Blog Tag: Web Nerdism
Activity Log
Every web app needs an activity log.
I was recently attempting to assist a RemindMe member in resetting their password. I kept wishing I had some kind of log instead of having to email him and ask, "Did you try this? How far did you get?" and wait for a response.
This could be a readily accessible function or object that simply appends to a log file or inserts into a database. Something that simply listed attempts and results would be great, like...
Member is logging in with email fred@something Running Query ... Member log in failed Member is resetting password with email fred@something etc...
In the end I was able to debug RemindMe the old fashioned way, by echoing on screen and exiting, and discovered the password reset function has been broken for God knows how long. Whoops! It's fixed now.
The very next upgrade RemindMe gets is an activity log. And a good regression test!
Streams
2 Comments | Latest by: Phil | Add A Comment! »»
March 2008 Update: Streams is now the new StreamStory!
I've created a new web-tool called Streams.
You are shown a random word. You type what that word makes you think of, then the next thing you think of, and you keep going. It's like free word association, stream of consciousness, free thinking, etc.
Currently the only way to revisit your stream is to use the "link to this stream" link at the bottom (which only shows up after you've started a stream).
The site sets a cookie, so if from the same browser you go back to your stream, you can edit it. If you sent the link to someone else, they will only be able to read the stream.
I'm working on being able to save a stream and will add that soon. Other features are also in the works (not too many though, want to keep it simple).
Possible uses are: jump-starting creativity, getting feelings out, getting into memories that are old, letting it all out, emotional dumping, healing...
Please try out Streams and let me know what you think. At the very least if you don't start a stream, please Suggest a starter.
Fusebox File Exists
I hacked my local copies of the fusebox core files (for version 4 and version 5) to NOT check if a file exists before including it. This seems to have sped things up a bit.
I think the file_exists() check is somewhat helpful for programmers during development. When you go live, either the file is there or it isn't. No reason to sacrifice performance for the sake of hand-holding.
I hear you ask, "Why are you using fusebox if you're concerned about performance!" - well... that's a topic for another time... for now, it's not terribly slow.
Popular Posts Follow-up
After posting about Popular Posts, I must have been hit by some spider, or people are actually clicking the "unpopular posts" links in the sidebar (or in that entry). Yesterday I noticed that I only had 3 "unpopular posts" in that list. The problem was I was assuming an "unpopular post" would have been viewed less than 50 times. Silly me. I tweaked the query to always grab the 8 lowest items (in addition to all the other criteria) by removing the views < 50 clause.
Now my "unpopularity" is back up to an acceptable level.
Popular Posts
A while back I added entry counts to the blog entries (damn, has it been that long?). When an entry is visited directly at it's own url, I crank up the count by 1. The visit to the entry has to be on this site, not via RSS. I don't add to the count when an entry is viewed in the main page or in monthly archives; only at it's own link. I thought that would be the most significant way of counting. It would count people going directly to specific entries from Google or linking directly to entries from other sites (one can hope...)
There is no catch for "unique visits" or "visits in a session" - I didn't want to think about it that much. I'm not selling ads with this metric or doing anything important with it. I just wanted to see which entries people are looking at.
With this information I have made 2 new queries, one for popular posts and one for unpopular posts, and I'm displaying the results in the side bar. Check out the popular ones and see what all the fuss is about. Check out the unpopular ones and give them some love, too ;-)
The popular posts simply grabs from the top of the stack and shows the 8 entries with the most views. The unpopular posts is a little different. It grabs from the bottom, but the views have to be greater than 0 and the published_at date has to be less than now (since I implemented post dated entries, those would have the least views). Also, I make offset by the number on the home page to skip all the recent stuff. I really want to highlight old stuff that people may have missed
I should really work up a way to display the middle 8 or so "mediocre" entries. Anyway - at the time I write this, here are the popular and unpopular posts:
Popular Posts
- Michal Training for LLS Ride (2271)
- Comment Spam Measures (1734)
- Trackback Test Entry (635)
- Implemented Trackback (625)
- Making Wrong Code Look Wrong (576)
- Seinfeld's Apartment (401)
- Outbound Link Warnings with YUL (399)
- Mentioned On Gen-X Design (372)
Unpopular Posts
- Wimpy SUV Drivers (32)
- Happy Birthday, Madelynn! (33)
- I'll Be Twenty Nine Soon! (33)
- Application Scope for PHP (34)
- Go Bleep Yourself (35)
- Japanese Pop Culture Is Weird (36)
- Good Ad Placement (37)
- New Mash-Up (41)
Actually now that I think about it, I could do one of those "popular posts this week" entries - with a cron job even. Is that cheating? :-)
Oblique Marketing Strategies
1 Comment | Latest by: Phil | Add A Comment! »»
Inspired by Matthew Stibbe's Oblique Marketing Strategies, I've built a tiny web site around them. The site shows one "card" at a time. Read the entry at the above link for more information.
Here's Matthew's announcement about it. Neat to be linked!
Oblique Marketing Strategies. Enjoy!
The Board - Not!
I made this fun little app in November that was basically a web version of a thing a group of friends I have call "The Board". When someone says something innocent in context, but dirty when taken out of context, it gets put on the board. As in, "That's going on the board!". I made a web version. Fun.
It was up for like 2 weeks. Then I moved hosting, and didn't get around to trying to put it back up until tonight. I set up the sub-domain, moved the code into the right spot, created the database tables, and spent an hour or so tweaking it here and there. It was almost ready to run.
Then I deftly deleted the directory with all the code. Oops.
A backup may exist. I'm checking, but it really doesn't matter. None of the friends who are in on that gag seemed to care. What's the f@#king point anymore?
Update: A backup exists! Boy, was I in a pissy mood when I wrote this entry or what?
Web Designer Blindness
4 Comments | Latest by: Philip Chalmers | Add A Comment! »»
I'm going slowly bind and I blame web designers. Practically every web site I visit, I have to crank up the font. I'm quick with the CTRL+Plus hot key combo. I might actually use Key Config to change it to a simpler combination.
Hey everyone, take two big steps back from your desk, and try to read your own web site. If you can't read it, give us a few points increase, would ya? Thanks... Come to think of it, I can barely read the text on Podo. I'll have to increase it. Then again, I hardly ever read Podo :-)
Update: "I did it, yeah?" I changed my key config to be PLUS (actually EQUAL) for increased size, MINUS for decreased size, and 0 for default size.
Styling Code Samples with YUL
Inspired by Dunstin's Tag Transformations for pretty code samples, Dustin's Get Elements by Class Name, and using the Yahoo! User Interface Library (again), I've hacked together a little script to transform the contents of a pre tag into a somewhat nicely formatted listing.
There's some problems with it. I'm using innerHTML. There's a nicer DOM standards friendly way to do this, but for now this will work. I'll update this later, maybe. For now, the code samples here and there (in places where I bothred to use class="code") look a little nicer (but the code still sucks... :-P).
Outbound Link Warnings with YUL
3 Comments | Latest by: Dustin Diaz | Add A Comment! »»
Inspired by Automatic external link interstitials using JavaScript and Behavior.js (via Ajaxian), I decided to try to implement the same idea using Yahoo! User Interface Library. (No, I don't have new ideas, just sample code... read on!)
JavaScript Window Features
The features for a newly openned JavaScript window are: width, height, menubar, status, scrollbars, resizable, toolbar, location, directories, and copyhistory. The first two are pixel sizes, while the rest are true/false. I'm sick of looking this up in Thau's JavaScript Tutorial every time, so I'm posting it here, for myself.
Por ejemplo:
win = window.open("page.html", "popupwin", "width=775,height=600,menubar=no,status=no,scrollbars=auto,resizable=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,copyhistory=no");
Professionalism for Web Developers
Web Standards Buzz says, "We must know our craft". They're basically saying web developers must practice their definition of web standards to be considered professional. Yeah, like that Google Firefox Start Page, the default home page on the most widely adopted standards-supporting browser around. OK!
