LW Metro UI is a WordPress theme inspired by the Metro design of Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8. It is a one-column style theme ideal for minimalist bloggers preferring a simple, clean and uncluttered design.
This is a child theme for the Thematic Theme Framework. Therefore, you need to have Thematic installed first before activating this theme.
VIEW DEMO
Click the ( i ) icon on the lower right of the demo page to preview other styles.
In this article:
- Requirements
- Installation
- Features
- Extras
- Configurable Tag Cloud Settings
- Credits
- License
- Support
REQUIREMENTS:
- Thematic – Install this theme first. No need to activate.
- Configurable Tag Cloud (CTC) – This is required if you want the tag/category cloud tiles. Install and activate this plugin before activating the LW Metro UI theme.
INSTALLATION:
After installing Thematic (and CTC), simply copy the lw-metro-ui folder to your themes folder: /wp-content/themes
Then activate the theme through your WordPress admin. The default widgets are added automatically upon activation.
FEATURES:
- Five (5) styles to choose from: Original, Blue, Lime, Pink, Purple
- A settings page for basic customizations:
- Use a background image in the header
- Use a PNG image for the site title
- Hide the site tagline
- Hide the menu bar
- Category/Tag cloud on tiles (widget)
- This requires the Configurable Tag Cloud plugin.
- Custom default avatar
- Just replace the avatar.png file in the images folder with your own. The image should be at least 48×48 in size.
- Tested on the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari and Internet Explorer in Windows 7. Styles should gracefully degrade in older browsers.
EXTRAS:
- Basic menu bar
- LW Metro UI is designed not to need a menu (for minimalistic reasons) but you still have the option to show it. The included menu design is basic so you may want to customize the CSS also.
- Primary and Secondary Asides
- These are situated above the 1st Subsidiary Aside of the default setup. There’s no sidebar in this theme so any additional widgets will ideally be placed here. Here’s a screenshot to better explain this.
Configurable Tag Cloud Settings:
Please note the highlighted options.
Number of Tags to Display – It’s recommended to have this in multiples of 5. Values 10 and 15 are best.
Smallest Font Size – Should at least be 10 (unit: point) to be reasonably visible.
Cloud Format – This should be set to List for the tile effect to work.
Display Post Count – Set to No for aesthetic reasons.
These ideal settings are automatically set if you have the CTC plugin installed before activating the LW Metro UI theme.
CREDITS:
Others have already been listed in the original post.
- ThemeShaper’s Thematic forums – I’m not an active member but I found many of the solutions to my problems there.
- Options Framework Theme
- Metro Icons
- Ars Grafik – for the square Photoshop brushes
- MetroTwit – for inspiring me to create the other styles
- WordPress Theme Demo Bar
- WPCandy – for the sample WordPress content
- Configurable Tag Cloud
- Daryl – for spawning the idea and for letting me release the original version
LICENSE:
LW Metro UI is released under GPLv2.
SUPPORT:
LW Metro UI uses Thematic so any questions or problems you may have will most likely be answered in the ThemeShaper forums. Still, feel free to post your questions and comments below. I would also love to know where people use the theme.
DOWNLOAD “LW Metro UI” – ZIP (1.18 MB)
You may use the following shortcut to link to this page:
http://www.syaoran.net/lw-metro-ui
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Filipino Catholic · Hobby Blogger · 
Safely Remove Huawei Mobile USB with HotSwap!
I’ve been using a Huawei Mobile Broadband USB (model: E1550) for several months now. It came with the Sun Wireless Broadband plan. Ever since I got this, I’ve always wondered why I couldn’t safely remove the stick through the regular “Safely Remove Hardware” option in Windows 7. I had assumed then that such device doesn’t need to be safely removed before unplugging it until one day, I couldn’t use it anymore on the computer. I guess it somehow became corrupt so I had to reinstall the stick using driver files downloaded from the web. After fixing that problem, I resolved to find a way to safely remove the HSDPA USB. I found the solution from this forum page.
According to the official site, HotSwap “does the same thing as you can remove device from Device Manager but it provides much friendly user interface as you remove the removable device from the “Safely Remove Hardware” icon in the notification area. It also ensures that all data are written and flushed to the disk before the device to be hot-swapped.”
If it only provides an interface, I don’t understand why Windows 7 couldn’t safely remove my Huawei mobile device by itself. Even more puzzling is how it shows the USB stick as two devices in my computer: as a CD drive and a mass storage device.
Both the Eject and Safely Remove Hardware options don’t work for these two.
It does show as a single device in “Devices and Printers” but the Eject option doesn’t do anything.
I’ve tried many solutions and ended up solving the problem with HotSwap which doesn’t need to be installed at all so you can carry it anywhere to any system you may encounter that doesn’t let you safely remove a removable device.
Once you’ve launched HotSwap, you may need to put a check on these device types.
Now I can safely remove the stick but obviously I need to do it twice because of the two entries which is still a mystery to me.
You’ll get a notification balloon for every device.
Interestingly, the Huawei mobile device will be moved to an “Unspecified” category in the Devices and Printers window after doing the above actions.
But it will be gone from the Computer window, at last!
So it’s truly safe to unplug the stick after this and I’ll be able to avoid corrupting the data card inside too. I’m not really sure if that corruption problem was caused by my “unsafe” removals but I’m not taking any chances. I don’t want to have to visit my ISP’s office just to obtain a replacement stick if this one goes kaput. Who knows? They might even charge me for that! So thanks HotSwap!
HotSwap! Official Site