Tony Stephens / Simian Design

A bunch of design and development links for you today. The majority (90%?) of these links came from [etc][via] the past couple of months.

* [Create really cool new windows][1] using [prototype][1a]. You can then use [script.aculo.us][1b] to have the sexy effects on the window. You _must_ try the demos.
* [24ways][2] really deserves it’s own post. It’s got [24 great tutorials/posts][2] on how to do things. Things such as:
* [Swooshy Curly Quotes without Images][2a] is great for pullout quotes.
* [Improving Form accessibility with DOM Scripting][2b].
* [An explanation of ems][2c].
* Russ Weakley shows us how to create [simple, accessible external links][3]. He uses a class in this example, but I’ve seen the same thing done using a Regex parser to loop through all the links. But that’s probably a bit much.
* [Tagcloud lets you create and manage clouds][4] with content you are interested in, and lets you publish them on your own website.

[1]: http://blogus.xilinus.com/pages/javawin
[1a]: http://prototype.conio.net/
[1b]: http://script.aculo.us/
[2]: http://www.24ways.org/
[2a]: http://24ways.org/advent/swooshy-curly-quotes-without-images
[2b]: http://24ways.org/advent/improving-form-accessibility-with-dom-scripting
[2c]: http://24ways.org/advent/an-explanation-of-ems
[3]: http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/external/
[4]: http://www.tagcloud.com/
[5]: http://komodomedia.com/blog/index.php/2005/08/24/creating-a-star-rater-using-css/
[5a]: http://www.gr0w.com/articles/code/php_5_star_rating_system_using_hreview/
[6]: http://www.formarchitect.com/index.php
[7]: http://www.dragon-labs.com/articles/octopus/
[8]: http://www.skimcss.com/skimlist
[9]: http://www.smileycat.com/miaow/archives/comment-showcase.html
[10]: http://paularmstrongdesigns.com/weblog/css/navigation-magnification
[10a]: http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html
[11]: http://print.wordpress.com/2006/02/22/css-beautifully-numbered-lists/
[12]: http://alltheheroesaredead.com/weblog/archives/2006/02/external-related-links-on-mt-blog
[13]: http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menus/dd_valid.html
[14]: http://www.mapsurface.com/
[15]: http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menu/one_page.html
[16]: http://pro.html.it/niftycube/
[16a]: http://www.cssplay.co.uk/boxes/snazzy.html
[16b]: http://www.spiffycorners.com/

[via]: http://www.fortysomething.ca/mt/etc/
(more…)

I ran across [this post about how to Ajax-ify your comments][1] and thought that could be interesting.

So I followed his instructions and templates. All in all, fairly easy and straightforward. They’re live now here, so feel free to test it out. Defintely check out [his original article on how to do this][1].

UPDATE: I did forget to mention, I did just blatantly steal Bryans progress bar image. As well as his styles of disabling the form. And his javascript. i really did almost nothing except implement what he put together. So go check out his stuff, it’s good. I took it.

[1]: http://bbuchs.f2o.org/archives/2005/06/23/ajax-ified_weblog/

I’ve been out on vacation for the past week, and really busy the month before that. So I’m apologize for the lack of posting to all three people that read this site.

In an effort to clean out some of my back-log, I’m gonna be posting a couple of big link dumps. Here is part one.

* Scott Andrew [nails why Google Maps is so perfect][1]. Hint, it’s not really Ajax, nor scrolling. It’s much more usability related.
* Pinki is an [OS X menu bar utility for quickly creating icon thumbnails][2]. ([via][wdik])
* An [Easter Egg on Incredibles DVD][3]. ([via][wdik])
* [Document Palette][4] is a pretty neat OS X utility. It will create new documents directly into open folders. Much cooler than the previous sentence sounds, trust me. ([via][wdik])
* Alessandro has a massive post [links-article about javascript][5] that is really worth reading. Tons of good links in there about JavaScript. (One of these days I’ll have to pick up my sorry ass and start posting over at web-graphics again.)
* Here is a fun little JavaScript DOM for you to play with. It’s a [complete Drag & Drop Library][6] which adds Drag Drop functionality to layers and to any desired image. Fun to play with. ([via][jz])
* An amusing post by [Tim Bray on the Microsoft XML Patent][7]. ([via][jz])
* If you have a [LinkSys anything][8], this is the place for you. ([via][jz])
* Interesting Idea: Having [forms in your RSS Feeds][9]. Russell Beattie did it recently, and it worked well for getting comments back quickly. It’s an interesting idea. ([via][laughing])
* Good article by Dave Shea about [semantic markup][10]. Read it, and be sure to check out his [markup guide][10a].
* [Really tiny houses][11]. ([via][simple])
* What [Pixel Artists use][12] when creating icons. ([via][simple])
* How to [prevent JavaScript memory leakage][13]. This script stores events and removes them on `unload`. This really helps out IE, since it has the worst memory leakage with JavaScript of all the browsers.
* To find out if IE is leaking memory, run [Drip, the IE Leak Detector][14]. Drip is a standalone app that lets you open an HTML page (or pages, in succession) in a dialog box, mess around with it, then check for any elements that were leaked. ([via][simion])
* [XHTML2][21] looks interesting. Wonder if it will ever see the light of day. ([via][simion])
* [Google Sitemaps][15]. This could be very cool. Have to play with it some more.
* [Trixie is Greasemonkey for IE][16]. Anything that makes IE more like Firefox is improving IE in my opinion. Except I’m hesitant to install any extra for IE. Old habit I guess. ([via][simion])
* A bunch of [iCal resources][17]. ([via][foo])
* A good [Ajax blog][18]. Lots of good links and examples in here. ([via][foo])
* [Firefoxy][19] is a Platypus script to make Kevin Gerich’s [fancy Firefox widgets][19a] quick to install. If you’re running Firefox on a Mac, you MUST install the Fancy Widgets. It makes things so much better. ([via][foo])
* Create [additional MoveableType DB Fields][20]. I’ve been thinking about dropping MovebleType and trying out WordPress, but nonetheless this look intruiging. ([via][etc])

[1]: http://jszen.blogspot.com/2005/05/why-google-maps-wins.html
[2]: http://www.mkd.cc/pinki/
[3]: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2005/05/25#a8621
[4]: http://verticaleye.net/dp/
[5]: http://web-graphics.com/mtarchive/001568.php
[6]: http://www.walterzorn.com/dragdrop/dragdrop_e.htm
[7]: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/06/03/Microsoft-XML-Patent
[8]: http://www.linksysinfo.org/
[9]: http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008482.html
[10]: http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2005/05/30/who_cares_ab/index.php
[10a]: http://mezzoblue.com/downloads/markupguide/
[11]: http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/houses.htm
[12]: http://www.yellowlane.com/archives/icon_design/confessions_of_a_pixel_perfectionist.html
[13]: http://novemberborn.net/javascript/event-cache
[14]: http://jgwebber.blogspot.com/2005/05/drip-ie-leak-detector.html
[15]: https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/
[16]: http://www.bhelpuri.net/Trixie/Trixie.htm
[17]: http://ohtogo.com/?p=3
[18]: http://www.ajaxian.com/
[19]: http://www.amake.us/software/firefoxy.html
[19a]: http://kmgerich.com/archive/000072.html
[20]: http://www.waywardpuppy.com/archives/2005/05/adding_addition.html
[21]: http://www.w3.org/2005/Talks/05-steven-xtech/

[wdik]: http://whatdoiknow.org/enjoying/
[jz]: http://jeremy.zawodny.com/linkblog/
[laughing]: http://laughingmeme.org/mlp/
[simple]: http://www.simplebits.com/notebook/
[simion]: http://simon.incutio.com/blogmarks/
[foo]: http://randomfoo.net/
[etc]: http://www.fortysomething.ca/mt/etc/

Searching and Classification. I have these two items at odds with one another. It’s in regards to my [low-threshold linking system, Link-Fu][linkURL].

I have a [del.icio.us account][delURL]. I love the faceted classification system. The [emering folksonomy][folkURL] is a great thing. The archiving power of this system is enormous. It breaks my search.

My [link system, Link-Fu][linkURL], is currently built in MoveableType as a separate blog. This allows me to search the site through one single search. This is nice, and convient.

But [Link-Fu][linkURL] and [Blog-Fu][blogURL] has never integrated like I really want. I want to post to [del.icio.us][delURL], have it display on my site, and update the proper RSS feed. And when I go to search, it searches my [del.icio.us account][delURL] as well as [Blog-Fu][blogURL]. And my results could be sorted for relevance either grouped, or separated. That would be ideal.

<siderant>
Ideally I’d like just one feed rather than multiple. I think having separate feed for your quickLinks/bookmarks/low threshold (whatever you call them) and for your main site isn’t the ideal situation. In fact, the more I think about it, it’s bogus.

If I subscribe to _one_ of your feeds, I’ll probably be subscribing to the _others_, as I’m interested in when your site is updated, or I want to get your content. What I _don’t want_ is a list of umpteen hundred feeds in my [feed reader][feedURL][of choice][choiceURL]. I don’t want granularity in my feeds. Not really. Not unless you’re a newspaper. Granularity in a newspapers feed could be nice. But that’s really about it.
</siderant>

[linkURL]: http://www.simiandesign.com/blog-fu/link-fu.php
[delURL]: http://del.icio.us/tstephens/
[folkURL]: http://atomiq.org/archives/2004/08/folksonomy_social_classification.html
[feedURL]: http://www.ranchero.com/
[choiceURL]: http://www.bloglines.com/
[blogURL]: http://www.simiandesign.com/blog-fu/

MT Tag Quick Reference is a handy little site that provides a sidebar screen with all the tags and descriptions for you. Quite nice, quite handy for any of your MT development.

Koala Rainbow is a plugin for MoveableType 3.0 that looks very interesting. Defintely check out the examples to see what I mean.

I’m checking right now to see if Image:Magik is installed on my server, and if so, I’ll be playing with this.

Messed around with the dates the other day. I didn’t like seeing just the vanilla date, and wanted something a little more. After looking around, I found <a href="http://www.rattledbaby.com/archives/000244.php">some interesting options</a> that have already been implemented by people.

I found <a href="http://blog.natbat.co.uk/archive/2003/Jun/14/time_since">NatBat’s method</a> to work just about like I want it. And it seems the code is easy enough to monkey with, so I’ll probably try and do that later.

My biggest problem is I was having a braindump yesterday on how to get the MT variables read into PHP. Then I remembered that the CGI is parsed <em>before</em> the PHP, so all I had to do was escape the characters. <? echo time_since('<$MTEntryDate format="%x"$>'); ?> worked just great.

UPDATE: Something is goofy. The time countdown isn’t working too terribly great, it’s off somehow. I’ll be looking more into it this weekend.

Well, I finally got the MT Search into a PHP Template, thanks to some help from Michael Simmons, of thoughtanomalies.com. He has a wonderful working script that you can just plop in and use. I made a few minor modifications, and that was all she wrote.

The basis for his script is to turn the default template for the MT Search into an XML document. Not a well-formed XML document, but a singular instance that is used only by this script. At some point I’d like to make that a well-formed XML document, but I’m not sweating it now.

Then you use his nicely written search document that reads in this XML document. Bingo! You have a PHP search.

I did modify the search string to include both of the blogs I was running (Blog-Fu and Link-Fu). This was done by modifying the file declaration from http://YOURSITE/PATH/TO/MT/mt-search.cgi?&IncludeBlogs=2.... to http://YOURSITE/PATH/TO/MT/mt-search.cgi?&IncludeBlogs=1&IncludeBlogs=2..... By adding in another URL String of the IncludeBlogs= with the other BlogID, I can search multiple blogs in one search result.

I also was running into problems using the fread function. So I switched that function to file_get_contents, and that problem went away.

Lastly, because I didn’t have individual archives set up for the Link-Fu entries, I wanted to display those differently. After monkeying around with the search results, I realized that rather than extend the XML document, and the search results page, I needed some sort of archives for the sidebar links. So I just created monthly archives, and that worked out great as well.

This was by far and away the easiest implementation I found of switching the searching over to PHP. I highly recommend using Michael Simmons method.

PHP, CGI, and MT: Together at Last, from Mezzoblue (building upon Shaun Inmans work).

This article outlines ways to help the comment preview pages. I’m still going through this, but it looks quite intruiging. I think I’ll be using this on my search result pages, comment preview and other CGI-built pages.

Mike Davidson is feed up with a couple of aspects of the templating system, and raw CGI queries of MovableType. So he’s provided us a good article on Converting CGI Movable Type Templates to PHP.

He outlines three methods to deal with this, and shows us examples of all three. I’ll be spending more time here as I implement some of these features.