Technology

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Supported Browsers & Platforms

Off on a Tangent is designed for a viewport width of at least 320px.

Desktop, laptop, and limited support browsers are tested using Apple macOS 10.12, FreeDOS 1.2, Google Chrome OS 59, Haiku Nightly/Development, Linux Mint 18.1, and Microsoft Windows 10 (1703). Tablet and smartphone browsers are tested using Apple iOS 10.3, Google Android 7.1, and Microsoft Windows 10 (1703).

The most recent version of each of the browsers listed below are officially supported. If you have any trouble using the site in a supported browser, please let me know! In addition, the site should work properly in almost any recent Blink, EdgeHTML, Gecko, or Webkit-based browser.

Desktop Browsers:

Tablet Browsers:

Smartphone Browsers:

Limited Support Browsers:
(it works, but it’s not pretty!)

Core and Libraries

  • WordPress—the core of this site is built on WordPress, an open source (GNU-GPL 2.0) blogging and content management system.
  • This site makes use, to varying degrees, of the following WordPress plugins. These plugins are also licensed under the GNU-GPL 2.0 (except for the Off on a Tangent plugin, which is for private use on this site alone and is not distributed).
    • Akismet Anti-Spam—Used by millions, Akismet is quite possibly the best way in the world to protect your blog from spam. It keeps your site protected even while you sleep. To get started: activate the Akismet plugin and then go to your Akismet Settings page to set up your API key. By Automattic
    • Better WordPress Google XML Sitemaps—Generates XML sitemaps for your WordPress website with ease. This plugin comes with support for sitemap index, multisite WordPress and Google News sitemap. It also provides a powerful and flexible system for any customization need. By Khang Minh
    • Broken Link Checker—Checks your blog for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found. By Janis Elsts, Vladimir Prelovac
    • CryptX—No more SPAM by spiders scanning you site for email adresses. With CryptX you can hide all your email adresses, with and without a mailto-link, by converting them using javascript or UNICODE. Although you can choose to add a mailto-link to all unlinked email adresses with only one klick at the settings. That’s great, isn’t it? By Ralf Weber
    • Disable Comments—Allows administrators to globally disable comments on their site. Comments can be disabled according to post type. By Samir Shah
    • Jetpack by WordPress.com—Bring the power of the WordPress.com cloud to your self-hosted WordPress. Jetpack enables you to connect your blog to a WordPress.com account to use the powerful features normally only available to WordPress.com users. By Automattic
    • Mail From—Change the default address that WordPress sends it’s email from. By Andrew Hamilton
    • Off on a Tangent—Supporting code for Off on a Tangent. By Scott Bradford
    • Search Regex—Adds search & replace functionality across posts, pages, comments, and meta-data, with full regular expression support By John Godley
    • TinyMCE Advanced—Enables advanced features and plugins in TinyMCE, the visual editor in WordPress. By Andrew Ozz
    • WP-PluginsUsed—Display WordPress plugins that you currently have (both active and inactive) onto a post/page. By Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan
    • WP Render Blogroll Links—Outputs your Blogroll links to a Page or Post. Add [wp-blogroll] to a Page or Post and all your Wordpress links/Blogrolls will be rendered. This extremely simple plug-in enables you to create your own Links page without having to write a custom template.The output can easily be styled with CSS. Each category with its links is encapsulated in a DIV with a classname called “linkcat”. All the links are attributed with the class “brlink”. By Tanin Ehrami
  • _s (underscores)—The Off on a Tangent WordPress theme is based upon the open-source (GNU-GPL 2.0) _s (underscores) starter theme.
  • This site also makes use of the following JavaScript libraries:
    • jQuery—Much of the custom JavaScript code that makes this site work the way it works is built upon the open source (GNU-GPL 2.0/MIT License) jQuery JavaScript library.
    • Bootstrap—The responsive layout and most user interface elements are built upon the open source (MIT License) Bootstrap framework.
    • SmartMenus—Menu functions are built upon the open source (MIT License) SmartMenus jQuery plugin with the Bootstrap add-on.
    • Colorbox—Image and gallery pop-ups are built upon the open-source (MIT License) Colorbox jQuery plugin.
    • jVectorMap—Electoral and others maps are built upon the open source (GNU-GPL 3.0) jVectorMap library.

Underpinnings

  • DreamHost—Hosting and domain registration services by DreamHost.
  • Apache HTTP Server—The web server software that underpins both my development and production environments is the open source (Apache License) Apache HTTP Server.
  • PHP Hypertext Preprocessor—The scripting language that powers WordPress and WordPress plugins, as well as my custom application code, is the open source (PHP License) PHP Hypertext Preprocessor.
  • Oracle MySQL—The database technology that powers WordPress is the open source (GNU-GPL 2.0) Oracle MySQL server.

Design and Development

  • Adobe Creative Cloud—Graphics and design work for Off on a Tangent happens in the various proprietary Adobe creative applications, including Photoshop, Illustrator, and many others (depending on the specific task).
  • Apache Subversion—I maintain my code-bases in Apache Subversion, an open source (Apache License) version control system. It keeps all my code in line and makes sure I can roll-back my occasional catastrophic errors.
  • Google Chrome—While developing this site, I do most of my initial development testing in Google’s Chrome web browser, which is based on the open source (BSD License) Chromium browser.
  • JetBrains PhpStorm—I do most of my coding in HTML, JavaScript, and PHP in JetBrains PhpStorm, a well-regarded proprietary integrated development environment based on JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA.
  • Mantis Bug Tracker—I track bugs, development goals, and more using the open source (GNU-GPL 2.0) Mantis Bug Tracker system, which I also use to track my other development projects.

Standardization and Evaluation

Minification

Browser Screenshot Gallery

Chrome (Desktop)
Edge (Desktop)
Firefox (Desktop)
QupZilla (Desktop)
Safari (Desktop)
WebPositive (Desktop)
Chrome (Tablet)
Edge (Tablet)
Firefox (Tablet)
Safari (Tablet)
Chrome (Phone)
Edge (Phone)
Firefox (Phone)
Safari (Phone)
Arachne (Graphics Console)
Links (Text Console)
Lings (Graphics Console)
NetSurf (Lofi Desktop)
Scott Bradford has been building web sites and using them to say what he thinks since 1995, which tended to get him in trouble with power-tripping assistant principals at the time. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University, but has spent most of his career (so far) working on public- and private-sector web sites. He is not a member of any political party, and brands himself an ‘independent constitutional conservative.’ In addition to holding down a day job and blogging about challenging subjects like politics, religion, and technology, Scott is also a devout Catholic, gun-owner, bike rider, and music lover with a wife, two cats, and a dog.