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William Shakespeare once wrote, “If music be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it; that surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die.” Translation? “Music is life, man.”
That’s why we shake it whenever we hear music, sing obnoxiously in the shower, and drum a beat with our silverware at the dinner table. If you want to up the anté on your drum solo or teach yourself a new talent, the Touchbeat Smart Drum Kit can turn your phone or tablet screen into a digital drum set.
A far cry from aimlessly tapping your hands on the table, this successfully-funded Kickstarter project lets you jam out to your favorite songs and teaches you how to drum.
Just clip the touch emulator onto your tablet and open the free, corresponding app. From there, you can use the complimentary sticks to participate in a handful of interactive games. Once you have the basics down, you can play along to a number of songs. The Touchbeat Smart Drum Kit even comes with a kick pedal, leg strap, and foot strap to make you feel like you’re playing the real thing.
Check it out:
Not everyone wants to hear you rock and roll all night (and party everyday), which is why you can plug in your headphones and jam out quietly. A win-win, if you ask us — your neighbors will be thankful, too.
A physical drum kit can set you back a couple of hundred bucks, but you can pick up the Touchbeat Smart Drum Kit for $69. Whether your New Year’s resolution is to pick up an instrument or you’re looking for a present for music-addicted friends, this set has you covered.
I never cease to be amazed at how frequently the interesting things I merely imagine turn out to be real. For instance, my relentless research in the field of goblets and challenges led me to wonder whether there might be some special type of goblet used in drinking games. I turned as usual to the sacred oracle, the source of all wisdom in the universe, for guidance. And what Google told me, after a fashion, was that such goblets do indeed exist. In fact, depending on one’s willingness to stretch the definition of goblet, which in my case is boundless, there may be several very different sorts of goblets that figure in drinking games.
For example, there’s a dice game played in Bolivia called Alalay. It’s quite similar to Yahtzee, in that it involves rolling five dice, with scoring based on the values of various number combinations. As in Yahtzee, the dice are placed in a small container and shaken before being thrown. In Alalay, this container, which is made of stiff leather, is called a goblet. Alalay is sometimes played as a drinking game, though the goblet itself is never used for alcohol; it wouldn’t do to get the dice wet.
I’ll Drink to That
But I found an even closer and more literal match for drinking-game-related goblets: something called a passglas (sometimes spelled pasglas)—a design that was popular in Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, and Sweden during the 16th through 18th centuries. A passglas is a tall glass—sometimes cylindrical but more often having six or eight sides—that looks suspiciously like a chemist’s graduated cylinder. It is tapered and stemless but, like all goblets, has a foot. And not unlike a graduated cylinder, it’s marked with glass rings or bands at regular intervals.
Etymologically sophisticated readers will guess, correctly, that passglas means “pass glass,” and the name accurately describes its use. The glass was filled with beer (or, depending on the locale and the desired depth of inebriation, schnapps). The first participant drank down to the first mark and passed it on, but if he—naturally, it would be a “he”—drank too much and the liquid level dropped below the line, he would be obligated to drink all the way to the next line, and so on. Presumably one’s precision decreased as the liquid drained, increasing the rate of consumption. Depending on the number of participants and the type of alcohol used, several refillings could be required in order for all parties to reach a suitable state of intoxication.
The Art of Drinking
Despite the apparent ubiquity and popularity of the passglas in its heyday, it’s rarely mentioned in literature or depicted in artwork—but there are some examples. Seventeenth-century Dutch artist Adriaen van Ostade specialized in paintings and sketches involving peasants, drinking, and drinking peasants. One of his more obscure paintings, called Het dansende paar (“The Dancing Couple”), painted some time between 1680 and 1685, shows a man drinking from a passglas while the next drinker eagerly waits his turn.
Nowadays passglases are sold as antiques or found in museums, and are little known outside the parts of Europe where they were once popular. This is too bad, because although modern drinking games may be more sophisticated in some ways, they rarely if ever involve a test of how skillfully one can actually drink. Precision drinking competitions could add an entirely new dimension to, say, New Year’s Eve celebrations—but a modern Pyrex measuring cup doesn’t match the simple elegance of the passglas. —Joe Kissell
An article titled “Can You Tell Red From White?” in the online edition of Wine Spectator Magazine a couple of years ago began with this line:
The New Yorker threw down the gauntlet. Wine Spectator rose to the challenge.
Whatever else you may say about the two magazines in question or the qualifications of the authors they hire to write about wine, this much is clear: Wine Spectator missed a critical opportunity for an excellent pun. In fact, so blatant was their oversight that it casts grave doubts on the magazine’s editorial sensibilities.
The Red and White Blues
But linguistic flexibility is a much less serious matter than that which concerned humorist Calvin Trillin, who wrote an article titled “The Red and the White. Is it possible that wine connoisseurs can’t tell them apart?” in the August 19 & 26, 2002, edition of The New Yorker. Trillin claimed to have heard from multiple sources that wine experts—even those with degrees in enology from the University of California, Davis—routinely failed a blind taste test in which participants were asked simply to pick which wines (served at room temperature in black glasses) were red and which were white. If true, this suggests that the whole enterprise of tasting and judging wines rests on a shaky foundation at best.
In the course of Trillin’s research, he discovered that the test he had heard of was most likely an urban myth, or at least a significant embellishment of a test where wines are judged by smell rather than taste. Nevertheless, he himself couldn’t reliably tell the difference. In an effort to show just how ridiculous it should be even to ask such a question, an enology professor subjected Trillin to an impromptu experiment with a pair of wines—one white, one red—and he guessed wrong. Volunteers on the staff of Wine Spectator fared much better in their own version of the test, correctly guessing color 40 out of 42 times.
Fruity, with a Note of Imagination
But the fact that anyone could fail such a test suggests that wines’ aromas and flavors are not as distinctive as experts have led us to believe. It also reminds us that the experience of taste and smell—tightly connected as they are—may be quite subjective. Psychologists say that one’s perception of smell is strongly affected by one’s expectations—more often than not, we smell what we think we’re going to smell, or what someone tells us we’ll smell. So it’s entirely plausible that the smells and tastes we perceive in a glass of wine can be colored (so to speak) by the wine’s appearance. Meanwhile, experts ranging from Wine Spectator editors to UC Davis enologists admit that some wines have flavors that belie their colors—typically reds with an unusually low level of tannin or whites with an unusually high level. Without the standard cues of color and temperature, even a seasoned pro could plausibly suffer from a confused palate.
Although I’ve been to several wine tastings, I have not developed the sophisticated palate or vocabulary necessary for describing the taste of a wine meaningfully. But then, if even such a basic distinction as a wine’s being red or white can be missed, I don’t feel so bad for not being able to detect that hint of raspberry, that faint aroma of vanilla, or even those strong oak overtones the labels declare so boldly. My test is much simpler: what color are your cheeks after drinking the wine? Red: good. White: not so much. —Joe Kissell
You’d be surprised how few literary examples of goblet-throwing there are. I mean, sure, this sort of thing shows up every now and then in your basic fantasy novel, but history isn’t exactly littered with the shards of goblets broken dramatically at the climax of some great epic tale. Except for one, of course: the Hymiskviða (The Lay of Hymir), a poem that tells the story of Thor’s heroic acquisition of Hymir’s Cauldron. This is the sort of story you read to your kids at bedtime—if you happen to live in Iceland in the year 1300 or thereabouts. For those not familiar with the story, here is an extremely abbreviated and very slightly accurate retelling.
Give Me a Cauldron Large Enough, and a Place to Stand…
The gods of Asgard were looking for an eternal source of mead, and they demanded that Ægir, god of the sea, provide it for them. Ægir, unhappy with the tone of their request, said he’d only do it if the gods could supply him with a cauldron large enough, such enormous vessels being rather scarce. Tyr, the god of war and justice, knew just where to obtain such an item: his father, the giant Hymir, had one that was “a league deep” (that would be about three and a half miles—certainly large enough to keep the gods drunk for a few millennia). But Tyr knew his father wouldn’t acquiesce easily, so he enlisted the aid of Thor, the god of thunder, to trick Hymir into parting with the giant cauldron.
Thor and Tyr went together to visit the bellicose Hymir. After braving their way through a variety of adventures, including a fishing trip during which Thor managed to catch two whales, Hymir still was not warming to his guests. He taunted Thor by saying, “Sure, you may be able to row a boat well, but if you’re really strong you should be able to prove it by breaking this glass goblet.” Thor threw the goblet against a stone pillar, but the goblet remained intact while the pillar shattered. Hymir’s wife whispered a word of advice to Thor: “Try again; this time, throw it at Hymir’s head, which is much harder than any goblet.” Thor did as he was told, and the goblet broke.
Hymir was upset that his goblet was broken, but nevertheless conceded that Thor had outwitted him, and offered him the great cauldron as his reward—provided, naturally, that he could carry it. Although Tyr couldn’t budge the cauldron, Thor handily carried it away. But the two gods had not gotten far when they turned to see Hymir following them with a band of his multi-headed henchmen; apparently he’d had second thoughts about letting go of his prized possession after all. Thor set down the cauldron, dispatched the pursuers with his trusty hammer, and then resumed the journey home.
All’s Well that Ends with Infinite Quantities of Mead
The gods were greatly impressed when Thor and Tyr returned with Hymir’s cauldron. Even Ægir changed his tune and began cheerfully brewing up mead to last Asgard through the winter. The mead flowed freely, the gods were happy, and they all lived happily ever after, except for those who didn’t. (We are not told how Hymir and his wife got along after that “hard-headed” remark cost him his cauldron, but one imagines the incident led to marital discord, if not worse. Such matters are, of course, of a more delicate nature than is generally addressed in Norse mythology.) —Joe Kissell
When I was in high school, I had a darkroom in the basement. Because I didn’t do a large quantity of film processing, one of my biggest concerns was that the expensive chemicals would go bad before I had a chance to use them. Since it is primarily exposure to oxygen that damages photographic chemicals, I stored them in air-evacuation containers, which are basically plastic bags inside boxes. As you drain out the chemical through a special spout that sticks through the box, the bag shrinks, thus making sure no air gets in. This solution is simple, elegant, and effective.
The very same laws of chemistry apply to wines, and that is why wine is sometimes sold “by the box” in air-evacuation containers. It keeps wine fresher longer, and is even less expensive, in many cases, than bottled wine. What’s not to like? And yet, boxed wine is routinely ridiculed as low-class. Everyone knows that any decent wine will be stored in a corked bottle. It’s just The Way Things Are. It’s not about oxidation, it’s about perception. You have to do things right. Buying wine in a box is tantamount to buying wine with a screw cap. It’s an indication of poor quality. Or is it?
Recently I’ve been seeing an increasing number of wine bottles stoppered with a “cork” made out of plastic. And I confess that my initial reaction is invariably one of embarrassment. (“I should know better than to choose such a cheap wine.”) This is of course irrational; I know intellectually that the important thing is simply to keep air away from the wine. But I’ve discovered that there is in fact an intense debate raging in the wine industry over the best method of sealing a wine bottle, and the pros and cons of each approach are much different from what I would have thought. Here for your enlightenment and entertainment is a summary of the major positions in the debate.
Cork: the traditional approach
Pros: Cork has a long history; it has been used as the sealing method of choice for over 400 years. Cork stoppers, because they are such a pain to remove, implicitly signal quality. When they work, they work well. They’re a renewable resource (the trees are not killed when the bark is stripped to make cork). They make a satisfying “pop” when removed from the bottle. They’re readily biodegradable. And they support an entire industry of corkscrews and other cork-removal products.
Cons: Corks often go bad. Estimates vary widely, but many bottles of wine are ruined due to corks that are tainted, ill-fitting, or deteriorated. (Depending on which figures you believe, as little as 1% or as much as 20% of all wine sold is “corked,” which is to say, damaged by a problematic cork.) Corks can be difficult to remove, and sometimes break off into the bottle. The world’s cork supplies are nearly maxed out, so cork prices are increasing.
Plastic: the new cork
Pros: Plastic is immune to cork taint, so wine is much less likely to spoil. Plastic corks can be made more cheaply, and with much more precision, than cork stoppers. Depending on the vintner’s tastes, plastic corks can be made to look very similar to natural corks, or be molded in any imaginable designer color. They’re recyclable. And the same cork-removal equipment (along with its obligatory “pop” sound) can be used.
Cons: If the trees used to produce cork are no longer used for that purpose, they may be cut down to make space for more lucrative crops, thus endangering the habitat of various kinds of wildlife and altering the local ecosystem in unpredictable ways. If not recycled, plastic corks also pose a more direct threat to the environment. Some wine experts claim plastic corks unfavorably affect the flavor of wine. On the other hand, they don’t hold the aroma of wine well, making the ritual of cork-sniffing unsatisfying. The plastic may not retain its elasticity well over time, making it unsuitable for wines meant to age for decades. And most importantly, it’s just not right.
Screw caps: a strange twist
Pros: Screw caps, like plastic corks, avoid problems of cork taint, and yet unlike plastic are much less likely to affect wine’s flavor or lose their effectiveness over time. They are less expensive than natural or plastic corks. And they can be removed without any special equipment.
Cons: As with plastic corks, screw caps imply environmental issues associated with the loss of cork farming. Cork sniffing, of course, is right out. And again, most importantly, it’s just not right. You shouldn’t be able to get at your wine as easily as you get at your cola.
Crown seals: good enough for beer
Pros: Crown seals (the type of bottle cap used on most beer bottles) are basically screw caps without the screw part, so they have all the same advantages except ease of removal.
Cons: The downsides of crown seals are the same as for screw caps, with the additional issue of needing a bottle opener.
Of these, crown seals came on the scene most recently and so far appear with the least frequency. Meanwhile, air-evacuation containers, which were previously used only for the cheapest wines, now sometimes hold fancier varieties. (No one seriously proposes distributing high-end wines in air-evacuation containers, since bottles are more durable and less likely to leak over a period of many years.) There are, I’m sure, any number of other equally sensible alternatives out there. But the habit of associating cork with quality is very hard to break. —Joe Kissell
One day Morgen and I were having a brainstorming session, as we frequently do, about interesting things that might fit in with certain weeks’ themes. The expression “hit or miss” came up, and we began talking about things that involve hits and misses. Morgen said, “Do you know what the national sport in Bhutan is?” I was embarrassed to admit I did not even know exactly where Bhutan is located; it’s simply not a place I’ve ever spent much time thinking about. Morgen told me that Bhutan is between China and India. Although this didn’t give me any strong clues, I made what I thought was a safe guess: “Soccer.” That turned out to be a particularly bad guess, because in 2002, Bhutan’s national soccer team was ranked 202 out of 203 worldwide; FIFA sanctioned a special match that year, at the same time as the World Cup finals, between Bhutan and 203rd-ranked Montserrat; the match was covered in a documentary film called “The Other Final.”
In fact, Bhutan’s national sport is archery. That fact alone, I think, qualifies as an Interesting Thing, but there’s more to the story.
Weapons of Play
Bhutan is a Buddhist nation, and one of the central precepts of Buddhism is a reverence for all life. So it seems somewhat incongruous that the nation’s favorite game involves a hunting instrument (or, depending on how you look at it, a weapon of war). But in Bhutan, the bow and arrow can only be used for play. In fact, when making arrows, one can use only feathers that were found on the ground; to kill a bird to obtain its feathers would be considered wrong.
Each village has its own archery range, making them as common as curling rinks in Canada. (That is to say, extremely common.) Although modern, high-tech equipment is making some headway, most competitors use traditional, hand-carved bamboo bows. Village teams compete against each other in rowdy, elaborate, multi-day tournaments that are as much about spectacle as they are about hitting a target. Archers can use almost any means at their disposal to distract or demoralize their opponents, including dancing in front of the targets. A major part of the sport goes on behind the scenes, as teams conspire to throw off their opponents’ game. It is this, rather than what I typically think of as team interaction, that gives Bhutanese archery such popularity.
The Wide World of Archery
You might imagine that since archery is the national pastime, Bhutanese archers would be world-renowned for their skills. So far, however, the country has not distinguished itself in international competition beyond Asia. Archery is the only Olympic sport in which Bhutan participates, and they have been sending their best archers to the Olympics since 1984. In the 2004 summer Olympics in Athens, Bhutan’s two archers made it only to the second qualifying round, but this was still a better showing than in previous years. This is largely due to the fact that traditional Bhutanese archery is much different in both equipment and style from Olympic archery—insulting your opponent during Olympic competition is, shall we say, bad form. But Bhutan remains optimistic that their athletes will eventually earn recognition as the world’s finest archers.
I’ve only tried archery a couple of times, and I found it a lot harder than I’d imagined. And in America, at least, I would consider it rather unsafe to taunt someone who’s pointing a deadly weapon in my general direction. All the same, I think I could get behind a national sport that is as much about fun and mischief as about skill. —Joe Kissell
My wife kept her name when we got married. This being the 21st century, I wouldn’t have thought that would be in any way surprising or problematic. But in the modern English-speaking world, linguistic habits haven’t quite caught up with changing social conventions—many people (and computers) still assume that when a man and woman get married, the woman will take on the man’s surname. As a result, we get mail addressed to “Mrs. Morgen Kissell” and even, bafflingly, “Mrs. Liz Kissell”—Morgen’s given first name is Elizabeth, but she has gone by her middle name since birth, and has never, ever been called Liz. At least no one, to my knowledge, has called her “Mrs. Joseph Kissell,” which I think both of us would find rather offensive.
As annoying as such mistakes can be, I do sympathize with folks who no longer feel they have a proper, respectful, and appropriate title to use when addressing women. The title “Miss,” which used to refer to an unmarried woman of any age, has fallen into disfavor, except for young girls. And “Mrs.” is supposed to refer to a married woman, but only when using her husband’s last name. (Morgen certainly is neither “Miss Jahnke” nor “Mrs. Kissell,” but she can’t be “Mrs. Jahnke” either, because that would imply my last name is Jahnke.) So that leaves “Ms.,” which virtually every style guide now proclaims as the only reasonable choice, but which many people hesitate to use because it feels like an odd, newfangled, non-word.
Stress and Mistress
The basic distinction between “Miss” and “Mrs.” harks back to earlier times when a woman’s marital status was an important indicator of her position—and when, more to the point, a woman was considered a subservient entity with respect to her husband. Interestingly, though, both “Miss” and “Mrs.” were originally shortened forms of the word “mistress.” The modern sense of “mistress” implies an illicit relationship, but before about 1600, a mistress was simply a female head of a household—married or unmarried. As a result, the abbreviation “Mrs.” would originally have been pronounced “mistress,” and would not have been used exclusively to refer to someone’s wife. The pronunciation “misses” was simply a contracted form of “mistress.”
Meanwhile, when “miss” was first used as an abbreviation for “mistress” in the mid-1600s, it referred to a concubine or someone in a role more like what we would today consider a mistress. In other words, a few centuries ago, the meanings of “Miss” and “Mrs.” were, at least in some cases, roughly the opposite of what they are today! Only in the 19th century did “Mrs.” (with the pronunciation “misses” firmly established) come to refer exclusively to a married woman.
There is also, of course, the title “Ma’am,” which was short for “madam.” Although few people refer to a woman as either “ma’am” or “madam” these days, the situation is parallel to “Mrs./mistress” in that the shortened form is considered respectful whereas the longer form sometimes denotes a woman of questionable character.
The Long and the Short of It
One of the things about “Mrs.” that has always bothered me is that it can really only ever be used in its abbreviated form. No one would spell it out as “mistress” anymore, and yet there is also no agreed spelling for the full word as it is pronounced; “misses,” “missus,” “missis,” and “missez” all seem wrong. The title “Ms.,” which came into use in the middle of the 20th century, has an even worse problem—it appears to be an abbreviation, but it isn’t short for anything. As with “Mrs.,” no one would know how to spell it out. “Mizz”?
And yet, despite the fact that “Ms.” is clearly a modern, artificial conflation of “Miss” and “Mrs.,” it now serves the useful purpose “Mrs.” once did: it provides a respectful title that does not require the speaker to have any knowledge of the woman’s marital status or age. This is a good thing, because such distinctions, even if known, serve only to perpetuate the long-outmoded belief that adult women who are married are somehow socially superior to those who are not. In this respect, “Ms.” is actually a better title than “Mr.,” which says nothing about marital status but does presume the addressee to be an adult. A young girl could be a “Ms.,” but a young boy would not normally be called “Mr.”
But then, perhaps such social titles have outlived their usefulness altogether. On Christmas cards, for example, since we can’t be “Mr. and Mrs. Kissell,” and since “Ms. Jahnke and Mr. Kissell” sounds awkward, most people simply use our first and last names and leave it at that. This, I think, is the best solution of all—personal, yet respectful. It’s a hit among Mrs./misses/miss-es. —Joe Kissell
Pennsylvania is a state (well, commonwealth if you want to be completely nitpicky) known for its linguistic, uh, irregularities. In the western part of the state, where I grew up, many people speak an endearingly odd dialect of English called Pittsburghese. Some town names have pronunciations that utterly belie their foreign roots. DuBois is pronounced “dew boys”; North Versailles is “north ver-sales”; La Jose is “la Joes.” Then, of course, there are towns that simply have goofy names—Eighty Four, Slippery Rock, and Punxsutawney come to mind.
I’ve Been to Pennsylvania; Ask Me about Intercourse.
But to put all these oddities in perspective, western Pennsylvanians rightly consider their geographic nomenclature downright bland compared to what you’ll encounter on the other side of the state. Drive four hours east from Pittsburgh and you’re in Lancaster County, an area that attracts tourists by the thousands each year for no other reason than that they want to be able to say they went through Intercourse to get to Paradise. (This makes for a roundabout route, as it turns out, but that’s only fitting.) Other nearby towns include Blue Ball, Fertility, Gap, Bird-in-Hand, Smoketown, and even (I swear I am not making this up) Kissel Hill. These place names seem all the more amusing because the area is known for its religious conservatism, being home to large numbers of Amish and Old-Order Mennonite folk in particular.
The other thing Lancaster County is known for is Pennsylvania Dutch—a term that can refer to an ethnic group, a language, a culture, or all three. Interestingly enough, despite the proximity of towns named Holland and New Holland, Pennsylvania Dutch has nothing to do with the Netherlands. The term is a misnomer, or at least an anachronism; the Pennsylvania Dutch came from Germany.
Going Dutch
How did a group of German settlers in eastern Pennsylvania—and the unique dialect of German they speak—come to be known as “Dutch”? There are two main theories.
Most people assume that Dutch is an accidental corruption of Deutsch (the German word for “German”) or Deitsch (the word for “German” in the Pennsylvanian dialect). But the term may have been more of a historical accident than a linguistic blunder. Until at least the 1500s, the English word “Dutch” was used to refer generically to people of Germanic descent from the regions now known as Germany and the Netherlands. It wasn’t until the 17th century that the term “Dutch” came to be used strictly for people from the Netherlands, but by that time a number of German immigrants had already settled in Pennsylvania, and the old term may have stuck. In any case, the language of the Pennsylvania Dutch evolved into a distinct dialect of German, and is still spoken by as many as a quarter-million people.
Eastern Pennsylvania is not the only place where you can find native speakers of Pennsylvania Dutch. Smaller communities are located in several states in the eastern U.S., as well as Ontario, Canada. Like many minority languages, Pennsylvania Dutch is slowly losing ground to the dominant regional language—English in this case. With each new generation, children are less likely to learn Pennsylvania Dutch as their first language. However, efforts are underway to preserve and promote the language through books, classes, radio shows, and other media. But the most important things Pennsylvania Dutch speakers can do to keep their language alive are to engage in conversation—and to have children who can learn the language at home. Clearly, in more ways than one, Intercourse is important to the Pennsylvania Dutch. —Joe Kissell
I need to say a few words about woodchucks. (First let me pause while you say the rhyme to yourself. Go on, you know you want to. Get it out of your system. Good.) I never understood what the word “chuck” was supposed to mean in the rhyme. Chuck isn’t often used as a verb; when it is, its most common meaning is “to throw” (as in, “Chuck that AOL CD in the trash”). This is naturally not the type of thing we expect a woodchuck to be capable of (as indicated by the counterfactual nature of the question in the rhyme). So the real question is why anyone would have given this animal such a nonsensical name in the first place.
(As an aside, woodchuck isn’t the only nonsensical name this animal has. It’s also called a groundhog. Oddly enough, “groundhog” is a fairly literal translation of the Dutch word aardvark, even though aardvarks don’t look anything like hogs. Woodchucks (Marmota monax) are rodents, or more precisely marmots, and are not even distantly related to either aardvarks or hogs. The most salient similarity among the three species is a propensity for burrowing.)
Gimme a W
The name woodchuck is derived from a word in one of the Algonquian languages spoken by Native Americans—either the Cree word otchek or the related Ojibwa word otchig. The English-speaking settlers in North America found these words hard to pronounce, so they substituted syllables that sounded more familiar and yet approximated the original sound; hence “woodchuck.” The process of consciously or unconsciously changing the shape of a word to reflect the existing morphemes (minimal units of meaning) in a language is known as folk etymology. This process frequently occurs when one language “borrows” a word from another and the speakers of the borrowing language mishear, or misunderstand the origin of, the original word.
English has many examples of folk etymology. Cockroach comes from the Spanish word cucaracha. As with woodchuck, the Spanish word was transformed into English by substituting similar-sounding morphemes: cock (as in rooster) and roach (which at that time was simply the name of a type of fish). There wasn’t anything about a cockroach that suggested “rooster” or “fish,” of course; it’s simply a matter of the sounds fitting. The same thing happened with the word polecat (from French poule chat, a cat that feeds on poultry) and ten-gallon hat (from Spanish galón, a braid). English speakers also mistook a napron for an apron, and even an ewt for a newt.
Begging to Differ
Closely related to folk etymology (or even, according to some people, a subset of the phenomenon) is a process called back-formation. Back-formation occurs when speakers remove a portion of a word, incorrectly assuming it’s a suffix, to form a new word. For example, the word pea was pease in Middle English, but that sounded like a plural, so the “s” sound at the end was dropped to make a false singular. Similarly, the word emote is mistakenly assumed to be the root of emotion, which is logical enough since -tion is a common suffix in English. But in this case, the word dropped whole from French (émotion) into English, so that derivation is erroneous. Other words in English that have been mistakenly created by back-formation include liaise, enthuse, laze, and evanesce. Some back-formed words, however, after enough time in circulation, become generally accepted: donate, sculpt, and even beg (from beggar) fall into this category.
A postscript about the woodchuck: The Algonquian words from which “woodchuck” was derived actually refer to the fisher (or wejack), a carnivorous mammal (Martes pennanti) that bears only a superficial resemblance to the woodchuck. So woodchuck turns out to be not only folk etymology, but a misnomer at that. —Joe Kissell
I set out to find a simple answer to a simple question: Why is there no meat in mincemeat? It was going to be a tidy tale of how a misnomer was born. Look up a few Web sites, collect a few facts, wrap them in a nice story, and on to the next project. As so often happens, however, my research took a rather circuitous path as I kept discovering connections and facts that I’d had no inkling of when I started out. The story of mincemeat is more interesting—and convoluted—than I ever imagined.
Mincemeat is, I must confess, a topic about which I have never felt much passion. In my family, mincemeat pie was simply one of a half dozen standard Christmas dessert choices. I rarely had room for more than two, and in my personal hierarchy of dessert preferences, mincemeat ranked well below Johnny Bull Pudding and blackberry pie. On the occasions I did eat mincemeat pie, it made no particular impression on me other than provoking a vague curiosity at its name, since whatever the filling was, it clearly did not contain any meat.
One explanation for the name could be that in Old English, the word meat had the more generic meaning of “food,” whether or not it happened to come from the flesh of animals. Thus, a mincemeat pie would actually have been a “minced food” pie, which could have been anything. However plausible this may sound, however, this explanation turns out to be incorrect (or at least misleading).
A Pie Fit for a King (or Two)
Centuries ago, mincemeat was so named for the very straightforward reason that it contained minced animal flesh (and in fact sometimes still does—more on this later). Beyond that, the details of its provenance and development are hazy. I have read a few unsubstantiated reports stating that mincemeat pie was served at least as far back as 1413, at the coronation of King Henry V of England, and that further, it was a favorite of Henry VIII. There is no record of the composition of these early dishes, but recipes dating from the early 17th century list a variety of wild game, plus eggs, fruit, spices, and sweeteners. According to some accounts, early mincemeat pies were small, like tarts; according to others, they were immense, weighing as much as 220 pounds (100kg). In any case, meat and fruit were invariably included among the ingredients.
Going back even further, however, there are some who believe mincemeat pie is based on an ancient pagan tradition of serving coffin-shaped cakes representing Osiris—the Egyptian god who, according to legend, died and was resurrected each year. This ritual took place on the winter solstice, December 21, and this very festival was later co-opted by Christians looking for a convenient date to celebrate Christmas (and stamp out pagan influences in the process). Along with the Yule log and the evergreen tree, the mincemeat pie is arguably a remnant of the original pagan celebrations that persisted when the holiday was refashioned.
Mincemeat’s Second Coming
One person who believed this argument was 17th-century Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell felt that Christians had no business observing the birth of Christ by eating, drinking, and merrymaking—certainly not on a pagan holiday, and using pagan symbols. So he abolished Christmas in England in 1657. Two years later, he prevailed upon authorities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to ban Christmas celebrations there too. The prohibition specifically disallowed mincemeat pies, which were characterized as being sinful both for their symbolic origin and their inherent richness. But Cromwell’s attempt to put the last nail in the coffin of mincemeat failed; it rose again. Within two centuries the ban on Christmas had been all but forgotten, and mincemeat was once again a staple in both Christmas and Thanksgiving celebrations. But over those years mincemeat had undergone a change in character. Perhaps as a way of obeying the letter of the law while maintaining tradition, some people had begun to leave out the meat in mincemeat, replacing it with nuts, apples, and raisins…along with brandy or rum. That, in short, is why the name doesn’t always match the ingredients.
This leaves the question of why anyone would think to mix meat and fruit in a pie in the first place. This notion seems to elicit “yuck” responses from many people, but I don’t see why. Sweet and sour pork contains pineapple; some curried meat dishes contain raisins. There’s nothing unnatural about mixing meat and fruit. It’s just not common to see them together in baked goods (though I have frequently said that the idea of chicken cinnamon raisin cookies sounds good to me). One commentator opined that the mixture was simply a method of preservation, as the combination of the acids from the fruits and the heat from baking inhibited the growth of bacteria in the meat. That seems vaguely plausible, though I prefer the simpler explanation: it just tastes good.
Today, a few recipes for mincemeat (and some brands of jarred mincemeat) do indeed contain meat, but of those that don’t, most of them still contain suet, the hard layer of fatty tissue surrounding the kidneys of cattle. To be sure, this doesn’t sound like an appetizing dessert ingredient. And yet, it turns out to be one of the main ingredients (again, along with raisins) in Johnny Bull Pudding, the dessert I customarily ate on Christmas instead of mincemeat pie. There’s just no escaping tradition. —Joe Kissell
I’ve never regretted the decision I made a few years ago to live without a car. After all, if I walk down the hill a few blocks from my home, I can catch a subway, streetcar, or bus to take me nearly anywhere in San Francisco I may want to go. But every now and then, that “nearly” part causes me grief. There are certain spots in the city I can reach via public transit only by taking a subway, a streetcar, and two buses—and then walking for 20 minutes. The prospect of all that waiting and transferring, especially on weekends or when buses are running late, tempts me to take a taxi (which gets quite expensive) or rent a car (forcing me to worry about parking and traffic). Even in a compact city such as this one, getting from place to place quickly, inexpensively, and safely can be difficult. Owning a car can help in some ways, but for many of us, it would be more trouble and expense than it’s worth.
It’s a Bird, It’s a Train, It’s a…Taxi?
Several articles here on Interesting Thing of the Day have mentioned ways of addressing the urban transportation problem: car sharing programs, carfree cities (including Arcosanti), and personal flying machines, for example. A while back, a reader suggested I check out an innovative urban transportation system called SkyTran. Later, another reader wrote to tell me about a different urban mass-transit solution called the RUF (Rapid Urban Flexible) system. Although the two differ significantly, they are both monorail transit systems designed for cities. As I began reading about these, I discovered that they are just two among many similar proposed designs. Clearly, this was a meme worth investigating.
The beauty of elevated monorail-based systems is the relative ease with which they can be retrofitted into an existing urban environment. Unlike subways, they require an absolute minimum of disruptive street closures (and no digging). Unlike streetcars, monorails don’t have to compete with cars and pedestrians for space on the roads. And unlike conventional elevated light-rail train tracks, monorails can be constructed quickly and inexpensively. Seattle already has a (very short) monorail line, as do some other cities. But some proposals currently being advanced call for much more elaborate and pervasive systems—with some interesting innovations that could make them much more efficient than buses or trains. These systems are known generically as Personal Rapid Transit (PRT). Unlike conventional mass transit, PRT replaces large vehicles with small cars that hold only two to six people—and therefore use very small and inexpensive tracks as well.
Packet-Switching Meets Mass Transit
The SkyTran is one such PRT system. Its designer proposes to install a network of tracks that can take riders within a few blocks of any location in a city, using a flexible point-to-point scheme rather than a fixed route. The cars can travel much more rapidly than a train or bus, and a sophisticated computer system prevents collisions and congestion. In theory, there would always be at least one car available at each stop; after you board, the car zips from the station’s bypass track onto the main track, where it picks up speed and takes you directly, without stopping, to your destination. This seems to combine all the advantages of a taxi with the advantages of a subway—and then some. Similar designs include the SkyWay Express, the ATN (Automated Transportation Network), and the ULTra (Urban Light Transport) system, which is being developed in the U.K.
If you want to avoid any walking—or be able to travel outside the immediate area served by the transit system—you might prefer another variant of PRT. The RUF (Rapid Urban Flexible) system being developed in Denmark is an example of a hybrid that uses specially modified electric cars that can operate automatically when riding on the tracks or manually on the road. Use your car around town as usual, but when you want to travel farther or faster, drive into a station where your car is guided onto a special monorail track. From there, allow the computer to drive you to your destination stop, where you drive off the track and resume manual control. RUF requires much less track than SkyTran and provides passengers with greater independence; on the other hand, the cars themselves are much more complex and expensive.
Proponents of PRT systems invariably point out that the cost of installing a citywide monorail system of this sort would be comparable to the cost of installing a traditional light-rail line; the additional efficiency should make it so cost-effective that it’s a no-brainer. Municipal governments are understandably hesitant to sink tens or hundreds of millions of dollars into unproven technology—but this is a chicken-and-egg problem; until one of these designs is actually put into large-scale use somewhere, there’s no telling how well it will live up to its promises. There’s another source of hesitation too: however flawlessly such a system may work, the question remains whether the teeming masses will like it and trust it enough to give up their cars. But as more urban dwellers go carless anyway (out of choice or necessity), PRT systems look increasingly appealing. —Joe Kissell
As everyone knows, a lot of scientists are extremely concerned about global warming. Evidence suggests that the high levels of so-called greenhouse gases produced over the past half-century or so will result in higher temperatures worldwide over the coming decades. The additional heat could melt polar ice and raise the level of the ocean, causing flooding and eroding coastlines; it could also lead to more severe climate change with potentially devastating effects. Other scientists say that worries about global warming are overblown—that the temperature will not rise significantly (at least, not due to human activity), and that in any case, the results of a slightly increased average temperature would be mild rather than disastrous.
But no one disputes that the air has become quite polluted—you can verify this easily by looking out your window. One major component of air pollution is carbon dioxide (CO2), which is produced as a waste product when fossil fuels are burned. The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen markedly since the beginning of the industrial age, and even if that change is not completely attributable to human progress, it’s not a good thing. Whether or not human-generated CO2 contributes to global warming, it clearly causes other problems.
Convincing the people and governments of the world to reduce the use of fossil fuels is essentially a lost cause, so the latest trendy approach to dealing with all that excess CO2 is capturing it as soon as it’s created and then disposing of it somewhere. Equipment installed at power plants and other major industries can separate the carbon dioxide from other waste products and liquefy it for temporary storage; finding a long-term home for massive amounts of the gas is the real problem. The process of storing carbon dioxide permanently in such a way that it cannot escape back into the atmosphere is known as carbon sequestration (or, sometimes, carbon dioxide sequestration). Broadly speaking, there are two places one might put large quantities of unwanted carbon dioxide—in the oceans or underground. Techniques for getting the CO2 to its putative final resting place (and keeping it there) are in varying stages of experimental development.
Ocean Storage
The world’s oceans already absorb unfathomable amounts of CO2; some researchers believe they could hold a great deal more with a little help. The upper part of the ocean typically has a fairly high concentration of CO2 (absorbed directly from the atmosphere), but at greater depths, the concentration is much lower. So one way to dispose of CO2 is to inject it into deep ocean water. At depths over 3,000 meters or so, liquid or solid CO2 is denser than the surrounding water, meaning that it could sink all the way to the ocean floor. Closer to the surface, it will dissolve into the water. Dissolved CO2 makes the water acidic, with unknown (but likely detrimental) effects on marine life. Liquid CO2 on the ocean floor may react with minerals there and form solid precipitates—or it may simply kill off organisms already living there.
Geological Storage
Merely burying CO2 is not good enough; in order for it to stay put, it has to be stored very deep in the ground, and somewhere that the gas cannot escape into the atmosphere. Some possibilities include:
Saline Aquifers: An aquifer is a porous layer of rock that holds a large quantity of water—often saltwater. Inject CO2 deeply enough into an aquifer, and the surrounding pressure keeps it in liquid form. Meanwhile, an impermeable layer of solid rock above prevents the gas from being released back into the atmosphere. Although aquifer storage is expensive, it is likely to have less impact on the environment than ocean storage—and the CO2 can remain safely underground, theoretically, forever.
Oil and Gas Reservoirs: If you can put carbon dioxide into an aquifer, you can also put it into a depleted gas or oil well. In fact, the technology to deliver CO2 into such wells has been in use for decades; pump CO2 into an oil well, for instance, and you can push out extra oil that would otherwise be unreachable. As long as the CO2 is stored deep enough, it will remain as a liquid.
Coal Seams: Most of the world’s coal deposits are located too deep in the ground for mining to be practical. When CO2 is injected into coal seams, the coal absorbs the gas. Meanwhile, in a manner similar to enhanced oil recovery, the process also pushes out methane gas, which can be used as a fuel.
And then, of course, there’s a natural CO2 storage apparatus: forests. Trees are incredibly effective at absorbing carbon dioxide and creating oxygen, so planting (or replanting) millions of acres of forest could go a long way toward solving the CO2 problem—no drilling or high-tech research required. This is not technically sequestration, as you wouldn’t manually inject previously collected carbon dioxide into a tree—but it does have essentially the same net effect.
Politicians hope carbon sequestration—of one kind or another—turns out to be a magic bullet that can appease consumers, energy companies, and environmentalists alike. Although all the potential terrestrial CO2 storage spots show some promise, the safety, capacity, and long-term effectiveness of carbon sequestration is ultimately unknown. At best, it will address only a small portion of the world’s pollution problem; at worst, we may find that something we thought we buried comes back to haunt us. On the other hand, we certainly take a lot of carbon out of the ground. Putting some back in just may balance the scales a bit. —Joe Kissell
Several years ago, a friend of mine gave me a book for my birthday called Thought Contagion. I had not heard of the book or its subject matter, the science of memetics, but I was fascinated by what I read. Author Aaron Lynch explained, concisely and convincingly, how some of the most significant beliefs in society came to be as popular as they are. By the end of the book I felt I understood, for the first time, a great many things that should have been obvious all along. I was even more surprised to discover that the things Lynch was saying were considered novel, and even somewhat controversial. What he described, simply and elegantly, is a compelling theory about the way beliefs spread.
What Memes May Come
The fundamental term in memetics is meme, which means a self-propagating idea. The term was borrowed from sociobiologist Richard Dawkins, who coined it in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Roughly speaking, memetics applies the principles of evolution by natural selection to beliefs. In conventional evolution, genes that improve an organism’s ability to survive endure in future generations and spread throughout a population; those that hinder survival eventually disappear. By analogy, memetics says that ideas are subject to natural selection as well; those that most effectively promote their own survival multiply and spread, while those that don’t, don’t.
In memetics, it is misleading to think of a person as having a belief; instead, it is more accurate to think of beliefs as acquiring people. Memes propagate from person to person in a manner analogous to the way viruses spread. A meme is passed from one person to another through one form of contact or another, and in some cases must mutate in order to continue surviving and spreading. Thus memetics is sometimes described as an epidemiology of ideas, investigating them in much the same way as a researcher might study the way a disease spreads throughout a community. This is not to say, of course, that all ideas that spread are negative ones, as the analogy to disease might suggest. Memetics itself is neutral with regard to the value of beliefs, and the principles apply equally to positive, useful beliefs as to destructive ones.
Being Fruitful and Multiplying
Just as a virus can spread by floating through the air, by skin contact, or through exchange of bodily fluids, there are a number of different mechanisms whereby beliefs spread. One of the most common and effective means of spreading a meme is simply having children, because children more often than not serve as hosts for the same memes as their parents. Thus memes that encourage procreation directly (“your biological clock is ticking”) or indirectly (“abortion is murder”) serve to propagate themselves to the children of the meme’s host. Similarly, memes that make it more likely that parents will pass a belief on to children (such as “children should respect their parents”) encourage their own propagation.
Another common mechanism of meme propagation is proselytism. Consider the meme “those who do not believe in Religion X will spend eternity in hell.” This meme aids its own propagation, because holding the belief increases the likelihood that it will be transferred to other hosts. A person who considers belief in Religion X crucial to eternal happiness will be motivated to influence its adoption by friends and even strangers (not to mention offspring). This meme also illustrates other methods of propagation, such as discouraging hosts from dropping the belief (persistence of the belief, especially at the time of death, is regarded as crucial to its effectiveness) and resisting efforts of competing memes (such as “all religions are equally good”) to displace it.
Gimme Some Truth (or Not)
Of the other methods of meme propagation, surprisingly, one of the least effective is for a meme simply to seem true. The sheer force of logic can and does cause memes to spread (as in “Earth revolves around the Sun”). But more often than not, competing memes with other methods of propagation win out over those that depend solely on truth or plausibility. In particular, political and moral beliefs (which typically spread by offspring production, proselytism, and dropout prevention) usually displace beliefs whose only mechanism of reinforcement is objective fact. This could help to explain, for example, how a nation might muster public support for a war in the absence of objective evidence of danger from an enemy.
The basic principles of memetic theory that describe the ways in which beliefs spread, persist, and recede, can account for the rise and fall of numerous widespread beliefs, including economic trends, pro- and anti-abortion movements, terrorism, racism, diet fads, and hundreds of other memes. It can explain how TV programs or radio talk shows gain and lose popularity, why less effective technologies win in the marketplace over more effective ones, and how public opinion can shift rapidly on many major issues.
My predominant thought while reading Lynch’s descriptions was, “Well, of course that’s why so many people believe such-and-such. It’s obvious. How could it be any other way?” And yet, that is precisely what’s interesting about memetics: it points out and explains things that should have been obvious all along, but weren’t. Although Thought Contagion is written for a general audience and therefore avoids complex mathematics, memetic theory is in fact a very serious science, backed up by increasing amounts of highly technical analysis. Very few professionals currently consider themselves full-time memeticists, but that is certain to change, thanks to the rapidly spreading meme, “memetic explanations rock.” —Joe Kissell
As I look around at the many printed items within arm’s reach—books, magazines, a calendar, posters, checks, labels, boxes, and so on—I am vaguely aware that nearly all of them made their way through a printing press at some point. And, since I’ve used rubber stamps and stencils, I have an equally vague awareness that any printing process is based on putting ink or other coloring onto some parts of paper while keeping it off other parts. But despite having worked in the prepress field for a while, I never thought very deeply about the methods for transferring ink to paper; terms like “offset” and “lithography” had no specific meaning to me. Even after I finally grasped how laser printers work, ink-based printing methods remained a mystery.
Every time I realize that I’ve been living in blissful ignorance about something so common, I feel sort of guilty—it’s the same feeling I had when I was in high school and knew that I’d studied just enough to get through my exams, but not enough to actually understand or remember anything. So I began some remedial self-instruction in printing techniques, determined to fill in those embarrassing gaps in my knowledge. Along the way, I learned all sorts of interesting things, but one printing method particularly struck my fancy: intaglio (in-TAL-yo) printing.
Making an Impression
There are several major large-scale printing methods. The original printing press and its descendants (including rubber stamps) use raised letters to ensure that ink is applied only to the desired portions of the page; although an entire block of type may be covered with ink, only the raised parts make contact with the paper. In lithography, a printing plate (or stone) is moistened with water and then coated with ink; the greasy ink adheres only to the portions of the plate with the right texture (achieved in a variety of ways), while the water on the blank portions of the plate repels the ink. Although paper is brought into contact with the entire plate (directly, or, in offset lithography, via an intermediate rubber roller), only the inked portions transfer marks to the paper.
Intaglio printing (from an Italian word meaning “carve”) predates lithography by more than three centuries. Like lithography, it employs full-plate contact—but instead of relying on water to keep ink where it belongs, it uses recesses cut, engraved, or etched into a metal plate (or cylinder) to hold the ink. After the ink is spread, the plate is wiped down to remove excess ink from the top surface. The paper is then applied under tremendous pressure to push it into the grooves, transferring the ink where it has made contact. One of the side effects of intaglio printing is that the inked surfaces are very slightly raised on the front and indented on the back; depending on the type of paper and ink used, this can give intaglio prints a unique texture. A variant of intaglio printing called gravure varies the depth of the recesses in order to produce a range of tones; deeper grooves hold more ink and therefore create darker colors.
Show Me the Money
Intaglio presses can cost ten times as much as offset presses, and an intaglio printing plate can cost hundreds of times more than a comparable plate intended for offset printing; hence the relative popularity of the latter. But intaglio printing has some important advantages. For one thing, the plates have an incredibly long life; many millions of impressions can be made before the image quality degrades. For another, intaglio printing can achieve remarkably fine levels of detail. These facts, combined with the raised surfaces of the design, make intaglio printing the natural choice for currency, passports, and other high-security documents. Virtually every banknote in the world is printed at least partially using intaglio, because its distinctive appearance and texture make it easier to spot counterfeits. Although intaglio will never replace laser and inkjet printers on the desktop, there’s no better printing technique when only perfection is good enough. —Joe Kissell
I recently went to a toy store with my son, and found myself marveling at how little had changed since I was a kid. Alongside all the miracles of modern toy science were dozens of items that I remembered seeing on toy store shelves 25 years or more ago, and they looked exactly the same—except for the price. Slinkies. Magic Rocks. Ant Farms. Silly Putty. Nerf balls. And, of course, Sea Monkeys. I vividly remember the ads in comic books and magazines promising “Instant Life—Just Add Water!” The ads pictured anthropomorphic sea creatures with tails, smiling faces, and crown-like protuberances on their heads. These intelligent and fun-loving creatures could be your new pets for just a few dollars.
I never managed to prevail upon my parents to spring for the Sea Monkeys, but I always wondered just how close the real thing would be to the hype. A couple of years ago, when Morgen bought a Sea Monkeys set as a present for a friend, I got to see them in action. The little critters were, unsurprisingly, not terribly impressive as pets. However, in terms of both biology and marketing they are a marvel every bit as interesting as those ads implied.
Brine Shrimp Deluxe
Sea Monkeys are a variety of brine shrimp. Unlike the common species Artemia salina, Sea Monkeys were engineered as a larger and longer-lived hybrid variety the manufacturer calls Artemia nyos (NYOS stands for New York Ocean Science Laboratories, where the breed was developed). But like all brine shrimp, Sea Monkeys lay eggs encapsulated in a cyst shell. These cysts have the unusual capability of remaining viable over long periods of time when completely dehydrated—effectively maintaining a state of suspended animation. This state, known as cryptobiosis, is also seen in some plant seeds, insect larvae, and crustacean eggs. When the eggs are re-hydrated in a saline solution, they continue with their development and hatch soon thereafter.
Sea Monkeys have other interesting characteristics, such as the fact that they have one eye when they hatch but later grow two more. According to the official Sea Monkeys literature, the animals also breathe through their feet—I’ll have to take their word for it—and the females can reproduce either sexually or asexually.
Just Add Hype
But when you get right down to it, these creatures, which rarely grow longer than half an inch (about 15mm), are not that interesting as pets go. Brine shrimp are often sold as food for other fish, and their low status on the food chain says something about not only their size but their neural capacity. Compared to even the most ordinary tropical fish, the translucent Sea Monkeys are rather tedious to watch—if you can spot them at all—as they swim around in their little tanks.
That brine shrimp could ever be conceived of as pets is nothing less than a stroke of marketing genius. The man behind it was inventor Harold von Braunhut, who was also responsible for such kitschy fads as the X-Ray Spex, which got me in trouble when I tried to wear them during class in sixth grade. Von Braunhut began working with brine shrimp in 1957, and in 1960, his first simple kits went on sale. The fact that the eggs could be shipped easily, stored indefinitely, and brought back to life within a couple of days suggested the name “Instant Life,” which was how the product was first sold. When von Braunhut realized the creatures themselves needed a more marketing-friendly name, he began calling them Sea Monkeys, reportedly because of their tails. (Any actual resemblance to monkeys is purely in the mind of the beholder.)
Von Braunhut died on November 28, 2003. But in recent years, his invention—along with its innumerable variations and spin-offs—has sprung back to life as a retro fad. For about US$10 (rather than the original $0.49), you can get a plastic tank, water purifier, egg “crystals,” food, and accessories—including a handbook whose main purpose is to convince you to buy still more supplies to keep your new pets alive as long as possible. Sea Monkeys come with a two-year “growth guarantee,” but owners seldom maintain their interest in keeping the creatures alive for more than a few months. As pets, they make great fish food. —Joe Kissell
Once you’ve signed up for Dropsource, you would create a project. You can choose either iOS or Android. After that, you’ll see the editor’s main screen. Create the initial structure in a few clicks. Each screen in your app is represented as a page, and your app needs to have at least one page in it. So, the first thing we need to do is select the “Pages” option on the left of the editor.
The first page you create will be automatically set as the home (or landing) page for your app. This is the page your users will see first. You can also respond to page lifecycle events (such as “Page Loading,” “Page Appearing,” etc.) in the “Events” tab. For example, by changing “Page Loading” events, you can add a loading animation during the data-loading process.
Next, we need to tie two pages together. To allow the user to navigate between pages in your app, you can use actions. For example, we can add a button on the home page with a label “Get to know us,” and then the user can navigate to the “About Us” page by tapping the button.
Open the “Events” button in the “Properties” tab. Click “Manage,” choose “Go to Page,” and select the target page from the list of available pages. In our case, we’ll transition to “About Us” and choose the transition type “Push.”
Dropsource uses objects called Elements as the building blocks of an app’s user experience. In the “Elements” section, to the left of the editor, you’ll see a variety of common components that you can use in your pages. To add them, simply click and drag and drop them to the canvas.
For the “About Us” page, we’ll add two elements: “Image View” and “Text View.”
Now we need to fill them with real data; select an image for the “Image View,” and add the text to be displayed. We can do this in the right panel. With just a few clicks, we’ll have the following page:
A lot of tools intended for fast product development provide a limited number of style options, and in most cases, a tool will force users to select from the list of available templates. As a result, many apps created with the tool will look similar. Not so with Dropsource. Dropsource is fully customizable, and you have complete control over the look and feel of your app. You can change style options for each element presented on the canvas — simply click the element, and you’ll find all available style options in the right panel.
With Dropsource, your app will be as unique as your vision. (Large preview)
You can also set styles dynamically while the app runs, so you’ll be able to change the appearance of elements when events occur in the app. Last but not least, if you create an app for both iOS and Android platforms, you can see the differences between styles. An app created using Dropsource is designed to provide the standard look and feel for each platform.
API Integration
Dropsource allows creators to connect their app to any REST API. It uses Swagger (or OpenAPI) specifications to build requests to the APIs. You can use prebuilt APIs or create your own API for the app. Public API providers, as well as back-end-as-a-service (BaaS) and internal enterprise systems, can be plugged right into your app quickly and easily, putting the full potential of that data at your fingertips. You can connect your Dropsource app to a back end built with Bubble or Backendless or even create a mock API with Stoplight. Essentially, you can use any provider you like, as long as it provides a REST API.
Working with data is one of the more complex elements of building your app, and Dropsource provides a good deal of resources to help you along.
If you want to use your own API, create a Swagger description file to integrate with Dropsource, so that it can access the API endpoints, signatures and data types.
If you want to use your own API, create a Swagger description file to integrate with Dropsource, so that it can access the API endpoints, signatures and data types. (Large preview)
Let’s create a “Search” page, which will be used to search for restaurants in the user’s area. We’ll need a few elements for this page: a search box, a submit button and a dynamic list. To provide search features, we’ll also need Google API integration. This means we’ll need to add an API to our project and configure it to show the search results. Dropsource already preloads several APIs into the platform for testing purposes, such as the Google Places API, the Slack API and others. Compared to visual design, API integration will require some initial effort (it’s not as easy as visually dragging and dropping). But as soon as you are familiar with it, you’ll be able to create truly powerful mobile apps. You can connect external data using an API. In our case, we’ll use the Google Places API (provided by Dropsource) to search for the nearest places.
You can connect external data using an API. In our case, we’ll use the Google Places API (provided by Dropsource) to search for the nearest places. (Watch video)
Test the App
Testing is an essential part of the UX design process. It ensures that your applications will perform as expected in production and will deliver a consistent experience to users and earn you five-star ratings in the app stores. Unfortunately, this iteration often takes a significant amount of time. With Dropsource, the process of testing native apps is streamlined, because you can do so directly in the browser or on a real device.
Dropsource allows you to test right from the design screen.
Browser testing is done through the Appetize.io tool, which makes it possible to share the app via a link. Share your work with colleagues and friends to get immediate feedback. Alternatively, you can test your app on a mobile device; with just a few clicks, Dropsource will email you a link to install the app directly on your mobile phone. From there, you can test all of the native functionality of your app and see the mobile UI right on your device’s screen, all without ever opening an IDE such as Xcode or Android Studio!
It’s possible to test the app using a simulator or on a real device. You can test your ideas and quickly iterate upon them.
It’s possible to test the app using a simulator or on a real device. You can test ideas and quickly iterate on them. (Large preview)
Publish the App
Once everything is tested and polished, you can ship the app to the App Store or Google Play in a few clicks. Simply click “My Build,” select the build that is ready to be shipped, and choose the option “Request a Service.” The Dropsource team will help you with publishing to the App Store or Play store for no additional fee. (Note: This is a premium feature, costing around $49 per month, but there is a 30-day free trial!)
You can publish your app to the App Store or Google Play directly from Dropsource. (Large preview)
Advantages And Disadvantages Of Building An App Yourself Versus With Dropsource
It’s worth comparing the differences between the standard approach for creating a mobile app (i.e. coding the app in IDE) and using Dropsource. Let’s suppose we have all of the technical skills for building a mobile app.
Coding from scratch
Building with Dropsource
Software required to build for Android and iOS
You’ll need to download and install the IDE for each platform.
You’ll need only Dropsource. There’s no need to download anything; everything is available in the cloud.
Dealing with Android and iOS updates
You’ll have to update your project according to the platform’s requirements, as well as update broken code (the “Auto update” functionality integrated in Android Studio and Xcode rarely works well).
Dropsource is always up to date with the latest specifications for Swift and Java. Just run a new build in Dropsource after an OS update, and your native source code will be rewritten following any new standards or updates.
Visual inspection of UI elements; setting properties using visual editor
A limited set of features is available in the IDE’s Layout Editor (Android) or Interface Builder (Xcode). A lot more can be defined in code.
All properties of standard UI elements can be customized using Dropsource’s UI. It’s possible to set complex interactions by using a robust system of events and actions for each component.
Data-integration capabilities
Integration with each third-party service requires coding.
No coding needed to integrate app with external data sources.
Code ownership: Is it possible to download and distribute the source code of your app?
Yes
Yes
Is it possible to extend the app with custom logic?
Yes
Yes: You can either ask the Dropsource team to build a plugin or download your source code to customize yourself.
Performance optimization
In most cases, you’ll need to optimize the code to achieve good performance.
An app created with Dropsource doesn’t have any performance trade-offs; 100% truly native source code (Swift and Java) will always perform best on iOS and Android devices.
Testing on devices
Use the IDE emulator and on real devices.
Use the emulator in a browser and on real devices (either via a link or download the code to install on a device via the IDE).
Why Using Dropsource Is Good For Your Project
Hopefully, you now see that building a truly native app can be easy. Let’s see what the other benefits of using Dropsource are.
Both iOS and Android Are Supported
Dropsource allows you to create iOS and Android apps side by side. The app can be made for both platforms while maintaining similar interfaces and features. You won’t be stressed about OS updates because Dropsource is always up to date with the latest specifications for Swift and Java, eliminating any worry when Apple and Google update their operating systems.
No Lock-In
With Dropsource, you can download your app’s source code whenever you like. Dropsource generates source code that is written in Swift for iOS apps and Java for Android apps, and that code can be downloaded onto your desktop when you need it.
Dropsource allows you to download the source code in one click. This is a great opportunity to inspect the code and debug and to use that as the base for a fully customized app down the road.
Dropsource allows you to download the source code in one click. This is a great opportunity to inspect the code and debug and to use that as the base for a fully customized app down the road.
Prototyping and Development Finally Come Together
Usually, a prototyping phase that includes user interface design is separate from actual development. Developers get information from the designers (in the form of a specification) and start to implement the actual interactive app. With Dropsource, you have one phase, and this is a great advantage.
Easier Buy-in From Stakeholders
When talking about a design, a lot of stakeholders want to be able to see (and possibly play with) a prototype to better understand what’s being proposed. With Dropsource, you’re freed from asking stakeholders to imagine what they’ll see once the development team turns out the latest version — simply create a functional app prototype, and put it in their hands. Dropsource is perfect for building a minimum viable product to test out an idea.
Quick Iteration
The reality today is that we have to move fast in order to succeed. This is especially true in mobile development, where thousands of apps are released daily. We need to test a lot of hypotheses to figure out what works for us. One of the top mobile development trends is to reduce the duration of the development lifecycle and to shorten the gap between developing a concept and building the mobile application itself. With Dropsource, you can test ideas and quickly iterate on them. This eliminates the need for distinct, time-consuming phases of design (including static mockups and overwhelming specifications.) Dropsource substantially reduces the time to market for users and enterprises that need to innovate quickly.
Conclusion
App development should be available to all. Whether you’re an entrepreneur with a great idea but little in the way of development resources or a developer looking to save time, Dropsource offers powerful potential to save time and effort:
You can build a truly native app. A wide variety of common UI elements, such as buttons and input fields, are available on the platform.
Instead of having different developers (or even development teams) build the same product for different platforms, you can use the same team, regardless of platform.
The tool eliminates the requirement to manually code, while still providing access to native source code.
Easily integrate your app with any REST API’s back end.
Finally, the prototyping and testing phases are seamlessly integrated in the development process.
I would rate Dropsource five out of five for ease of use, features and functionality. If you’re looking for a robust tool to prototype or build a fully functional mobile app, try Dropsource for free. Every idea is worth building. Who knows? Maybe your app will change the world.
The first section you will see in the layout panel is Overlay Grid, which will show you all the elements on the page with display: grid applied. You will be able to turn on the grid overlay on each grid by checking their respective checkbox. For now, only one grid overlay can be displayed at any one time, but having multiple grid overlays is a feature on the roadmap.
Every additional grid will have a different color from the default purple, but you are free to change the colors of your grid overlays by clicking on the colored circle on the right of each grid element. The grid overlay will show all the grid tracks and grid gaps of the selected grid.
Once you select a grid, a rendering of the selected grid will appear in the space below in the color of the grid overlay. This rendering will show you each section of the grid you defined and hovering over any section will highlight its corresponding area on the actual page. There will also be a tool-tip that shows you the line number of the row and column of the highlighted grid item.
Most of us would be in the Rules panel when examining the CSS on our site, and you can toggle the grid overlay from there as well. Select the element which has display: grid applied to it, and click on the waffle-like icon on the property. The options for display of line numbers or grid area names that have been set on the Layout Panel will be respected when the grid overlay is toggled in this manner.
The next section on the panel is the Grid Display Settings, which allows us to toggle three options for now. The display of line numbers, the display of area names and the option to extend grid lines indefinitely.
The basic premise of how Grid works is that you first define a grid, then proceed to place your grid items within that grid. You can either place those grid items manually or let the browser do it for you. The position of the grid items depends on their grid-row and grid-column values. Grid lines are referred to by their numerical index which starts from 1.
Once Display line numbers is active, the selected grid overlay will display the line numbers of the grid in the color of each respective grid overlay. Each grid has their own numerical grid index which starts from 1, different grids will not share the same numerical grid index.
Line numbers cut off at the top edge (Large preview)Line numbers cut off at the side edge (Large preview)
If your grid extends the width or height of the viewport, you will notice that the line numbers get cut off at the edges. The Mozilla team is aware of this issue and it is being tracked under Bug 1396666.
You can also define a grid using the grid-template-areas property, which gives us the ability to name the areas on our grids. The syntax for this property also provides a visualization of the grid structure in the CSS itself, making it easier to understand the layout of the grid from your code.
This creates a 3 by 3 grid and each section is named according to how they are laid out in the grid-template-areas property. If the sections are named, they will be displayed as a second tool-tip when you hover over the rendering of the grid in the layout panel.
We can also toggle the display of the grid area names on the grid overlay by checking that option in Grid Display Settings. According to Mozilla, this feature was inspired by CSS Grid Template Builder, which was created by Anthony Dugois.
The last option you can toggle is to extend grid lines indefinitely. By default, the grid lines on each grid are constrained to within the bounds of the grid container. But sometimes it can be useful to see how the grid aligns in the context of the entire page.
The Box Model section under the Layout Panel shows a rendering of the dimensions of the selected element, its padding, borders, and margins. In addition to that, it also shows the CSS properties that affect the position, size and geometry of the selected element, namely box-sizing, display, float, line-height, position, and z-index. A convenience when it comes to troubleshooting layout-related CSS issues.
The computed value of the height and width of the selected element and its current positioning value is displayed below the box model outline. You can also directly manipulate the margins, borders, and paddings of the element from the diagram itself.
If you use CSS lengths other than pixels, the DevTools will convert the values into pixels automatically based on the computed value, which is really nifty.
Grid Inspector Plays Well With Transforms
There are many instances where Grid will be used in combination with other CSS layout properties, like transforms, for example. The Grid Inspector tool plays well with CSS transforms and the grid overlay will adjust to it, however, the selected element has been transformed. You will be able to see how the Grid has been rotated, skewed, scaled or translated.
As with any other browser feature, the Grid Inspector tool will inevitably have bugs as the team is hard at work adding new features and polishing existing ones. If you do encounter any such issues, please raise an issue at Bugzilla, Mozilla’s bug tracking tool.
The metabug, which tracks all Grid Inspector related issues, is Bug 1181227. You can search for the term Grid Inspector to see the list of related bugs as well.
If you have any suggestions or feedback on the Grid Inspector tool or the Firefox DevTools in general, Mozilla is on Discourse. Or you can also tweet at @FirefoxDevTools.
(This is a sponsored article.) If you manage a WordPress website, you’ve probably faced a common problem. How do you get insight into all of your content at a glance? WordPress’ admin area does not show you much about your pages, posts, users and comments. That can make it hard to find the right page, to check if all associated fields are properly filled, or simply to get a general sense of your website’s content. Does this sound familiar to you? Read on because we will demonstrate some simple custom solutions and a ready-to-deploy plugin to overcome this problem.
A modern WordPress website usually consists of much richer content than simply titles and chunks of text. Plugins such as Advanced Custom Fields and WooCommerce introduce custom fields that store specific pieces of content, such as prices, additional images, subtitles and so forth. Those functions on their own are great, but how do you keep track of all of that content when you can still only see the title, date and author in your admin screens? The answer is, you can’t.
In this tutorial, we’ll tackle this problem by showing you some easy-to-implement custom code. For those of you who don’t want to code, we’ll show you how to configure the Admin Columns plugin to do the job for you.
Also, you will learn how to:
add new columns to the posts overview,
sort your posts by these columns,
create a filtering form to find your content,
use Admin Columns to edit your content inline (without having to navigate to the individual post).
A Motivating Use Case
Imagine that you’re tasked with building or managing a website containing a real-estate agency’s portfolio. On the website, you display pictures, house addresses, locations, number of rooms and other attributes. On the admin screen, you manage the portfolio, adding, removing and editing existing real estate. The columns WordPress shows by default (title, author, publication date, number of comments) are hardly relevant for your real-estate website, and you’d be more interested in seeing the existing pictures and information about the real-estate listings as a whole.
Let’s look at a standard admin overview screen for custom post types:
This would be pretty useful if this were our website’s blog posts or news items, right? But for our real-estate portfolio, this gives us no information at all. The same goes for web shops, car dealerships, creative portfolios and so forth. Luckily, there’s a solution. We’ll work towards a far more pleasing overview of our real-estate portfolio, which will look like this:
As you can see, this gives us a lot of insight into our real-estate portfolio. It’s now much easier to find, validate and, as you’ll see, edit the content.
We’ll provide a step-by-step guide to adding custom columns to your WordPress admin screens, sorting them and adding custom filters. We’ll also show you how to do this with the Admin Columns plugin. (If you don’t want to code, you can just skip to that part right away.)
Managing Columns With Code
First up is the management of columns for admin screens: adding columns that are specific to your content type, removing columns that are obsolete, and reordering columns. For this goal, WordPress offers the Columns API. It’s available for users and taxonomies as well, but we’ll focus on the posts screen. Changing the existing columns can be accomplished using two WordPress hooks: manage_[post_type]_posts_columns, which allows you to remove, reorder and add columns, and manage_[post_type]_posts_custom_column. In place of [post_type], enter the post type you wish to target. For pages, for example, you would use manage_page_posts_columns and manage_page_posts_custom_column, respectively.
If you haven’t heard about WordPress hooks, we encourage you to move on to the “Managing Columns With the Admin Columns Plugin” section. It explains how you can manage your columns without touching any code. But if you feel like learning, then read more about WordPress hooks (filters and actions).
“Where Do I Place My Code?”
To add all of this custom functionality, we need a place to run our code. This is best done in a plugin. In this tutorial, for example, we’re creating a custom plugin to run all of this code in. If you don’t know how to create a plugin, you can learn how.
All of the code snippets we’ll provide will go in our custom plugin. It is advisable to place such code in a plugin, not in your theme.
Adding, Removing and Reordering Columns
The first hook for managing columns (manage_posts_columns) is a filter that handles the array of columns. The standard array of filters for the posts overview is this:
We’re going to remove a few columns from this list and add a few. To do so, we’ll add a callback to the manage_posts_columns filter and append our custom columns to the columns array. Note that we’re using the manage_realestate_posts_columns hook. Here, realestate is the name of our post type, passed as the first argument to the register_post_type function for registering custom post types. We use it in place of [post_type] in the manage_[post_type]_posts_columns filter.
The first line adds our function smashing_filter_posts_columns as a callback to the filter that handles the columns that are displayed. The second line defines the callback function. Lines 2 to 4 add our custom columns to the list of columns. Finally, line 6 returns the resulting columns list.
Note: The smashing_ part before our functions is just a best practice to make sure that our function name is unique in WordPress. The __ function is used for translating the string to the user’s preferred language. Notice that for both “Price” and “Area,” we use smashing as the text domain, which WordPress uses to determine what source should be used to translate the string. We can omit this for translating “Image” because WordPress already includes translations of this word itself. You can read more about text domains in the WordPress Codex.
We’ve added columns to display an image, the price and the area, and the array with the new columns has been returned. The resulting real-estate list looks like this:
Remove the “Author,” “Date” and “Comments” columns, which are irrelevant to our real-estate content.
Reorder the columns so that “Image” is first.
We’ll modify our function to accomplish this. Note that we do not explicitly remove the three columns mentioned above, but simply construct an entire new array of columns precisely as we need them. The modified lines are highlighted.
Our new real-estate overview screen is starting to take shape: Irrelevant columns have been removed, and new ones have been added in the right positions.
Next up is populating our columns. Again, WordPress provides a pretty simple hook to do so: the manage_[post_type]_posts_column action. Unlike the previously discussed hook, this is not a filter, so it only allows us to add content, not to change it. Thus, in the callback for this action, we’re simply going to echo the column content that we want to display.
We added a callback function, smashing_realestate_column, to the action 'manage_realestate_posts_custom_column', taking two parameters: the column name and the post ID. This is indicated by the fourth parameter, add_action: It specifies the number of arguments expected by the callback function. The third parameter, called the priority of the hook, determines in what order the callback functions registered to the hook should be executed. We’ll leave it at the default, which is 10. This callback function populates a single post’s “Image” column.
The remaining two columns, “Price” and “Area,” are stored as custom fields with the keys price_per_month and area, respectively. We’ll display these in the same way as we did with the image, displaying “n/a” when a price or surface area value is not available. The implementation is very similar for both columns. Starting with the price column, the changed lines in our smashing_realestate_column function are highlighted in the code block below.
Let’s move on to some of the more funky stuff. Let’s add some sorting functionality to our columns!
Making Columns Sortable
Making columns sortable is relatively easy in WordPress, yet it’s rarely implemented for custom columns. Sorting helps you organize content and enables you to find content quickly. For example, we could sort our real-estate overview by price and then find our cheapest and most expensive pieces of property.
We’ll start by adding our “price” column to the list of sortable columns:
This code hooks into the manage_edit-realestate_sortable_columns filter and adds smashing_realestate_sortable_columns as a callback function (line 1). The “price” column is made sortable by adding it to the list of sortable columns in line 3. Note that the array key, price, is the name we’ve given our column before. The array value is used to tell WordPress what it should sort by. We could, for example, use WordPress’ native sorting strategies to sort by title, date or comment count.
In our case, however, we want to sort by a custom field. This requires us to create another function, which needs to alter the posts query if we’re trying to sort by price. We’re going to use the pre_get_posts action. It allows us to change the WP_Query object (the object that WordPress uses to query posts) and fires before posts are queried. We check whether to sort by price and, if so, change the query accordingly:
Lines 1 and 2 add the callback function to the action and start the definition of the callback function, respectively. Line 3 then checks whether we’re in the admin panel and whether the query is the main posts query (see the Codex for more information). If not, we don’t change the query. Then, we check whether the current sorting strategy is by price. If it is, we adjust the query accordingly: We set the meta_key value to price_per_month, telling WordPress to retrieve this custom field for all real estate, and we set the orderby key to meta_value, which tells WordPress to sort by the value belonging to the specified meta key. Finally, we tell WordPress to sort numerically instead of alphabetically, because “price” is a numerical column.
Note: You might have noticed that the filter we hook into is named manage_edit-realestate_sortable_columns, whereas you might have expected it to be manage_realestate_sortable_columns (without the edit-). This is simply an inconsistency in filter naming in WordPress.
The result is a sortable price column:
The same procedure can be repeated for the “area” column. For textual columns, which should be sorted alphabetically, be sure to leave out the $query->set( 'meta_type', 'numeric' ) part.
Managing Columns With The Admin Columns Plugin
Now that we’ve covered the programming part of this tutorial, it’s time to move on to the much simpler method: using the Admin Columns plugin. Without touching any code and using a simple drag-and-drop interface, you can manage columns with just a few clicks. More than 150 column types exist. It comes with optional fields that let you customize how a column is named and behaves. In this last part of the tutorial, we’re going to show you how to set up Admin Columns to create the exact same overview as before. On top of that, we will show you how you can then filter and edit content directly from the content-overview screens.
First off, install Admin Columns as you would install any plugin, and activate it. It’s ready for use right away, so let’s start to manage our columns by going to the “Column Settings” page.
Admin Columns lets you control the columns per content type (for example, posts, pages, users or comments) using the dropdown box highlighted in the image above. In our case, we will select the post type “Real Estate.” You will see the screen immediately showing the columns that are currently active for this post type.
Let’s clean up a bit by removing columns we don’t need for our real-estate overview:
Wasn’t that easy? We will continue by adding our first relevant column: the featured image that shows a picture of the property. To do so, simply click the “Add Column” button, choose the “Featured Image” column type from the dropdown, and fill in the appropriate settings:
As you can see, Admin Columns shows relevant display options for your columns to give you full control over their appearance. Here, you’re asked to specify the dimensions of the image to display. Later, we will see that Admin Columns shows the appropriate options when you select a different column type. For these options, Admin Columns tries to present sensible defaults, to minimize the time required to add new columns.
The last part showed us how to drag the column to the first position. Admin Columns lets you reorder columns simply by dragging them around. Our real-estate screen now looks like this:
We’re now going to add the two columns to display the property’s living area and monthly rent. Because we’ve added these custom fields using the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, we will use Admin Columns’ ACF integration plugin for this task. However, the “Custom Field” column would have also sufficed for this purpose.
The animation below shows the process of adding the “Area” and “Price” columns:
Note: Admin Columns offers integration add-ons for quite a few other plugins, including WooCommerce, Ninja Forms and Yoast SEO.
For those who followed the code examples and paid close attention, we did not add the “City” column. It’s a little trickier to do that with code, but with Admin Columns it’s a breeze. We simply select the “Taxonomy” column and pick the “City” taxonomy, and voilà! Our result is there. Didn’t we tell you? It’s a breeze!
Depending on your mouse-handling speed, we’ve achieved this result, from top to bottom, in somewhere between two and three minutes!
Sorting and Filtering With Admin Columns
Most of what you’ve seen so far is part of the free version of Admin Columns, which can be downloaded from WordPress.org. However, there is also Admin Columns Pro, which offers additional features. We’ll discuss the most prominent features for this use case: sorting, filtering and editing. These features will help you to quickly find and update your content right from the overview screen.
Although the features might be pretty self-explanatory, I’ll explain them really quickly in the context of Admin Columns.
Sorting will display your content in a particular order based on the value of a column. It’s great for getting insight into your content very quickly. For example, it enables you see which pages have a page template and to order them alphabetically. For a regular blog, you could quickly find out which users have authored the highest number of posts by sorting users according to their post count.
Filtering helps you to find content faster. You can filter columns that have a specific value, or a value within some range (for numeric columns) or without any value set at all. For instance, you could find e-commerce products within a price range, or posts missing a featured image or custom field. You could even use multiple filters together to target content more precisely.
Let’s get back to our use case and consider a simple example: We want to find houses with the largest surface areas. This will take us only a few seconds because we can simply make the “Area” column sortable and sort by that column in the real-estate overview screen:
Now, let’s take it a step further by adding a filter: We want to find the top 10 houses with the largest surface areas, but only those with a monthly rental price between $300 and $500. Again, a few clicks are enough:
There are, of course, many other ways to sort and filter. Combined, the features are a powerful tool to gain insight into your content.
Editing With Admin Columns
The real-estate overview screen now shows all relevant information and allows you to find the content you need. However, one thing is lacking: To edit our content, we have to go to the editing page, find the fields we want to change, update them, click “Update,” and go back to our overview screen.
What if we could do the same process in just three simple steps: click, edit, save? With Admin Columns Pro, we can.
The screenshot above shows “direct editing” mode for the property title, and it’s available for almost all custom columns. In Admin Columns Pro, inline editing can be toggled from the columns settings screen. It automatically detects your content type and adds editability accordingly. With images, for instance, the media gallery will pop up.
In this example, we’ve used the Advanced Custom Fields add-on for Admin Columns, which comes with all business and developer licenses. It detects your ACF fields and adds them as possible columns. They are automatically sortable, filterable and editable — just toggle the corresponding icon.
The result is pretty neat: Our real-estate overview screen adds editing icons to all cells, and just by clicking, editing and saving, we can update our content. Let’s see that in practice: We’ve enabled direct editing for all of our custom columns, and we’re going to use that functionality to quickly update our content:
The changes are instantly saved. Should anything go wrong, undo and redo buttons are available to quickly revert.
Direct editing is supported for almost all columns. With the Advanced Custom Fields and WooCommerce add-ons, Admin Columns gives you a native editing experience as if you were editing from the details page.
Wrapping Up
Admin Columns can do much more cool stuff, but there’s just not enough room in this article. Why not take a look and check out some of the awesome features for yourself? We hope to see you there!
