Home » Development » API
“Übersicht” is a German word that means “overview” or “summary” in English. The name of the software was chosen because it allows users to have a quick overview of various information on their desktop. It’s also a play on words, because in German the name of the software can be translated as “super sight” which refers to the ability to have a lot of information at a glance.
Übersicht is a lightweight and powerful application that allows users to create and customize desktop widgets using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. With Übersicht, you can create widgets that display information such as the weather, calendar events, system resource usage, and more. The widgets can be customized to display the information in any format and can be positioned anywhere on the desktop, allowing you to create a personalized and efficient workspace.
Übersicht widgets are created using a simple and user-friendly interface that allows you to preview and edit the widget’s code. The widgets are also highly customizable, allowing you to change the appearance and behavior of the widgets to suit your needs. Additionally, Übersicht widgets can be shared with other users, and there are a variety of widgets available for download from the developer’s website.
The application is open-source and free to use, and it’s also lightweight, it won’t affect your computer performance. Overall, Übersicht is a powerful and versatile tool for creating custom desktop widgets on macOS.
There are several other tools similar to Übersicht that allow you to create custom desktop widgets. Some of the most popular alternatives include:
With many external systems in play, its always crucial to keep an eye on things. I have build nice dashboards, using Grafana, InfluxDB, NetData and Prometheus. But they are either displayed in a browser window or on a separate screen.
If you have 2 / 3 monitors or an ultra-wide screen, you have a lot of Desktop real-estate you can use.
That is something that I have been looking at for years, but only tried for a short period of time. This year I want to really build out desktop and menu widgets , that help me to get an even better overview of things and help reduce repetitive tasks.
I will share links to things I like and share access to the widgets I build myself or tweaked.
These are the current things that are in progress or planned.
Nothing to share yet ….
“Git is a DevOps tool used for source code management. It is a free and open-source version control system used to handle small to very large projects efficiently. Git is used to tracking changes in the source code, enabling multiple developers to work together on non-linear development.”
Many use Github to host remote Git repositories, but you can use other hosts like: BitBucket, Gitlab, Google Cloud Source Repositories …. You can also host your own repository on your local NAS or remote server.
Will use this article for common problems I encoutered and possible solutions.
Push failed in Github Desktop and using Push from the command-line. The best bet is to experiment with different git config options.
The core.compression 4 worked for me and the push went through nicely.
Other config option that can be tweaked are
Read more about them here
jQuery has provided easy access to complicated core Javascript solutions in the past and has been shielding us from difficult workarounds for legacy browsers. But times have changed and many of those things can be done as easily using Javascript directly.
jQuery is a fast, small, and feature-rich JavaScript library. It makes interactions with HTML documents easy, and is widely used in web development to add features to web pages and to simplify the process of writing JavaScript. With a combination of versatility and extensibility, jQuery has changed the way that millions of people write JavaScript.
That being said, jQuery is still a popular and widely used library, and there are many valid reasons to continue using it. It is ultimately up to you to decide whether the benefits of using jQuery outweigh the potential drawbacks in your particular situation.
Easily search and compare direct Javascript solutions to jQuery ….
How jQuery does it:
Pure Javascript:
Link
UmbrellaJS is a lightweight JavaScript library that provides a number of utility functions and features for working with DOM elements and handling events. It was designed to be small, fast, and easy to use, and it does not have any dependencies on other libraries.
Some of the features provided by UmbrellaJS include:
UmbrellaJS is a good choice for developers who want a simple, lightweight library for working with DOM elements and handling events. It is especially well-suited for smaller projects or for developers who want to avoid the overhead of larger libraries like jQuery.
Selector demos:
DocumentationMigrate from jQuery
HTMX (HTML enhanced for asynchronous communication and XML) is a JavaScript library that allows you to add asynchronous communication and other interactive features to your web pages using HTML attributes and elements. It allows you to make AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) requests and handle responses directly in your HTML, without the need for writing any JavaScript code.
HTMX works by intercepting events on HTML elements and making asynchronous requests based on the attributes you specify. For example, you can use the hx-get attribute to make a GET request to a specified URL, and use the hx-trigger attribute to specify an event that should trigger the request. You can also use the hx-target attribute to specify an element on the page where the response should be inserted.
hx-get
hx-trigger
hx-target
Here’s an example of how you might use HTMX to make a GET request and insert the response into a div element:
div
When the button is clicked, HTMX will make a GET request to /some/url and insert the response into the div element with the id of target.
/some/url
id
target
HTMX is designed to be easy to use and flexible, and it can be used to add a wide range of interactive features to your web pages.
I am currently using HTMX in one of my longterm projects and will be talking about it more in a separate article in the future !
HTMX Reference / Documentation
It is ultimately up to you to decide which approach is best for your particular project. Sometimes a combination is needed ;)
Facebook sucks …. and now how to solve saving pages connected to a gray account! Might not work for everyone, but it solved it for me.
“A gray account is an account used to log into Facebook that is not associated with a personal profile or account. People used to be able to manage their Pages with gray accounts before we required individuals to have a personal Profile in order to create, manage, or run ads on a Page.” – Facebook Help
Normally it should be easy to transfer a page to a new administration account. Right? RIGHT!
My customers page was on the new profile page layout, that was introduced a while back. So normally you should go to the Page -> Professional Dashboard -> Settings -> Site Access. This would than allow you to assign a new page admin.
This just straight fails for me! I can easily choose a new person , select person and allow full access, confirm with password and than nothing happens. When checking the console, i see a couple of random errors …
Tried with different accounts, different browsers, different OS. Always the same …
After trying everything and almost giving up. I though, well you can still switch back to the old page layout, maybe that works!
And that is what finally worked for me. I was able to assign my customer as a new admin, within Settings -> Site Roles and than switch back to the new page layout!
Again … Facebook sucks! Who is testdriving updates and checking for incoming errors … seems that noone cares. Just leave it to the user, to solve their own problems. Not a single resource, that actually helps. I am sure that there are many, that already lost their pages! Just unbelievable !!!
Happy coding!
Papa Parse is a powerful, in-browser CSV parser for the big boys and girls :)If you do need easy CSV parsing and conversion back to CSV, take a look at it!
Papa Parse is the fastest in-browser CSV (or delimited text) parser for JavaScript. It is reliable and correct according to RFC 4180, and it comes with these features:
<input type="file">
I am currently using it to quickly parse Adobe Audition CSV marker files and prepare them for storage for my podcast.
Papa Parse @ GitHUB
Homepage / Demo
This is not a tutorial, but more like sharing a nice geeky road-trip ;)
I have a pretty good understanding of the Youtube Data API, as I have actively used it on portalZINE TV in the past, to upload videos and dynamically link them to my local post-types.
For one of my latest customer projects (TYPEMYKNIFE / typemyknife.com), the task was a bit more complicated and the goal was to make it as future-proof as it can be with the Google APIs :)
Prerequisites / References to get you started:
The goal for the setup was to actively synchronize WooCommerce products with linked / attached videos, with their source at Youtube.
As the website is multilingual, WPML integration is critical as well. And as Youtube allows localization of title and description, that can be added into the mix quiet easily in the future ;)
The following product attributes should be mirrored and optimised for Youtube:
The following attributes should be integrated into the description to enrich the Youtube description:
All of these attributes will be collected internally and assigned using a simple template system, which allows the customer to move parts around freely and freely layout the description for Youtube.
The following stats will be collected for review:
Youtube SEO
These are the relevant key aspects, that help to get your videos more views.
In the past access to the Youtube Data API was far easier and less limited, when it comes to offline / none expiring OAuth2 refresh tokens.
When you are building a server-side application that is only available to your customer or moderators, it makes no sense to run that app through the Google App verification. Your app will never be used in public.
The Youtube Data API and its scopes, are defined as sensitive and therefor require third-party security assessment for public access.
The scopes I am requesting are https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.upload + https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.
Because of that its far easier to just setup OAuth 2 in test mode and restrict access to your customer and specific additional accounts only (up to 100 test users allowed). What all these account need, is access to your own or Brand Youtube Channel.
Preparation in the Google Cloud Console:
A detailed description can be found here.
You can circumvent verification for the consent screen, by using an organisation setup at Google. Here some infos about that. With that setup offline refresh tokens should work fine.Update: Just tried that, but wont work with a branded youtube account, even though the cloud user has admin access to it. Not giving up yet, but Google / Youtube really makes it difficult to just have a simple offline solution for specific tasks ;) BTW also forced the login hint, to make sure the right account is logged in : $client->setLoginHint(‘YourWoreksapceAccount’); !
You might have heard of the “The League of Extraordinary Packages“. It is a group of developers who have banded together to build solid, well tested PHP packages using modern coding standards. They also offer an OAuth2-client + OAuth2 Google extension that can be used.
You might have heard of the “The League of Extraordinary Packages“. It is a group of developers who have banded together to build solid, well tested PHP packages using modern coding standards.
They also offer an OAuth2-client + OAuth2 Google extension that can be used.
On the server, the Google API PHP SDK can be easily integrated using Composer.
In my customer plugin I neatly separated all relevant areas in classes & traits:
You can check the expiry time of your access token by accessing: https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/tokeninfo?access_token=YOUR_TOKEN“A Google Cloud Platform project with an OAuth consent screen configured for an external user type and a publishing status of “Testing” is issued a refresh token expiring in 7 days.” – Google
You can check the expiry time of your access token by accessing: https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/tokeninfo?access_token=YOUR_TOKEN
“A Google Cloud Platform project with an OAuth consent screen configured for an external user type and a publishing status of “Testing” is issued a refresh token expiring in 7 days.” – Google
Basic Auth example from the SDK:
A simple upload example can be found here .
All operations to and from the Youtube Data API are rate limited. What is important for us, are the queries per day.
The default quota is 10.000 queries per day, sounds a lot, but is easily gone after updating 150-200 videos. You can request this limit to be raised, but again a lot of paperwork and questions that are just not needed.
The above limit just means, that you need to cache as many queries as possible, to only query live when needed ;)
Something you learn fast, when experimenting with different things! I hit that limit multiple times in the first few days, with around 500 videos in the queue.
Different operation cost you different amount of units
It also helps to use the Google Developer Playground to testdrive the Youtube Data API with your own credentials while optimising your own code. You can define your own OAuth 2.0 configuration by clicking the cog in the upper right corner.
I setup the bulk updating to allow splitting it over multiple days, if required. For this an offline refresh token is needed, as the standard token expires after 60 minutes.
My customer can also just update a single video, when changes are applied to the product or a new product has been added.
If more frequent updates are required, I will ask for a raise of the queries per day. You can circumvent the limit by using multiple Google Cloud Platform accounts with new OAuth credentials, but really an overkill right now. I have done that in the past ;)
The GUI is just based of Bootstrap, to make it simple and clean. Using my own wrapper to make it work within the WordPress admin.
For all ajax operations, I am using htmx and _hyperscript, which I will talk about in another article in the future.
Really neat and clean way to build single page interfaces.
The whole plugin runs of its own REST API endpoint. Just love using WordPress as a headless system.
I used TWIG / Timber for the templates, to separate logic and layout. Timber has been my goto solution for years now. It drives my own and many customer websites.
This has been a lot of fun, maybe a bit too much LOL
I do geek-out about many of my projects, but this experience helped me to bring my WordPress toolbox to the next level. This will help to drive other things in the future.
Working so deeply with the Youtube Data API has been fun and feels so easy now, after all remaining problems have been solved.
Would have loved this during my portalZINE TV days ;)
I you read all this, you just earned yourself a badge for completion ;)
Need something similar or something else? Just say hi and we can talk.
“WPML (WordPress Multilingual) makes it easy to build multilingual sites and run them. It’s powerful enough for corporate sites, yet simple for blogs.” – WPML
I have been running and setting up multilingual websites for more than 12 years. WordPress and related integrations have gladly come a long way to make our life’s a lot easier.
For basic content WPML is almost plug & play, but I do see more and more sites / customers struggling with more complex setups. WPML is one of the most popular multilingual plugins and is used on x00.000 of websites.
Just so you know, WPML is a commercial solution!
The amount of settings has increased a lot over the years and offers possible solutions for almost any content / plugin setup.
But for more complex setups, I would suggest to hire a professional to look over the settings or study the plugin documentation carefully.
Especially with a lot of content, it can quickly increase problems and the need to revisit specific content over and over again.
WPML lets you translate any text that comes from themes / theme frameworks (DIVI, Elemetor, Gutenberg …), plugins, menus, slugs, SEO and additionally supported integrations (Gravity Forms, ACF, WooCommerce …).
You can translate content internally for yourself, using translation management to translate with an internal team of translators or get help from external translators / translation services.
The latest version also offers AI translations, which allows you to get a decent start for most of your content.
In addition to the above, WPML String Translation allows you to translate texts that are not in posts, pages and taxonomy. This includes the site’s tagline, general texts in admin screens, widget titles and many other areas.
Well, I am a bit biased. I have not looked much at other solutions for the past 5 years, as it offers all I really need.
I have used it on projects from 2 to 15 languages and it scales nicely. At least with proper hosting attached!
Anything can be tweaked through the API, Hooks and custom integrations. I have build additional WPML tools for my customers, to streamline some of the repeating / boring tasks.
Their support is responsive and the forum already provides a huge amount of answers to most of the questions that might come up.
If you develop / maintain multiple customer websites with multilingual content, the investment is quickly amortized. I do offer WPML to my maintenance package customers, maybe something to consider ;)
Its an essential solution in my WP toolbox.
WPML 4.5 is on its way and will include a “Translate Everything” feature, among other fixes and enhancements.
Translate Everything allows you to translate all of your site’s content automatically as you create it. You can then review the translations on the front-end before publishing.
WPML / Documentation
VR is a new passion of mine, that I play with in my freetime, but also explore as a developer and tech enthusiast.
As video quality has evolved a lot in the past 2 years, the big topic now is full body immersion.
The following things are becoming more important:
I will use this article to collect things that are already available, diy projects, experiments and things that are in their early stages.
Hand & finger tracking is already making its way into consumer products. It is still not widely integrated, but has made big jumps the past year.
Eye tracking is not only important to make avatars more life-like, but also to track your eye focus and help to reduce processor load.
Lip tracking has made a big jump, with the new Vive Lip tracker and is important for social interactions.
Body tracking is one of the areas, that has so many projects attached to it. There are so many neat solutions out there, that almost anyone can use it by now.
Free locomotion is one of the biggest challenges in VR right now. You can increase your playarea, but that is still limiting and requires space. Their are VR treadmills, but none of them really reproduces life-like natural movement yet. And those solutions that come close, are still out of your reach. Most of the tracking above is somehow covered and will be available soon, while real locomotion is really the hardest to solve of them all.
Always crucial to have the right look for yourself in VR :)
“Klaro [klɛro] is a simple consent management platform (CMP) and privacy tool that helps you to be transparent about the third-party applications on your website. It is designed to be extremely simple, intuitive and easy to use while allowing you to be compliant with all relevant regulations (notably GDPR and ePrivacy).”
The tool is developed by KIPROTECT and can be found on Github.
As I integrated Klaro on a couple of websites so far, I decided to make my work a bit easier and start building some basic clean themes for it.
I have a basic white and black&white theme so far. The download includes a testdrive folder, to showcase the themes. The white theme is also used on this website ;)
I really hate those standard consent management modals, that integrate badly into the website native design.
Klaro does a good job allowing to override its core theme and makes it a bit more pleasant. We do have to live with those modals from now on ;)
The themes are Sass-based and provide easy configuration options.
Enjoy!
cubicFUSION Themes for Klaro! @ Github
Klaro is still missing some things, will collect some workarounds here for you to play with.
Updates: Github Discussion – 0.7.10 also adds custom callbacks to services (onAccept, onDecline, onInit) NICE!
Used a simple MutationObserver to do some magic for now, without diving into the core Klaro code for now. I am sure they already have an event listener or watcher setup.
Admin Enhancer is the first free plugin released under the cubicFUSION brand. The plugin is still work in progress, but a tool that is already used within some of my client projects. I am using this plugin to centralise things I love & need, when sending out a finished website or project.
NEW: DASHBOARD GUTENBERG / DASHBOARD TEMPLATES NEW: ADMIN TOOLBARUPDATE: SHORTCODES
This version includes a new addon “GUTENBERG DASHBOARD“, that allows you to build a White-Label Admin Dashboards using the Gutenberg Editor.
It integrates with the SHORTCODES addon and allows to drop in the dashboard widgets via its own Gutenberg Block.
The Block provides settings to overwrite CSS from the admin widgets, allowing you tweak them a bit — for better visual integration. The Dashboard template itself can be tweaked using CSS and Sass via SCSS now 😉
I am also releasing the first integration of the “ADMIN TOOLBAR” addon, which allows you to tweak some of the admin toolbar and footer options (Hide WP Logo, Hide Toolbar on Frontend, Hide Menu Items ..)
Already working on 0.3 … ENJOY!
cubicFUSION – Admin EnhancerWordPress Repository
