Not the Official WordPress.com Gallery FAQ

(Cross posted from Random Acts of Photography where you can read the entire post and its updates)

WordPress.com introduced the Gallery feature back in April 2008. However, a full Gallery-specific WordPress.com Support document appeared only in September 2009. My Not-the-Official-WordPress.com Gallery FAQ was an early attempt to bridge the information gap and is still being updated over various changes and upgrades to image handling and the Gallery feature on the WordPress.com site.

A Small but Important Disclaimer: Since their introduction, the Gallery feature and image handling behavior on WordPress.com have been a continual “work-in-progress” and things may go pear-shaped without warning. The Gallery behavior on WordPress.com blogs as described below is correct as of this Post’s latest update and was tested both pre- and post-publishing on my WordPress.com blogs. Updates will be listed here, as well as current problems which will be removed when solved.

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What is a Gallery?
A Gallery is a thumbnail set of images that appears in your blog Post or Page. Clicking on a thumbnail image will open either the original image or a larger image in a separate Attachment page.

Read the rest of this post, and its updates, at Random Acts of Photography>>

Daniel Gordis – When Mistakes Are Worth Making

This piece was written by Daniel Gordis and released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 1.0 License.

Thank you Daniel. You’ve eloquently summed up most of my conflicted feelings from this past week since the return home of Eldad (z”l) and Udi (z”l).

Daniel Gordis – When Mistakes Are Worth Making

18 July 2008

For some strange reason, I remember the scene with clarity. I was in the kitchen, early on a Friday afternoon about a month ago, cooking Shabbat dinner. Micha, our youngest, now 15, was hanging out in the living room. The radio was on in the background, and on the hour, the news came on. It was over in minutes, and then the music returned.I hadn’t really paid attention to the news, but Micha apparently had. “Do you think we’re ever going to get Gilad Shalit back?” he asked. Without even looking at him, I said, without even thinking, “Of course we are. Definitely.”

“You don’t know that,” a different voice piped in. Now, I looked up. Avi, his older brother, was unexpectedly home. “We may get him back, and we may not. How can you possibly say that we definitely will?” But the conversation was over. Micha, overjoyed to see Avi, had quickly followed his brother upstairs, and I was left alone in the kitchen. So I never got to answer Avi.

But had he pressed, and had Micha not been around, I would have said to him, “Why did I say that? Because when he hears the news each and every day, the only thing that your brother thinks about is the fact that you’re about to get drafted. And he’s beyond worried he’s panicked. Because he worships the ground you walk on. And he needs to believe, to know. He needs to believe that you’re going to be OK. And he wants to know that though he lives in a country that asks its kids to do everything, to commit everything, that country also knows that it owes them everything in return. And getting them home – no matter what has happened to them – is part of that.”

That Thy Children Shall Come Again To Their Own Border

08:47 – With 15 minutes to go before the official prisoner exchange between Israel and Hezbollah, the country is collectively holding its breath for the safe return this morning of the two Israeli soldiers that were abducted in June 2006 on the Lebanese border which brought about the Second Lebanon War.

In reality, we’ve suspected that the chances of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev returning alive are very slim. There’s been no word at all about their condition during the two years since their abduction, no report from the International Red Cross, no report from the UN, nothing. Only hope.

09:06 – The Channel 10 news reported that only now the German intermediary has received information on the condition of the two soldiers and Israeli officials are waiting to hear.

09:19 – Yakov Eilon, presenter of Channel 10′s news, just hinted that the two are no longer alive, that shortly the two would be transferred to the Israeli side of the border “in order to identify them”, a term in Hebrew which is used when talking about identifying bodies.

09:33 – The two soldiers have been turned over to the Red Cross. Still no official word on their condition.

09:41 – Right up until the last moment, the Hezbullah spokesman manipulated the news media into believing that the two might return alive. Then two coffins were taken out of the vehicles and put on display.

May the memories of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev be blessed. May their families and friends find comfort in their memories.

More to come later; too hurt to talk just now.

Footnote: even if it is a gruesome thought, I was somewhat relieved to hear that their bodies were in an advanced state of decay. More news coverage here and an excellent op-ed piece by Ron Ben-Yishai here. Lots of thought-provoking and angry reactions about today’s events from Israeli bloggers.

Mobile Blogging-Not

via Mobile earlier: Trying out the new mobile interface from my nokia 6131 and found that unless text wrapping is turned off, the display is borked. Frustrated!

Back on the computer: With all the hype about the new Apple 3G iPhone, which for various reasons will not be available here in Israel, WordPress is releasing an app just for the iPhone interface that can be used both for your self-hosted WordPress.org install and here on WordPress.com. You can read more about it here.

Which leaves the rest of us without iPhones struggling with m.wordpress.com, the mobile interface for wordpress.com. I tried posting from my Nokia 6131 a few days ago with text wrapping enabled, and the m.wordpress.com interface was wrapped after every letter. I quit without posting. Today I tried accessing the mobile interface with text wrapping off and saved my above post as a draft. On saving, I had to accept a server redirect 3 times and I finally quit. When I logged in to my Dashboard via my computer, there were 4 drafts of the same post. Won’t be looking to do that again anytime soon.

There are so many more of us who don’t have and won’t have iPhones in the near future; I hope the regular m.wordpress.com interface continues to be developed so the rest of us can do some of the things the iPhone app does (like posting photos from our phone).

(Update: Yella suggested in the forums that I give the Opera mini browser a try. Does anyone else use it? What do you think of it?)

Top search terms-June 2008

Some of the top search terms for finding this blog from the past 30 days :

wysiwyg blog (yep, got that)

headers for cutline (yep, got those)

ravelry serape (from NaKniSweMo-so got those)

photoimpact x3 goodies (got those, not x3 specific, though)

pi presets (yep, got those)

gourmet yarn store israel (got those, too; now with Google Maps goodness.)

wordpress knitting theme viewer (er,um…)

dover file download (sort of, but pi-related)

goodies pi (yep, got those)

“the flavor graveyard is” (hm, thinking the Halloween post got those)

wordpress.com +flickr slideshow (sadly, don’t got those)

p.i.’s tool (not quite sure about that one; pi’s got so many of ‘em)

uol photoimpact (yep, got those)

blog+moodstream (um, not really. sure would be cool, though)

pi tutorial (yep, got those)

cutline headers (yep, got those-see above)

just jennifer blog (certainly got those)

photoimpact tutorial (got those)

israel (definitely got those)

world record for blog with no comments (wt*?)

If I search Google for that last one, my Live Hatikva post is #2 in the search results. =:-O

Work with me, people! Not for nothing is Crabby over there on the sidebar.