This is for anyone searching for the answer to this problem- the rest of you can ignore it.

If after upgrading wordpress from 2.0 to 2.0.2 or from 2.0.1 to 2.0.2 you get this error message:

Parse error: parse error, unexpected ‘<' in /home/"user name"/"folder name"/wp-includes/functions.php on line 904 there is a good possibility your ftp application (I use Transmit on a Mac) was set to upload "Binary" instead of "auto detect" Although the site seemed to work with the old "functions.php" file- I'm pretty sure there was something broken that I didn't have time to find. Hope this helped.

Rapid Web Development and Testing with Mozilla Firefox

Although many of you won’t be a traditional “Web Developer” because you are using Word Press to develop your site and manage content- if you want to learn more about the code underlying a site- Firefox has development tools.
One of the great things about Firefox is that it’s modular. You can add extensions easily to do all kinds of things.
I couldn’t live without the Autofill extension or the Sage RSS reader- but, if you are interested in developing web sites- there are a ton of other useful tools- all covered in the above link to a presentation.

For the badly coded sites that require Internet Explorer- there are a couple of  extensions that can make viewing IE specific pages in Firefox simple:

• IE Tab allows you to launch the page you are visiting in IE in a new Firefox tab.
• IE View launches the current page in IE.

You can also load other search sites into your “google” window in the toolbar- a few that I can’t live without are Dictionary and Wikipedia- although the Urban Dictionary is fun and occasionally useful.

Adding extensions is often a simple one-click process- and then restarting Firefox- no download and install. The number of extensions is growing every day- but there are hundreds that are available- and one may help you do just what you need.

Microsoft Delays IE’s ActiveX D-Day

As if people don’t need another reason to switch to Open Source software solutions- Microsoft is now making their new browser require custom authoring so that it can run their own custom Active X controls. Internet Explorer is already known as “Microsoft Exploder” by coders who care to adhere to W3C standards- and now it may be even worse- not working with it’s own proprietary standard.
While it may be cheaper for Microsoft not to settle the lawsuit- for all the companies that trusted Microsoft to provide a platform for their business model- that now have to pay their developers to re-vamp existing work- this is an expensive proposition.

Having data standards that work on all platforms (Mac, Linux and Windows) is critical- why does Microsoft keep marching to their own drummer? Because they can. We test all sites on multiple operating systems- with multiple browsers- if they are W3C compliant- then they are good to go.

It’s time for a mass revolt against IE. Download Firefox today- and tell your friends. Friends don’t let friends use Microsoft Explorer.