hi,insraq!

Feb. 14 is the Spring Festival this year. Coincidentally, it is also the Valentine’s day.

FSF Europe has launched a campaign to appreciate the work of open source developers.

FSF Europe says you can:

• Send them a message thanking them for their work
• Buy your favourite project some chocolates
• Hug a developer (ask permission first!)
• Buy your favourite developer a drink
• Send a book to your favourite contributor

Or you can just put up their banners in your blog.

See the details in the campaign web page.

P.S. Although I use Windows 7 as major production environment, I have a Kubuntu installed on my laptop.

I’m not a good blogger – I do not update my blog frequently. I know that to gain popularity, one has to be a productive blogger. I’m simply not that kind of guy, I quite enjoy the peace of my life.

Anyway, go back to the title. I decide to hold a web design sharing (or you may call it a course). It is an introductory course which basically introduce XHTML and CSS. The good thing is that the course is free of charge. I don’t know what a similar course usually costs, but free of charge should definitely be very attractive. The course will be held in The Chinese University of Hong Kong. . As I expect most people who will attend are Putonghua speaker, I decide to use Putonghua as main language.
I’ve coded a simple course website. The website will be used as illustration, that is, I will explain in detail how to code a website like that using XHTML and CSS.

Anyone who are interested and would like to come are welcome. As it is hold in the university and taught in Putonghua, I won’t expect a lot of people. If you do want to attend, please sign up for it. I will send you emails about the details.
The detail arrangement and course outline can be found in the course website.

The details of the course:

The First Night
Time: 6:30pm ~ 9:30pm Jan 23 Sat
Venue: NAH 11 (Humanities in New Asia College, CUHK)

The Second Night
Time: 6:30pm ~ 9:30pm Jan 30 Sat
Venue: NAH 11 (Humanities in New Asia College, CUHK)

The Third Night
Time: 6:30pm ~ 9:30pm Feb 6 Sat
Venue: NAH 11 (Humanities in New Asia College, CUHK)

The long Christmas holiday makes me lazy. I very much enjoy designing; coding is just fine but debugging and writing documents are what I hate. So during the holidays I have finished a lot of themes but none of theme have been debugged and documented. That’s basically what kept me busy after the holiday.

Anyway, I’ve finished the following themes: Inspire 4 5 and 6. Among them, Inspire 4 was actually debugged before Christmas and I wanted to release it as a Christmas gift. However, I didn’t feel like writing the release note, so it was kept in my hard disk during the holiday. Inspire 5 and 6 are finished during the holiday.

Anyway, I decide to release these three themes and conclude the Inspire Project. The reason for termination is that I don’t think the existence of the project makes much sense any more. I create the project to bring fresh and new designs for XOOPS community and as time goes on, I find out the bottle neck is not the design of the theme but the architecture.

XOOPS has a very awesome theme framework: Mor.Pho.GEN.e.sis (I’ll use “MORPH” for short). Kris, the creator, is very kind to demonstrate some new features of MORPH 3.10. I thinks the framework should be fully taken advantage of, thus I will spend more time working on it. Meanwhile, I do ask Kris a favor of optimizing the architecture for Inspire themes. He might integrate Inspire themes with MORPH framework, which is definitely a good news.

Here are screen shots, you may click to enlarge.

Inspire 4

Inspire 5

Inspire 6

As always, you can find the theme files in the “Get&buy” section (formerly as Download).
By the way, I tested all the themes in major browsers, even in IE 6. Inspire 6 is XHTML 1.0 and CSS valid. The latest Inspire 3 is also compatible with IE 6.

Update 6 : Inspire 3.06 is released on Dec. 22 17:14 GMT+8

Change log for Inspire 3.06
Minor syntax fix.

Update 5 : Inspire 3.05 is released on Dec. 18 15:00 GMT+8

Change log for Inspire 3.05
1. Almost fully compatible with IE 6.
2. Better CSS syntax.

Update 4 : Inspire 3.04 is released on Dec. 14 13:55 GMT+8

Change log for Inspire 3.04
1. Add CSS hack to fix z-index issue in IE7
2. Fix issue with Yogurt Module

Update 3 : Inspire 3.03 is released on Nov. 7 22:14 GMT+8

Change log for Inspire 3.03
Better XOOPS smarty syntax (by Kris_fr)

Update 2 : Inspire 3.02 is released on Nov. 6 1:14 GMT+8

Change log for Inspire 3.02
1. Adjust the xoops_content and center center blocks co-existence issue.
2. Fix a bug of center center blocks.

Update 1 : Inspire 3.01 is released on Nov. 5 15:41 GMT+8

Change log for Inspire 3.01
1. Fixed bugs in IE 7.
2. Fixed XOOPS system_template compatible issues.
3. Fixed block css issues.
4. Amend XHMTL mark up.
5. Optimize CSS file.

I haven’t updated this blog for a while – quite busy with some other projects. Inspire 3 was half finished and I didn’t want it to die in my hard disk. So I spend some time finishing it. It takes me much much longer than I expected. And it turns out to be much much better.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. The left blocks will be displayed in the “extended” footer. Please show 4 blocks at most . The right blocks will not be displayed.
2. The “center center” blocks will be displayed in the “Spotlight” area by tabs . The block title is tab title and block content is tab content. Please do remember to give a title to each “center center” block.
3. Center left and center right blocks will be displayed under “Spotlight”.
4. Except blocks mentioned above, other blocks will not be displayed.

You can check out the demo here . And you know where to download the theme .

And as I am kind of busy these days and I have to focus on paid projects, the Inspire projects may be suspended. So Inspire 3 may be the last released (free) theme recently. I’ve prepared a series of designer’s talk so please stay tuned. Please subscribe to our blog or follow us on twitter .

We are happy to introduce our new Customer Support Platform (CSP) for our current and potential customers. It is a highly usable and practical tool for communication and customer support. You can submit your request and report a bug through the platform.

What’s more, It is a wonderful tool for customer relationship management. Your account will not be removed after the conclusion of the project. If you have a new project for us, you can keep using your original account. And you can get a promo discount if you give us two projects in one year, which can be traced in the platform.

After your project commences, your account will be created and sent to you by email. Please modify your password and update your email address in your account settings.

The platform is powered by Trellis Desk , a great web application by Accord5. Those people rock!