Yesterday, the WordPress folks released a plugin derived from the code they use for WordPress.com: it’s called WordPress.com Custom CSS. There’s a lot more functionality in that plugin, including advanced filtering of CSS with CSS Tidy and KSES. Custom stylesheet rules are saved in the wp_posts table, which means you can have revisions.

Most importantly, this is tested code that has been deployed on WordPress.com.

I highly encourage any users on WordPress 2.9 or higher to switch to the WordPress.com Custom CSS plugin. That being said, there is no easy route for migration from Simpler CSS to that plugin, because the storage methods are completely different. WordPress µ hosts should consult with users before switching, or enable both plugins for a period of time so that users can manually copy their code over. Since Simpler CSS continues to function for version 3.0-alpha, you may continue to use it without side effects.

Simpler CSS will not be developed after the current version, 0.4. However, users of WordPress versions between 2.7 and 2.9 are still welcome to download it from the plugin repository.

Note: I have made a decision to continue maintenance releases only for the purpose of ensuring that it continues to work.

Now, [ scribd ]...[/ scribd ] too should work properly.

Note: references to the ‘scribd’ shortcode in this post were modified with added spaces in order to prevent WordPress from changing them into embeds.

Changelog tab on the directory, via westi on wordpress

When I release the upcoming updates of Simpler CSS and Simpler iPaper, I will be sure to incorporate a changelog into the readme, but I will not be adding the changes from releases earlier than Simpler iPaper 1.1 and Simpler CSS 0.2b.

Although the Simpler CSS and Simpler iPaper plugins have not been updated for WordPress 2.8, there are no changes in WordPress that would likely affect the proper functioning of the plugins.

In any case, updated versions will be released within the week. However, I am debating whether to update it to Tested up to: 2.8 or Tested up to: 2.9-rare, which is the version string used in the Subversion trunk as of June 18. We’ll see.

Addendum: Simpler iPaper will still be compatible with older versions as it moves forward. Simpler CSS will still be compatible with only 2.7 and up.

• Default CSS setting / default text
• Cleaner cleaning
  • Quotes in CSS no longer escaped
  • @import and CSS comments are now stripped

A new default CSS setting shows on the options page for new users who have just discovered the custom CSS feature. By default, introductory text is shown to let users know what the plugin does. This default text can be edited in the plugin file — very useful for WordPress µ hosts.

Default text on Simpler CSS options page

Version 0.2b also fixes a problem where CSS properties that have quotes, such as font-family: "Times New Roman", Georgia, serif; may be escaped by the PHP function htmlspecialchars(). ENT_NOQUOTES is now used so that quotes in CSS code are not erroneously escaped.

This new plugin uses Perl regular expressions to strip out @import rules (to prevent the loading of external stylesheets — useful only for WordPress µ hosts that want to limit their users’ capabilities) and CSS comments (to reduce output size). Further filtering will be added in future versions in a way that allows them to be disabled or enabled.

(We’re skipping the 0.2 release because that one had a link to the old Simpler Plugins site, which has been switched to this blog.)

This is the initial version; version 0.2 will be coming within the next few days, allowing for a WordPress.com-style default message and regular expression-based filtering.

How it looks in the Appearance menu

Screenshot of the Simpler CSS Options page

Coming soon — once the plugin is admitted onto the repository and directory.

(Unlike the Simpler iPaper plugin, which was released under the Apache License, this plugin will be released under the GPL in order to comply with the licensing of the project from which it was forked.)

Download a pre-release version.