audio jack, G-sensor, compass, and 5 megapixel auto-focus cam with microSD expansion. It’s all there baby. The White version of the device has an industry-first Teflon coating (right, just like your pans) to keep things clean and grime free. Multi-touch and anti-fingerprint coating too. Hero arrives in Europe in July with T-Mobile and Orange, Asia later in the summer, and North America even later in 2009. Stay tuned for a full hands-on, but for now, enjoy the press shots in the gallery below and the new video after the break!

Read – Product page
Read – Official PR

Gallery: HTC Hero official press shots

Continue reading HTC Hero running Android and Sense UI leaks from HTC’s own website (updated, official, video)

Filed under: Cellphones

HTC Hero running Android and Sense UI leaks from HTC’s own website (updated, official, video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s funny how the only argument for IE8 is that it’s better than IE7, well thanks for spraying perfume on shit — I can still smell it and yet again I don’t want to touch it.

(via IE8: Don’t get the facts. Get Reality. « deanjrobinson.com)

When it comes to web browsers Internet Explorer is the one out there leaving bad impressions making everyone else look bad. Well at least they’re good at doing that, because, well, they aren’t much chop at anything else.

Facts are meant to be true aren’t they? Microsoft, or should that be Windows since they are marketing it as “Windows Internet Explorer 8”, seem to have put their own spin on the truth by providing a list of 10 reasons that IE8 is sooo much better than Firefox and Chrome. Yes, just Firefox and Chrome, not Opera and not Safari. I don’t really care for Opera (have never used it), but the absence of Safari is just a little too obvious. Clearly they are aware that Safari probably beats IE8 in these 10 claims of awesomeness (and about 1000 others) and didn’t want to challenge Apple. Either that or they still believe that Safari is a Mac only browser, don’t laugh, I wouldn’t be surprised at all. Is ignorance or denial the first sign that you have a problem?

Let’s take a look at the wonderful claims being made by the peeps at IE8, text referenced from screen shots taken by Chris Messina (factoryjoe ← my favourite flickr stream) on the 19th and 20th of June 2009, (here: 19th and here: 20th).

Security (IE8 only)

Internet Explorer 8 takes the cake with better phishing and malware protection, as well as protection from emerging threats.

Ok, first problem, by only place a ‘tick’ next to IE8 they are essentially claiming that Firefox and Chrome have no security features, especially to someone who just skims down the list and doesn’t read their provided explanations. They do this on 6 or 7 of the other “reasons” below too.

I haven’t been a full-time Windows user for almost 3 years, but back then most of the “malware” and “emerging threats” had more to do with the fact that 99% of the viruses that the scum out there were writing and distributing only targeted machines running Windows, than it did with the actual browser. Yes the browser can add an intermediate step to help prevent some of these “threats” but in many cases the user themselves should be more responsible, if they want to visit dodgy sites and download, umm, “screensavers” and other sorts of “entertainment” then they should be aware that they are putting their lovely Windows machine at risk of infection. Maybe if Microsoft had plugged all the security holes in their swiss-cheese operating system sooner it wouldn’t have as big an issue.

Even better get a Mac, you won’t have to worry about IE and its highly unlikely you’ll get an viruses.

Privacy (IE8 only)

InPrivate Browsing and InPrivate Filtering help Internet Explorer claim privacy victory.

Claiming victory because you left out the competitor that includes the features doesn’t make you the victor. Safari has had “Private browsing” mode for a long time, and Firefox is introducing something similar in version 3.5 which should be out soon.

Ease of Use (IE8 only)

Features like Accelerators, Web Slices and Visual Search Suggestions make Internet Explorer 8 easiest to use.

Ease of use is not won by adding features that 10% of people will use, its achieved by making the software, uh durr, easier to use. From what I can tell IE8 still looks and feels like IE7, with its odd arrangement of menus and buttons splattered all over the top portion of the screen in a completely different manner to most other Microsoft software. Although they’ve at least continued this trend in the latest version of Office with that stupid ‘ribbon’ menu/palette crap. A web browser is core to many computer users need, there should be no learning curve.

Web Standards (IE8, FF, GC)

Yes, two quotes, they changed their text… wonder why.

It’s a tie. Internet Explorer passes more of the World Wide Web Consortium’s CSS 2.1 test cases than any other browser, but Firefox 3 has more support for some evolving standards.

…or one day later…

Firefox and Chrome have more support for emerging standards like HTML5 and CSS3, but Internet Explorer 8 invested heavily in having world-class, consistent support for the entire CSS2.1 specification.

Oh, this is priceless, anyone got a camera I’d like a photo of little IE8 playing with the grownups. Its like a high school basketballer claiming they are better than players in the NBA because they have a better free throw percentage. In other words, its bull shit.

So yes, you’ve FINALLY got CSS2.1 support, welcome to 5 years ago. IE8 is still so far behind its not even humorous anymore, its just sad. They (now) say that IE8 invested heavily in having world-class CSS2.1 support, great but that would have been a nice thing a few years ago, real browsers have moved on to this radical thing called CSS3, and you Internet Explorer are holding the world back by not implementing even the most basic parts of it.

For starters, border radius, Safari and Firefox (although it took until v3 for it to be ‘nice’) have had thins for a long time, and yet with this first new version of IE in years we still don’t get it. Why?

Declaring a tie is a bit of a cop out, I’m pretty sure I could put together a page that would look perfect in Safari, firefox, Chrome and Opera and would still need some dirty, dirty hack to look ‘right’ in IE8.

Internet Explorer is the mortal enemy of web developers and designer across the world, and with version 8 it doesn’t make things better it makes them worse. Now we have three fucking version of IE to fight with. Wonderful.

Developer Tools (IE8 only)

Again two days, two quotes, and this time they even changed which browser they awarded a ‘tick’ to.

Of course Internet Explorer 8 wins this one. There’s no need to install tools separately, and it offers better features like Javascript profiling.

…or one day later… (IE8, FF3)

Internet Explorer 8 has the most comprehensive developer tools built in, including HTML, CSS and JavaScript editing, but also JavaScript profiling; other browsers have developer tools available, but either require you to download the separately, or aren’t as complete.

“Of course”? Are they serious? Apparently not,since they removed that bit.

Heaven forbid that you us developers need to download a browser addon to check css and a js errors… regular users don’t give a toss, so why clutter up their experience and add unwanted confusion by making it a bundled “feature”? Why Microsoft, why?

I’m also pretty sure that Safari’s web inspector shits on, and then sets fire to, whatever rubbish tools IE8 has added.

Abuse and insults aside, it has to be better than what was in IE6/7, especially in regards to javascript errors. “Error at Line 1, Character 0” – gee thanks IE, thats useful for debugging my 4000 line javascript file, thanks. If they’ve fix that issue alone it will be an improvement.

Reliability (IE8 only)

Only Internet Explorer 8 has both tab isolation and crash recovery features; Firefox and Chrome have one or the other.

And what about the reliability and crash recovery features of the operating system the people have to use if they want to use your stupid browser? Oh, they don’t have any, ok…

Customizability (IE8, FF, GC)

Sure, Firefox may win in shear number of add-ons, but many of the customizations you’d want to download for Firefox are already part of Internet Explorer 8 – right out of the box.

More features does not a better product make.

Especially features that 90% of people won’t use. What about the features we do want though, things that are included in Safari and Firefox “out of the box” things like CSS3, and “being not shit”, are there at least IE8 plugins for those?

Compatibility (IE8 only)

Internet Explorer 8 is more compatible with more sites on the Internet than any other browser.

omgroflmaowtfbbq

Are they serious? Must be they haven’t changed the wording yet. Make up and smell reality you idiots, Internet Explorer is not compatible with websites, websites are compatible with IE.

If the world hadn’t spent the last 8 years building websites and then fixing them to work with the fucked up web standards implementation in IE6/7 then nothing would work in IE8.

Also, adding “IE7 compatibility mode” or “render as IE7” or whatever the hell its called achieves nothing, we still have to test everything in all those modes because there is no way of knowing what the user is going to have selected as their default

Internet Explorer, you are the cause not the solution, please crawl into a hole and die. Thanks.

Manageability (IE8 only)

Neither Firefox nor Chrome provide guidance or enterprise tools. That’s just not nice.

…or one day later…

Neither Firefox nor Chrome provide guidance or enterprise tools.

Someone at Microsoft must have found out they had a 5 year old writing their promo material and stepped in the make that small wording change.

How about this for a reason. Regular people aren’t enterprises, so enterprise tools are pointless for a large percentage of the population.

What is with Microsoft’s fascination with “enterprise” anyway, its like they think it makes them sound better or something. Either that or they are just closet Star Trek fans.

Performance (IE8, FF, GC)

Knowing the top speed of a car doesn’t tell you how fast you can drive in rush hour. To actually see the difference in page loads between all three browsers, you need slow-motion video. This one’s also a tie.

Another tie? really? Ok, if you say so.

Reports say that IE8 is definitely quicker than IE6/7, but its not nearly as fast as Firefox (which itself isn’t always that great, FF3.5 is apparently a big improvement though), and this were a race into outer-space, Safari would be beyond Pluto before IE8 had reached Mars.

IE8 you’re not fast, you probably never will be. Get over it, or simply switch to cross platform rendering engine that works. Y’know something like Webkit.

The points I’ve discussed above are based on what their “browser comparison chart” said on the 19th and 20th of June 2009, you can see the list here, no doubt its probably changed again, and if it hasn’t it will, just give it time.

But wait there’s more

The good folk at Microsoft also provide a set of 8 reasons to install IE8, they even put them under a heading of “What’s so great about Internet Explorer 8?”

In summary, because if I go into detail I’ll write another 2000 words, the 8 reasons are: it’s faster than ever, it’s easier than ever, it’s safer than ever, keep up with the stuff that matters to you, see any site easily, recover from crashes quickly, surf with more privacy and make it yours.

I agree with about, umm, zero of them, but you can check out their reasons for the reasons here.

As as I see it the only reason you should install IE8 is if you’re currently using IE6 or IE7, and are too brainwashed to switch to a real browser. People who actually like using the internet need not bother.

What next?

Well from Microsoft we can probably count on seeing Internet Explorer 9 in 2013, and it probably still won’t support CSS3 or HTML5, if we’re lucky we might get that for IE10 in 2020 by which time Firefox and Safari with have release a dozen major upgrades none of which Microsoft will see as important enough to implement themselves for another 10 or so years.

One can only wonder what the Internet Explorer crew will “invent” next? In IE7 that ‘invented’ this new thing called RSS… or not, but for Joe Average IE7 was probably the first time he’d encountered this new fangle thing, so to him its a Microsoft invention. This time its ‘Web slices’, which sounds an awful lot like Safari’s web clips. Just saying.

But don’t just take our word for it. Download Internet Explorer 8 today to see for yourself.

But don’t just take my word for it. Don’t Download Internet Explorer 8 today and save yourself the headaches.

(via Fever° Red hot. Well read.)

Your current feed reader is full of unread items. You’re hesitant to subscribe to any more feeds because you can’t keep up with your existing subs. Maybe you’ve even abandoned feeds altogether.

Fever takes the temperature of your slice of the web and shows you what’s hot.

(via iPhone 3.0 Update: 10 Hidden Features – PC World)

Everyone knows about the cut-and-paste functionality, but the new iPhone software offers much more than that.

(via Appmodo: Official AT&T iPhone Tethering to Cost $55 Per Month)

Appmodo:

A source with AT&T informed Appmodo today that MMS for the iPhone will be coming mid July, not “the end of the summer” as previously reported. The highly anticipated tethering option will also be delivered towards the end of July with pricing around $55 per month, not $70 as suspected across the net.

That sounds outrageously high to me, unless they mean $55 total, not $55 in addition to the existing $30 data plan. If they want $85 a month for tethered data, that’s larceny. What are carriers in other countries charging?

Update: Here are the rates from O2 in the U.K.; they strike me as high but reasonable. (Note that O2’s data plans are metered, so you can save quite a bit of money if you stay under 3 GB of data for the month.) In Canada, Rogers includes tethering in their higher-end data plans for no extra cost; the sweet spot looks to me to be Rogers’s 6 GB plan for CDN$30/month.

In Austria and New Zealand, there is no extra charge for tethering. It just works with your existing data plan.

And our Scandinavian friends are all sharing a good laugh at our expense. Unlimited data plans with tethering run about US$20/month in Finland, Norway, and Sweden.

 ★ 

(via Appmodo: Official AT&T iPhone Tethering to Cost $55 Per Month)

Appmodo:

A source with AT&T informed Appmodo today that MMS for the iPhone will be coming mid July, not “the end of the summer” as previously reported. The highly anticipated tethering option will also be delivered towards the end of July with pricing around $55 per month, not $70 as suspected across the net.

That sounds outrageously high to me, unless they mean $55 total, not $55 in addition to the existing $30 data plan. If they want $85 a month for tethered data, that’s larceny. What are carriers in other countries charging?

Update: Here are the rates from O2 in the U.K.; they strike me as high but reasonable. (Note that O2’s data plans are metered, so you can save quite a bit of money if you stay under 3 GB of data for the month.) In Canada, Rogers includes tethering in their higher-end data plans for no extra cost; the sweet spot looks to me to be Rogers’s 6 GB plan for CDN$30/month.

In Austria and New Zealand, there is no extra charge for tethering. It just works with your existing data plan.

And our Scandinavian friends are all sharing a good laugh at our expense. Unlimited data plans with tethering run about US$20/month in Finland, Norway, and Sweden.

 ★ 

(via AT&T relents a little, lets iPhone 3G customers with upcoming upgrade dates buy 3G S at full subsidy)

The original plan was to offer mildly subsidized prices of $399 and $499 for the 16GB and 32GB versions of the iPhone 3G S to AT&T customers who weren’t currently “upgrade eligible,” but the carrier’s having a change of heart, ostensibly in response to… you know, people wanting to pay less. The new plan is to let anyone with an upgrade date in the months of June, July, August, or September get in on the fully discounted $199 / $299 price points, which should cover a good number of existing 3G owners. Unfortunately, the way the upgrade date is calculated is black magic involving your monthly bill, your credit rating, your contract, and your astrological sign, so you’ll need to log in to AT&T’s site or call up a rep to figure out the full deal; we’re told customers should start to see those new discounts reflected on their accounts as of tomorrow. And don’t worry — anyone who’s already preordered will be receiving a full refund for the difference.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

AT&T relents a little, lets iPhone 3G customers with upcoming upgrade dates buy 3G S at full subsidy originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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(via Why Apple wins. every. time.)

Suddenly, the shape of things to come is the shape of what’s here now. The iPhone is the client, the MacBook (they’re all Pro) the server, and you can bring it into the office and plug into the corporate Exchange server with one click. Never has the fear of Apple holding developers or users hostage been so overstated. Apple’s rigorous march forward and its deep understanding of what the market will want next is not only keeping them ahead of the competition but building the markets they will own tomorrow. They’re like WIllie Mays and the basket catch, making the hard stuff look easy.

(via Sony announces new PS3 motion controller)

Sony just announced the rumored new motion controller for the PS3 — the prototype looks like a wand with a color-changing ball on top. It’s designed to work in conjunction with the PlayStation Eye, with the wand overlaid on-screen with a weapon or tool. Unlike Microsoft’s Project Natal, Sony says they’ve learned “some experiences need buttons,” which is why there’s still a controller involved. The system is said to be “sub-millimeter” precise, and it was demoed drawing and playing a shooter — it’s sort of the middle ground between Natal and Wii Motion Plus. Sony says it’ll launch in the spring of 2010, but we don’t know what pricing will be like yet.

(via WordCamp SF This Weekend)

Along with a bunch of other folks from the Crowd Favorite team, I’ll be in San Francisco this weekend for WordCamp SF. I’m looking forward to catching up with some old friends from my decade in the Bay Area, and meeting some new folks.

I’ll also be helping staff the Genius Bar from 2:55-3:30pm, so feel free to stop by (perhaps with some Carrington questions). I’m looking forward to helping out.

Unfortunately I’ll miss the developer day since we booked our flights before it was planned. That’s a shame, but maybe next time – I’m sure I’ll get a chance to hang out with a bunch of the devs on Sat.

ShareThis

(via Universal Internet Explorer 6 CSS | For A Beautiful Web)

For A Beautiful Web is a series of web design master class training workshops covering topics including visual design for the web, best-practice XHTML mark-up and CSS, Microformats and practical web accessibility design and techniques.

(via ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ – Sega Returns!)

Over the past few months, iPhone gamers have all been wondering what in the world happened to Sega. They released Super Monkey Ball [App Store], then Columns Deluxe [App Store] not too long after, and then just disappeared until tonight when Sonic the Hedgehog [App Store] was finally released–Surprising us all.

There have been some good ports for the iPhone and some bad ports for the iPhone. Sonic the Hedgehog safely lies somewhere in the middle. The default display mode for the game stretches the screen to fit the aspect ratio of the iPhone and overlays a transparent D-Pad on one side and matching transparent button to jump on the other. This not only makes the game look slightly blurry, but in my testing with an iPhone 3G resulted in frame rates which are less than desirable for a game that is all about going fast.

Fortunately, Sega included a second view style in to the game that does away with the transparent controls and instead centers the screen in its original resolution of 320×224 for a crysttal clear representation of the original. In the smaller screen size, the framerate, while improved, still isn’t perfect. There is still noticeable slowdown when Sonic gets hit and loses all his rings, but it’s quite playable. Disabling the game’s sound also increases performance, but I don’t think this is something you should ever have to do. If you have a 2nd generation iPod touch, you’re in luck because the game runs noticeably better than on the older iPhone hardware.

The simple controls of all Sonic games translate well to the iPhone, and since all you really ever need to be doing is running forward or jumping, none of the problems exist with the virtual D-Pad that other games which require more precise controls have.

Also, I was surprised to find that if you quit Sonic the Hedgehog mid-level, the game remembers exactly where you were and you’re given the opportunity to continue the next time you start the game.

Here is a gameplay video that shows both full screen and original screen sizes in action:

[ Full HD version | Low Bandwidth version ]

It seems fairly obvious that Sonic the Hedgehog is little more than the Genesis ROM wrapped in an official Sega emulator. If this is the case, I think I speak for all iPhone gamers interested in classic titles when I say: Sega, please, release more games. You’re sitting on a gold mine here. Optimize the emulator a little more so it runs well on the iPhone then do absolutely nothing but release every good game from the Genesis library you still hold publishing rights to. Thanks in advance!

App Store Link: Sonic the Hedgehog, $5.99

The ploy: say a show is going to be cancelled so the show’s fans will broadcast their support for the show, press ensues and new people know about the show and friends of fans may be interested in watching the show for the first time.

(via Dumb TV Network Marketing)

If you’re a comedy fan, then you may already know that the NBC sitcom My Name Is Earl was canceled yesterday. The show, which just finished its fourth season, unexpectedly got the axe just as another NBC comedy, Chuck, was saved by its fans.

Well, in just about 24 hours, fans of the show have harnessed social media to organize a campaign to convince NBC to reverse its decision and bring the show back. The core of the campaign centers around a new Twitter account, @EarlTwitition, which already has nearly 6,000 followers as of publishing.

The campaign, which kicked off early yesterday, has been building up momentum and retweets. This is also the first time that we’ve seen the term “twitition” used to describe a social protest of this scale. The campaign seems to be growing rapidly, fueled by the viral hooks made possible by Twitter and social sharing.

As we’ve discussed before, social media has probably made it a little more difficult for networks to cancel a TV show. The reason is simple: its fans can organize, protest, and build attention quicker than ever. Yet while the fans were able to save Chuck from receiving the boot, it’s unlikely My Name is Earl will experience the same result.

The problem? NBC has already canceled the show. Chuck was not canned – in fact, the fans made what could be called a preemptive move to save a show that many thought was in trouble. Once a network makes a decision, it’s tough to reverse it.

The last really good example of social media reversing a networks’ TV decision is probably Jericho, which was brought back largely due a social media campaign but canceled not long after. It’s also important to remember that, while the Jericho campaign was successful, dozens of other protests have been unsuccessful.

So will Twitter save My Name is Earl? Possibly, though I think there’s a better chance that this campaign will help convince FOX or ABC to pick up the comedy instead. So to Earl fans, we wish you good luck!

—

On a side note, a suggestion to the campaign: adopting a hashtag will help your cause by better organizing your efforts and bringing additional exposure to it. Perhaps in the same vein as #savechuck, the hastag #SaveEarl?

I do agree with Andrew here, I never really thought about building modules out of plugins. Instead I tend to bring in custom functions that are organized within a functions directory (that I individually call from the main functions.php file). It’s almost as if I have a plugins directory within my theme and I activate those modules/functions/features within the functions file. Lost yet?

Anyways, maybe the reason I don’t like the idea of child themes is I don’t see any advantage other than not having to build a theme switcher in an options panel–which I’ve already done.

Frameworks is a different story entirely, short answer: KISS. Only the large scale projects where you need one framework to manage multiple sites that each have unique layouts and options would a framework work. Otherwise, just build it as you normally would and stop worrying about hooking into template sections and trying something more complicated than it should be.

(via Are child themes the best option?)

Child themes have been gaining popularity recently but there still seems to be a great amount of confusion involved and I wonder whether they are the best option, despite their popularity.

In the beginning the big thing about child themes was the ability to create a child theme so that you could modify it and yet still benefit from updates to the main theme. That quickly moved on using child themes as the presentation layer of a framework, to offer a theme based on that framework to other users without needing to get into the actual framework code which would likely be updated.

Now it looks like themes are being released with bundled child themes so as to offer extra graphics. I don’t think I have seen a theme with bundled child themes where there is different functionality involved, but I may just have missed them.

Unfortunately some of these instances result in the need for ‘grandchild’ themes, and that is not a relationship you want to investigate.

Aside from the first option, the uses all seem to have something in common which is separation of logic and presentation and I can’t help thinking that if you want to bundle a whole load of extra functionality without explicitly attaching the means to display it then plugins would be ideally suited.

This isn’t a new thought, to be honest I have been harping on about using plugins to moduarlise themes for a long time now to no effect, but the more complex the underlying theme becomes the more I am convinced that a plugin or indeed several, might be a better option.

I can quite easily find reasons not to do it: firstly you are asking the user to turn on more than one thing which some believe is undesirable. Personally, I find the option to turn bits off to be very beneficial but of course you have to minded to build in that level of control.

Secondly, by making it into a plugin you open the gates for others to just use what you have produced in their own themes. Of course they can do this already, but plugins are designed to be reusable, that is point, whereas masses of code in functions.php (or however many other files) is certainly harder to work with.

Finally, if it ain’t broke…

Despite these things though I think there are some significant advantages to using plugins and keeping functions.php as light as possible. I’ll leave you to think about what those might be.