Remkus de Vries

Curiously Questioning Everything

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Stop Chrome from hiding full URL

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Chrome 86 adds yet another obfuscation. Slugs are no longer visible and only visible upon hover. Chrome has been trying for ages now to hide the full URL in its address bar – Ominbox in Chrome’s own terminology – and I find it annoying as hell.

There are so many reasons for me to always be able to see what exact URL I’m on at just a glance… hiding is seriously breaking my flow.

Time needed: 2 minutes.

So, here’s how to disable that:

  1. Go to Chrome flags

    Paste this in the address bar: chrome://flags

  2. Disable these Omnibox setting

    Find the following Omnibox settings and select to disable them.Chrome Flags Omnibox settings

  3. Relaunch Chrome

    You’ll need to relaunch Chrome to make the new settings work. But after Chrome has rebooted, you’ll have a fully functional Chrome address bar again.

How To: Restart Your Camera in Mac OS X

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Working from home, for most, includes a fair amount of video conferencing. But, what if the camera on your Mac produces No Connected Camera errors and effectively won’t work or has suddenly stopped working with apps like Facetime, Skype, Zoom or Google Meet?

Well, you can either go for a full reboot of your computer, or use a little command line magic.

Time needed: 1 minute.

Restarting the camera on your Mac, Macbook, Macbook Pro, Macbook Air, or iMac works like this:

  1. Kill all apps that use the camera

    Make sure to stop all apps using the camera. I’ve not found this to be a requirement in all cases, but it’s good practise to do so before proceeding.

  2. Open Terminal app

    Open the terminal app on your Mac. You can find it by navigating to your Applications > Utilities folder.

    Alternative you can use spotlight (⌘ + Spacebar) and start searching for “terminal”. Of course, if you’ve got the wonderful terminal enhancing iTerm app installed, that will work as well.

  3. Copy killall command

    You’ll need to copy the following command into terminal:

    sudo killall VDCAssistant

  4. Paste killall command to terminal

    Navigate to your terminal app and paste the killall command you’ve just copied

  5. Confirm command execution

    Next up, you’ll need to hit Enter which will prompt you to enter your administrator password for the Mac. Most likely this is the same password as your Mac user account you’re logged in with.

    If all went correctly, you’ll see an empty command line prompt again. Same as when you started.

  6. Open camera app again

    Open up your camera-using app (Zoom, Skype, Facetime, etc) and activate your camera again. It should now function properly again.

I’ve had to do this so many times that I’d figure I’d document how to do it properly. Hope this helps you too!

Letting go…

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This is just a reminder to let go. To let go of things you’re not going to pursue. Of things that are never going to get the full attention that they deserve. Of things that are cluttering your todo list. Of things that you feel obligated to do because you once thought of them.

I’m a gatherer of things, a collector of things by nature. That’s my modus operandi. However, as much as I like to collect things, I’m also keenly aware of the power of letting go. So, to that end, I’ve let go of a lot of “things” to in the last couple of days and perhaps you’ll recognize some things to let go of as well in my list. I let go of:

  • Mindmaps of ideas I once had
  • Domain names I’m never going to find the time (read: priority) to pursue into actual projects
  • Draft posts I haven’t touched in a loooong time (think years)
  • Trello cards and boards full of ideas
  • Reminders in reminder apps full of things I “need” to do still
  • Notes in my notes app with information that is no longer relevant
  • The content of my Downloads folder
  • Old boxes which at one time contained iPhones, iMacs, etc.
  • Screenshots of things in my Pictures/images folders
  • Duplicate images on my devices
  • Any old pair of shoes that were extra to having one pair of backups for painting the house or something like that
  • Email subscriptions that I dismiss too regularly
  • Screws and other assorted metal thingies in glass pots
  • Keys to locks I, for the life of me, can’t remember where they belonged to.
  • Electrical cords, chargers, USB cables, etc. You know what I mean, you have one of those boxes as well!
  • Old phones that were already ancient in 2004
  • Papers no longer needed
  • Food ingredients that are way past their due date
  • Books I was never ever going to read
  • Clothes I was never ever going to wear anymore.

In other words, any and all things that cluttered. All of this I let go because it’s so much better to have a clear focus. And clear focus only truly works if the list is small.

So, what are you letting go of?

About mental and physical health

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My working days consist of my sitting behind my computer all day. I’m not sure what the percentages are of people having similar work scenarios, but I’m guessing they’re pretty high. This sedentary work life is something I struggle with. I like being active during the day, but it’s hard to be active when you’re just sitting in your chair all day.

Apart from the obvious health risks of just doing anything actively all day, I started experiencing mental effects as well. I felt locked up in my own mind. I was having trouble unwind at the end of the day and not think about work anymore after work hours.

So, something had to change. I’m a firm believer in symbioses between a healthy body and healthy mind. To compensate for my stationary work life, I started to work out in the gym. This is years ago now.

In the beginning, all I did was just a little bit of fitness, but I quickly started feeling better mentally. And as I progressed in the weights, I physically started feeling better as well. And while I started feeling physically better, I started feeling better mentally as well. It was almost as if one influenced the other 😏.

Why Am I Sharing This?

A few weeks ago I shared an Instagram story of me walking with a Yoke for the first time, as well as doing a Farmers Walk. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, go ahead and go to my Instagram profile and look for the #fitdad stories.

A couple of people commented on that story and started asking questions. Instead of keeping those answers in my Instagram DMs, I thought it’d be good to answer them here. Because there was a common theme in those questions. I’m also including some other questions I get about working out and what it does for me.

My workout frequently asked questions about working out

I wish I could do cool stuff like that, but that looks way too heavy!

You know what? When I started working out properly, I did my bench press, squats, overhead press and deadlifts with an empty bar. So, that’s just 20kg and all I did was incrementally add kilos. As little as 0,5kg per time. I focused on the form only.

Is it even healthy, lifting so heavy?

Not only do you create more muscles and thus burn more calories in rest state, doing heavy lifting actually increases your vascular and nerves system. And, if done correctly, it can be the best cardio exercise you ever did!

What do you do in any given week

I basically have two workout sessions which I alternate. The first starts with Overhead Press and Squats plus some complimentary lifts. The other workout is focused on the Romanian Deadlift and Bench Press and also some complimentary lifts.

Additionally, I do some LISS exercises like outdoor walks or on my indoor bike.

What if I really don’t like working with weights. Are there any alternatives?

So, looking at the end goal for me, which is to live as healthy and strong for as long as possible, lifting weights really is the only option. But, if hauling with weights isn’t your thing, body weight exercises will get you there as well.

What else do you do to feel to empty your mind

My favoriete is lifting weights, but I also like going for an hour long walk, meditate, listen to music loudly. Basically, anything that stops me from thinking 😅.

What are your favorite excercises?

There’s really only one absolute favoriete one and that has to be the deadlift. I’m currently doing the Romanian Deadlift (RDL) and loving it. It the one excercise that absolutely destroys me, depletes and leaves me with no room to think. I mean, there’s really no room to think once you’re going for sets with 10 reps of 200kg.

WordCamp Soltau Recap

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Last weekend Taco, Karin and I from team Yoast attended a new kind of WordCamp. A WordCamp Retreat. Located in the North of Germany we experienced a very relaxed WordCamp with some interesting differences from your regular WordCamps.

I’ve written a full recap for WP Tavern which was published this morning, and this is one of the things I mentioned there:

Most of this was made possible by the location. Hotel Park Soltau is located in the North of Germany surrounded by woods and heath. The hotel was reserved for WordCamp attendees only. Everyone stayed there, ate there, and networked there. It was an incredibly immersive experience on a different level than any of the other WordCamps I’ve attended.

I highly encourage you to read the rest on The Tavern and do let me know if you have any questions.

On Theme Onboarding in WordPress

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One of the actions that raise a lot of questions over for clients over at WP ServicePoint is the moment when a client decides to switch to a new design, a new theme. It’s one of those actions that is surprisingly poor handled by the vast majority of the themes out there. A few of the questions I saw in our mail queue made it very obvious that there are themes out there that really shouldn’t be handled by new to average WordPress users.

That’s a bold statement, right? Well, yes it is, but it’s also true. And yes, some of those themes were the kind that tries to solve every damn website layout solution out there in just one theme, but truth be told, there were some themes that were in itself simple enough, but required just too many steps to make them look anything like the demo. And that’s just not okay.

A while ago my son wrote about his general onboarding experience as a WordPress newbie. In the second step, he describes the experience of activating a theme for the first time. What was very clear to me from that exercise is that that particular onboarding experience is just really poor.  We should be doing better. And since we’ve started building premium themes as well, I started looking around to see what was out there.

Some plugins are already doing it right

Turns out, there are some plugins that are doing it right. A great example would be Yoast SEO‘s plugin that provides a wizard that runs you through setting up the plugin configuration. Their inspiration comes from WooCommerce’s wizard that helps you set up your shop.

Some smaller plugins do a simplified version of that. Upon activating the plugin a few short and simple options are presented, some pages (required by the plugin) are automatically assigned and or created, that sort of thing. WP Car Manager is a good example of such a setup.  So what about themes then?

Theme onboarding

I’ve looked extensively at the vast list of premium (and free) themes available to me, but none provided a flow that would solve the issues and questions Roan ran into. The “best” solution I found was upon activating the theme, redirecting to a setup page inside the WordPress Dashboard. On that setup page, a whole range of instructions was provided on how to set up the various parts that made up the whole of the design. Think menu, frontpage settings, import demo content, import widget settings, install required plugins, etc. Array Themes is one of those theme shops that handle this very nicely in their themes.

But, I was looking for a complete solution where Mike McAlister from Array Themes’ implementation would be the end-point of a wizard like setup – like Yoast SEO is providing– not the first step.  So, I turned to twitter to ask for help:

Hopeful Results

Turns out, there are really not that many solutions out there. There are two platform dedicated solutions out there that are interesting, but since they rely too heavily on the specific platform they’re designed for, they’re not really that useful. One solution is for onboarding themes from ThemeForest/Envato (demo video | code on Github) and the other was the general WordPress + BeaverBuilder theme onboarding experience on the GoDaddy hosting platform (blog post, demo video, some code on Github).

But there’s hope. I was introduced by Ana Segota to the most promising solution out there. It turns out to be a project that is currently in the works and it’s called Merlin WP by Rich Tabor. The demonstration video shows what happens when you activate the theme and how it takes care of installing required plugins, installing demo content, importing widgets and more.

Clearly, there’s movement on the Theme Onboarding Front, and I for one am very keen to learn how Rich plans to add all the necessary flexibility in there. There’s a lot of cool stuff you can do with a smooth running wizard, provided you allow for options and opt-outs – like for instance, not all themes will be installed on new sites – and extra steps and integrations like licensing for example.

So, I’d love to know what you guys think about this. Would love to have your input on what scenarios should or should not be included in such a wizard or if the premise of such a wizard is even a good one? Do let me know in the comments!

“It’s almost like our unconsciousness is a kind of failure”

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You know I’m all about applying perspective as much as possible when living our daily lives. It’s also one of the topics we frequently discuss with our kids – 10, 16 and 18yo. One of the questions we entertained ourselves with over NYE was about how the world looked / worked before the internet. When googling for examples we stumbled upon a very interesting article I’d like to share with you.

The following quote is what especially caught my attention:

“When you wake up, you have this gift of a blank brain. You could fill it with anything. But for most of us, we have this kind of panic.

Instead of wondering what should I do, we wonder what did I miss. It’s almost like our unconsciousness is a kind of failure and we can’t believe we’ve been offline for eight hours…”

I encourage you to read the rest of the article: What it feels like to be the last generation to remember life before the internet. 

Demo Screencast Preparation Steps

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I love discovering new cool WordPress plugins/solutions and I love it even more if the developer has taken the effort to create a demo video of the plugin in action.

However:

So, let’s address that. What is my opinion about that? I think it comes across unprofessional and sloppy. There, I said it.

Now, it’s very easy to criticize something, but it takes effort to actually come up with a solution. Or rather, in this case, steps to take to prevent sloppy demo videos. On that note, I’d like to share with you the steps that I take before I start recording a demo.

Screencast demo preparation steps

Time needed: 2 minutes.

In order to produce a clean and distraction-free screencast, follow these steps:

  1. Close all non-related apps

    All non-essential apps should be turned off before you start recording.

  2. Use a dedicated Demo Desktop screen

    Consider using either a dedicated clean account on your computer, or if you’re using a Mac, use a dedicated screen for your recording.

  3. Kill all notifications.

    Make sure you kill all notifications before you start recording. In OSX you can do this easily in your the Notifications pane in your general settings.

  4. Set up a fresh demo installation

    Create a new and fresh local development environment with a domain name that reflects the purpose. DesktopServer will allow you to do that, for instance.

  5. Update all the things. WordPress, plugins, themes, and translations. Yes, all the things.

    Not having any updates available will allow all those OCD viewers of your screencast to focus on the actual screencast.

  6. Dismiss all notices in the Dashboard

    All those upgrade and other kinds of notices are distractions. Perhaps even use a clever way to hide and combine all those notices, but that’s a different subject 😉

  7. Hide the toolbar, bookmarks in your browser

    There are possibly personal and/or private links in your bookmarks bar, so it’s probably better to remove it while recording.

  8. Hide all the browser extensions and plugins

    This is easily done by either using a private browser window or to slide the address bar all the way to the right.

  9. Make sure you have a fitting desktop wallpaper if you have the possibility it might be shown when clicking around

    If you’re recording your entire screen and you need to click around to show what you want to show, you may want to consider a friendly background image.

That’s my demo preparation checklist. Obviously there are some things to consider when actually recording as well:

  • Use a storyboard if it’s a long demo with lots of steps
  • Do a proper introduction starting at the beginning
  • Explain your steps while you’re doing them. Don’t assume the audience knows why you click somewhere
  • Get a proper microphone that records something that’s actually similar to your voice
  • Do a proper recap

So there you have it. Problem and solution. I’m sure there’s tons of smart stuff you folks do as well when creating demo videos and I’d love for you to share them in the comments!

Further reading