Category Archives: Technology

Blogposts on blog.futtta.be about internet, web developement, browsers, security, linux, …

How to LYTE-n up your WooCommerce video’s

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So you have a WooCommerce shop which uses YouTube video’s to showcase your products but those same video’s are slowing your site down as YouTube embeds typically do? WP YouTube Lyte can go a long way to fix that issue, replacing the “fat embedded YouTube player” with a LYTE alternative.

LYTE will automatically detect and replace YouTube links (oEmbeds) and iFrames in your content (blogposts, pages, product descriptions) but is not active on content that does not hook into WordPress’ the_content filter (e.g. category descriptions or short product descriptions). To have LYTE active on those as well, just hook the respective filters up with the lyte_parse-function and you’re good to go;

if (function_exists('lyte_parse')) {
add_filter('woocommerce_short_description','lyte_parse');
add_filter('category_description','lyte_parse');
}

And a LYTE video, in case you’re wondering, looks like this (in this case beautiful harmonies by David Crosby & Venice, filmed way back in 1999 on Dutch TV);

David Crosby & Venice – Guinevere | 2 Meter Sessions | 1999

Watch this video on YouTube.

Quick trick to disable Autoptimize on a page

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So suppose you have one page/ post which for whatever reason you don’t want Autoptimize to act on? Simply add this in the post content and AO will bail out;

<!-- <xsl:stylesheet -->

Some extra info:

  • Make sure to use the “text”-editor, not the “visual” one as I did here to make sure the ode is escaped and thus visible
  • This bailing out was added 5 years ago to stop the PHP-generated <xsl:stylesheet from Yoast SEO from being autoptmized, if I’m not mistaking Yoast generates the stylesheet differently now.
  • The xsl-tag is enclosed in a HTML comment wrapper to ensure it is not visible (except here, on purpose to escape the HTML tags so they are visible for you to see).

Autoptimize 2.4 beta 3 includes image optimization!

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We’re finalizing work on Autoptimize 2.4 with beta-3, which was just released. There are misc. changes under the hood, but the main functional change is the inclusion of image optimization!

This feature uses Shortpixel’s smart image optimization proxy, where requests for images are routed through their URL and automagically optimized. As the image proxy is hosted on one of the best preforming CDN’s with truly global presence obviously using HTTP/2 for parallelized requests, as the parameters are not in a query-string but are part of the URL and as behind the scenes the same superb image optimization logic is used that can also be found in the existing Shortpixel plugin, you can expect great results from just ticking that “optimize image” checkbox on the “Extra” tab :-)

Image optimization will be completely free during the 2.4 Beta-period. After the official 2.4 release this will remain free up until a still to be defined threshold per domain, after which additional service can be purchased at Shortpixel’s.

If you’re already running AO 2.4 beta-2, you’ll be prompted to upgrade. And if you’d like to join the beta to test image optimization, you can download the zip-file here. The only thing I ask in return is feedback (bugs, praise, yay’s, meh’s, …)  ;-)

 

Nokia and me, reunited at last

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Me and Nokia, we go a long way back; my first mobile phone was a trusty Nokia 3210 and it’s unique gaming proposition Snake.

I switched it for a Nokia 7710 because I was thrilled to be able to go on the Internet. The CSD data transport protocol, WAP and WML were very limited however and the phone crashed regularly (apparently it was the first Nokia with the Series 40 OS and it showed) so that didn’t last too long really.

A couple of years of infidelity later, while half the world went crazy about those iPhone’s and the other half was busy looking very business-like on their Blackberrys, I returned to Nokia for the Symbian-powered Nokia e61i, which I absolutely loved not in the least because of the hardware keyboard (a feature I missed on smartphones years after I bailed on my e61i).

And now I, the prodigal son, after a long string of good, bad and broken smartphones, have finally returned home, buying a 2018 Nokia 6.1 with 64GB internal memory (and 4GB or RAM) for under €300. Great build-quality with a aluminum unibody shell, 5.5 inch screen, fast charging, fingerprint, Zeiss lens … And it is running bloat-less stock Android 8.1 and given the Android One stamp it will receive continuous security updates and 2 years of OS upgrades. After 2 weeks of usage I can say this is the best smartphone I have owned to date! It sure feels good to have come back home ;-)

New: Autoptimize CriticalCSS.com Power-Up released!

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The Autoptimize criticalcss.com Power-up has just been released to the wordpress.org plugin repository!

This plugin integrates with and extends Autoptimize. It integrates with criticalcss.com, a premium service which uses a “headless” browser to extract real critical CSS. That way it  fully automates the extraction of high-quality critical CSS and the creation of rules for that critical CSS. It can work 100% automated, but also allows semi-automated jobs (where you enter a URL for which you want a specific rule, the power-up will do the rest) and manual rules (where you create the rule and add critical CSS yourself).

bol.com: please don’t share my data with Facebook

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NoScript remains one of my favorite browser addons (or plugins or whatever they’re called these days). Look what it just proposed to block while browsing bol.com (one of the big online retailers in BE and NL);

So when does GDPR go in effect exactly and will I be able to opt-out of data-sharing from that moment onwards?