I really only have one thing left to do before I upload and activate the preview of the Big Urgent Wish WordPress theme. It’s a bit of a killer. It’s actually quite easy, but the logistics are making me swoon a bit just now. Mind you, once I have it all down, the installation will be a breeze for anyone familiar with the mind-bogglingly super-easy process of downloading and using a new WordPress theme. (The basic gist is this: download a theme, upload it to your Themes directory, and then activate it. That’s all there is.)
Here’s what I gotta do: because my theme uses semi-transparent PNG graphics for backgrounds in some places, any version of IE under 7 will not display them properly. Therefore, I have a browser sniffing PHP routine to determine what, exactly, the platform/browser are… and, hence, what the User Agent is capable of supporting (assuming UA string spoofing is not taking place).
Thus, by renaming *.css files as *.css.php (the “.css” bit is unnecessary but useful), and by parsing those files as CSS (after, of course, being processed as PHP), I can substitute GIF images instead for the crippled masses.
However, this entails a bit more typing and rearranging than I care to stomache today, so I will put it off until tomorrow (a day off from work).
Incidentally, the name “Big Urgent Wish” came to me one day as I was at my day (read: night) job (answering e-mails for a big-name online fashion retailer), extrapolating on some of the strangely translated phrases we sometimes get from non-English speaking customers abroad. This is not a phrase that was directly written out by anyone, it’s just something I thought up while trying to come up with something to top a goofy phrase I once read. As an aside, I embrace non-English speaking peoples… and, equally, the unusual and poetic, evocative turns of phrase that they can sometimes be capable of producing. Isn’t language even more wonderful from alternate angles?
