Sep
20
2004

Testing smilies

(Add / View Comments) (0)Monday, September 20, 2004 - 10:50:45 pm
(Posted Under: Web Development)

[smile] [wink] [biggrin] [confused] [cry] [frown] [neutral] [razz] [razz] [cool] [rolleyes] [suprised] :-/ - 3 char
[smile] [wink] [biggrin] [confused] [cry] [frown] [neutral] - 2 char
[smile] [wink] [biggrin] [confused] [cry] [frown] [neutral] [razz] [razz] [cool] [rolleyes] [suprised] [eek] [evil] [lol] [mad] [embarrased] [sad] [twisted] [arrow] [exclaimation] [idea] [question] [mrgreen] - text


Sep
19
2004

Weblog running on it's own.

(Add / View Comments) (0)Sunday, September 19, 2004 - 12:22:19 am
(Posted Under: Web Development)
With the intense desire to be able to use categories to display certain weblog entries in real time, I've quickly whipped up a standalone script. Though, it's nice to still cheat and use Pittwater for creating the XML, when I don't feel like creating it directly (although, I am for this post, go figure!)

I must says, having the control to write my own markup language (basic UBB, and URL's automatically converted to links) is really nice. As is defining my own emoticon syntax - now I can write, like an email, and not worry about what BB I'm on.

However, how I'm eventually going to put this on my live website on Alphalink is another thing.

Extending this, I have the whole external rendering also setup for other parts of the site, to store the actual content in XML, which publishes into the actual webpages through XSLT rendering. Oh so much more maintainable, and I'll be able to upload published pages with no problem.
Sep
19
2004

Pittwater external rendering is kinda cool

(Add / View Comments) (0)Sunday, September 19, 2004 - 12:09:19 am
(Posted Under: Web Development)
Hmm, this temporary use of Pittwater to render the !weblog (with the help of a server side include and cron script) is kinda cool.

The whole idea of the having the functionality of the Pittwater repository, and partial content rendering engine, in an external site is pretty appealing. Keeping all the actual rendering (templates etc.,) off site, and pulling rendered content into placeholders on a published site. I'd certainly be inclined to use something like that.

The trick in my mind would to be keeping the rendered site Pittwater unaware - on a server that knew nothing about Pittwater, and portably and minimalistically pulling rendered content from Pittwater into the published site. In my mind it would be a lot less dynamic than a fully blown Pittwater website. More a case of entering content, then publishing statically on the published website, each time. Unfortunately I can't think of a great wato publish the rendered content into the published site, while keeping the published website (pages/site + server itself) uncoupled from Pittwater. The coolest application in my mind, would be one that used stock standard webpages, without rewrites or CGI. What I'm doing currently (wget + server side includes) seems like the best way to do it with keeping the website and Pittwater very much uncoupled, and the website stock standard. Though, a nicer method would be...well, nicer. I dunno.

An interesting alternative use of Pittwater at the very least anyway. Not having to implement a seperate code base for a mini-repository and XSL transform logic for each site/page you want to render from XML, as I currently do, without going the whole Pittwater site render route, surely would have some kind of wider application, one would think anyway.

It'd also be nice to have the control in motile:markup to only process UBB, not scratch. It's obvious above that scratch is not on the same wavelength as myself. [wink] Actually, what I'd really like is to be able to embed HTML into content, that'd be really sweet. The reason I want to use XML and transform it into HTML is to save work in site redesigns (hey, I'm a programmer - if something follows a template, why not use a template? [smile] ), not the same reasoning as the majority of users would be using the CMS. Being able to add HTML into the XML where required would be great. However, I don't think XSLT would really work, even taking Pittwater out of the picture, as HTML would be XML nodes, not part of the XML content. Oh well, that'd be damn sweet if it was technically possible. Having to emulate another markup code in XML is annoying.

It's just dawned on me, that this is probably the first time I've actually used the Pittwater interface while not being on the clock (not that I just use vi on the clock anyway! [wink] ). It pains me to say, as big as I am on editing the XML (or anything else) directly/on a system level, and as much as I detest web interfaces across the board, this ain't such a bad way to do things. The interface seems to be more appealing when I'm not entering customer data .If the databound form had a GUI formatting editor, and a transparent way to encode formatting in the XML, I could be converted. If there was the whole 'external rendering' functionality described above, I think I'd use Pittwater for a great deal of my site.

Well, maybe I shouldn't get too ahead of myself, it still is a web interface after all, and I haven't lost an hour of typing yet. [wink] But I do notice that the GUI might get a bit too much of a bad wrap in the Swamp.

I'll no doubt be back to vi on Monday. [wink]
Sep
18
2004

Netscape 4.x support dropped

(Add / View Comments) (0)Saturday, September 18, 2004 - 10:50:45 pm
(Posted Under: Web Development)
That's it, I don't think I'm supporting Netscape 4.x anymore. I can hear the Motile crew's evil laughter from here. [wink] I know they've all been waiting for me to break - it's taken just under a year.

I find it extremely frustrating that virtually impossible to get a nice looking site using today's standard to render half decently in Netscape 4.x. Well, at least without going to the extents I did with browser detection both client and server side on Lost Horizons . Especially since I've done this new design very basically and cleanly, yet Netscape 4.x still chokes. Eh!

While I've virtually come around to the thinking that supporting Netscape 4.x is a ridiculous task, I still feel dirty. I remember when I'd first tried both Mozilla (0.x) and Netscape 6 on my lower end machine (circa 2000?), and couldn't uninstall them fast enough. Well, partly because they were buggy, but largly because of how much of a resource hog they were, in comparison to Netscape 4.x (4.78 at the time, if I recall). I always like supporting the most basic infrastructure - this applies to code as well as web development. (For example, I must prefer writing to a file than the registry). While W3Schools provides (without source) stats that the usage of Netscape 4.x is on par with Netscape 3.x, a suprising number of machines coming into the office still running Windows 98 is quite suprising.

Added to that, the fact that I only made the complete shift to Netscape 7.1 (for browsing) in the last 9 months, and how much I'd detest winding up at a site that wouldn't work in Netscape 4.x, it's hard to think that I might be forcing someone like myself to, gasp, IE. It's a painful and frustrating decision to make, especially in light of accessibility, and my whole philosophy on the point of the web being information, not flashing lights. It's such a toss up, but it looks like flashing lights (combined with the fact that the new design is supported flawlessly in both Mozilla and IE6 it seems) are winning out.

Maybe I should take comfort in that css Zen Garden style wise doesn't work in Netscape 4.8...though, it does degrade in NC4.8 nicer than my new site design does, hmmmph. [wink]

Or maybe I'm analysing this too much. [wink] Maybe I should just focus on having a site that looks sexy in Mozilla and IE6.
Sep
16
2004

Johnny Ramone Dead

(Add / View Comments) (0)Thursday, September 16, 2004 - 09:28:44 am
(Posted Under: Music Music)
Another Ramone gone. Eh...I want to be sedated.
Sep
15
2004

This is not a weblog

(Add / View Comments) (0)Wednesday, September 15, 2004 - 09:32:39 pm
(Posted Under: General)
Welcome to my !weblog. Yes, not weblog. I hate weblogs. They're stoopid, and don't even have a good name (this is certainly not a blog. [wink] ). However, for about a 9 month's I've wanted somewhere to spew geeky shit randomly.

What better to do that than a not weblog? [wink]

At the moment it'll be pretty basic, using Pittwater to render HTML to cut and paste into my weblog page. Oh, the fun that will be. However, I can't commit to going the full Pittwater site route. It'd actually be nice if Pittwater components were modular enough externally use Pittwater's rendering functionality, without being tied into to full giving Pittwater control over a site. I'm such a fan of XML storage to HTML rendering as a method to create webpages, but just can't give up flexibility and portability. Oh well, once I hit some PHP, I should have this weblog working the way I actually want. Provided Alphalink have the XSLT extensions installed.

On another rant, it'd be so nice if clients reliably did XSLT - then there wouldn't be any issue. I know, the expectation of being able to do anything reliably client side when it comes to web browsers is an oxymoron.

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