Software Updates
August 22nd, 2005
I’ve done quite a bit more on the software today. I do plan on releasing a technology preview sometime but I think we’re still quite a bit away. The blog is going to be the initial focus of the software with a discussion board possibly after that so components are being designed to be generic. In some ways, a basic forum can be seen as just a blog where anyone can start an entry and the main page doesn’t display the whole first post.
Anyway 
Comment Count
The number of comments in a blog entry is displayed next to the entry title on the right hand side. I spent quite a bit of time trying to get this to look right - trying to fit it beneath the date box, getting it to look obvious that the link was clickable, etc. I’m still not quite sure about the hover effect so any thoughts and suggestions would be great.
Paging
Take a look at the bottom of the main blog page. I tried to make the page links as large as was sensible to improve usability (Fitt’s law) without affecting the aesthetics too much. I think it’s quite a nice balance. There also seems to be “something missing” without a bar above or below the page list so it’s currently showing some information such as “page 1 of 3″.
The pager looks better on Gecko browsers than Internet Explorer and Opera so we might want to invest in some rounded corners with images. Again, I’d love your thoughts on the usability and aesthetics of it. Perhaps we could change the status message beneath the page numbers when they are rolled over although I’m not sure if this has a practical use.
Date Boxes
I can’t remember exactly when I added these but they’re there
Commenting
The interface now displays the last editing time of comments. Previous revision data is also available to the comment author (I plan on making this public soon).
Unobtrusive JavaScript
Unobtrusive Javascript is a new way of writing Javascript event handlers. Well, it’s not exactly new, but it’s cool. It’s the separation of logic and content. Instead of adding event handlers into the code itself, they are placed in a external JavaScript file. That file then does some magic such as document.getElementById(’example’).onclick = function(). We’re moving towards full usage of unobtrusive JavaScript. We’ll probably make Javascript dynamically add the URL and image buttons at the bottom of input boxes so users without JavaScript turned on won’t see any buttons instead of seeing non-functional ones.
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Did you mean to create a blue border on hover? Because it’s not something I’m keen on. Everything else so far is great and I’m loving it. I want to see more green though! Bring on the green! I like the page-o-meter at the bottom. Fits in well.
I don’t really like it either but I want to make it obvious that the comment icon can be clicked on. I’m not really sure how to achieve that.
Maybe a CSS rollover image? Or it’s possible to change the colour of the item I think with CSS.
A rollover will be fine.
I’m not sure why this is happening, but I’m using the firefox google toolbar extension, and when I use the spellchecking function my words are seriously messed up? Should I report this to google? This appears to be the only site it happens to me at.
It may be an idea to do so - as far as I know it’s just a standard textbox, wrapped in a few divs with a bit of Javascript. I may download the toolbar when I have a spare moment and have a look.
The comment times seem to be behind 1 hour (and therefore maybe the post times as well?).
As of Sunny and Rambles suggestions, I modified the comment link a bit. Hopefully it looks a bit nicer now. And it’s green
The time is one hour behind BST; it’s GMT/UTC
Your blog is looking very nice, Cow. Since you’re essentially using the same principles in your object model that I’m working on, I’d love to compare and contrast the way we’re both doing things.
Definitely, I’m sure that there are things that we can learn from each other’s implementations
I’m currently working on a task list of things to do before making an initial technology preview available which will be under GPL. I’m still checking the licenses of the scripts that I’ve used and ensuring that they can be distributed with GPL code.
I like it now. Great job. Why can’t the times match with our computer clocks? It’s much easier and I won’t keep turning my clock back an hour :). Anyway, keep it coming.