HyperBlog | Stage 2 Spec
(now out-dated)
not implemented completely: new-> Admin Page
There is one admin page for the user. The user gets there by logging on (simple dialog box asking for username and password) to http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/theirname/ All they can do there now is delete posts.
Email parsing would be taking information from the email and saving them as per Mikhail's system.
Notes on email parsing
Any modification the HyperBlog system does needs to be accessible to the HyperPop-Up Menu.
change-> URL changes
The URL's which specify the location of the Blog and it's layout will be more easily readable by people. http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/ir_svr/page/blog.jsp?blog=5&blog=6&blog=3&&date=1054678635928&msg=&first_only= becomes something more like http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/ir_svr/page/blog.jsp?blog=fleurkli&frodeheg&douheng=date=2003-06-09-12:35am&msg=&first_only=no
There will also be a new display mode, 'display this post separately' which is indicated by adding &alone at the end of the URL. I am not sure how this will fit into the page layout until we have the pop-up menu system.
Each blog page will be a collection of posts with added controls, as detailed in 'Email parsing' above.
It should also be possible to automatically show the latest entry by adding :latest to the end of a URL for the blog.
after-bid addition-> There will need to be a 'current' variable, for use on dates especially, so that we can have a URL to a blog view which always shows the current month. Mikhail may have gotten this in there.
after-bid addition-> There will need to be a 'date-range' variable, to that we can have a link to show a range of dates, in support of our chaperized blogs format. This way I can have a link to show only the blgo entries for our trip in August for example.
change-> Layout - Frames
Change of web layout where a new frameset simplifies the layout with only 2 frames.
after-bid addition-> No Frames Layout
There will also need to be a no-frames option, which removes the menu on the left and adds a small 'edit' link in the top right hand view of the page.
new-> View Single Entry/Post/Blog:
There will also need to be an option for the user to see one blog post alone in a window. It will also have the small 'edit' link in the top right hand corner. It will also have << to go back chronologically one blog by the same author [=] to go to the regular list view and >> to go to the next blog entry by the same author.
A layout is shown in the Single Blog page.
change-> Layout - HTML
changed - NOT correct-> All type should be Georgia and the sizes in the sample layouts should be adhered to, most importantly, the main body text should be size 1 and the menu text -2.
after-bid addition-> I put together a test page showing a sample blog entry with the three main fonts. It is available at http://www.cynapse.org/thesis/typetest.html and in screenshot form: http://www.cynapse.org/thesis/typetest.gif
It is clear to me that Times New Roman wins the legibility and elegance vs. size battle. The same test showed the elegance of Helvetica for headings. This is why it will be the type for dates, though bold and grey.
Layout of the body type will be enhanced through CSS, giving a much greater line height to increase legibility. To test various heights, three pages were built: http://www.cynapse.org/thesis/blog-type-layout-100.html for a regular height, http://www.cynapse.org/thesis/blog-type-layout-120.html for 120% line height, http://www.cynapse.org/thesis/blog-type-layout-150.html for 150% line height and http://www.cynapse.org/thesis/blog-type-layout-200.html for a 200% taller line height layout. A screenshot is available at http://www.cynapse.org/thesis/csstest-4-samples.gif
The outer extremes quickly lost their appeal. The 120% and 150% were more difficult to choose between so I put together a screen shot of them side by side, to measure the easy of which the eye can wrap around a line. That is available at http://www.cynapse.org/thesis/csstest-two-samples.gif In my mind the 150% makes it a little bit tougher to wrap.
The final layout then becomes: http://www.cynapse.org/thesis/blog-type-layout.html : Times New Roman, 120% line height with date headings grey, all caps Helvetica with one blockquote indent.
change-> How to make URL's live
If the URL is in a valid format and alone, just make it live and open to a new window.
Also let the author put a word in front of it with a colon (in the blog email) to make the word in front of the colon be the visible link. This will be a very useful feature for long URL's. Also let the user contain the word within decorative brackets (rarely used) like {} to include more than a single word. This is an easy convention to explain and remember I think...
article:http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/ir_svr/page/blog.jsp?blog=3&&date=1054678635928&msg=&first_only=
becomes article
Also:
{Doug's Blog}:http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/ir_svr/page/blog.jsp?blog=3&&date=1054678635928&msg=&first_only=
becomes Doug's Blog
after-bid addition-> How to make thumbnails's live
It would help us if the pictures in the blog would not necessarily point to a larger version of itself, as described below in 'Attachments'. So please allow the above system to work with images. This way I can make them point to pages with more multimedia contents.
:http://www.invisiblerevolution.net/blog-july2503/tinto.html
new-> Simple Search:
A simple view spec addition of two single text fields, one to specify that only blogs with the included text should shown (within the criteria set for what blogs should be listed) and what blogs should be ignored. Here I need advice, maybe a different search system/logic should be used? It is shown in the edit section of the 2 Frames layout sample
Any blog which has been constrained in this way will have the search/listings criteria shown in the menu bar below the date, like this, only showing the 'but not' if there is such a criteria. The bolding here is intentional.
Frode Hegland
< April
2003
>
Showing
Doug,
XML
but
not
LiSA
new-> Comment System:
A simple comment system which allows users to comment on other posts and have the comments be blog posts themselves.
It should work like this:
1 - User reads a post. Gets the urge to comment.
2 - Clicks the [Add Comment] link.
3 - The users email app opens with the comment-blog@invisiblerevolution
address already in as well as a Subject with the Subject of the
blog preceded by "ReBlog:" and followed by the full
url to the blog post.
4 - The server receives the emailed blog post and knows what
it is connected to, what it concerns.
5 - The system then checks the senders email address to see if
this is a registered blogger. If so, it posts it to that bloggers
blog instead of the general comments blog.
6 - And there we will make each Subject the Subject of what it
refers to with the 'ReBlog:" tag.
7 - The original blog will then have each comment listed after
it as shown in he comment layout page.
A layout is shown in the Comment Layout Page.
new-> Attachments:
Emails will be able to include attached images, which will be parsed and put into the blog in the same location they appear in the email. Unless the user has set a preference for the attachments to appear as a list of links only. The images will be processed to be 75 pixels tall (max) and when clicked on, open the original file/image in a new window. The only supported initial format is JPG.
If movies are smaller than 160 by 120 then they will be shown inline with autoplay=false. If they are bigger, they will be listed at the end of the post as an attachment.
Other attachments will appear at the end of the email as a link - they will not be inline.
As for RSS, the images will only appear as links in the RSS feed.
new->Web - Not urgent
We'll be adding a blogroll. "Blogrolls are a collection of links on the home page of a weblog that point to sites that are somehow related to yours. They serve several purposes, they direct readers to the sites that are important to you, and serve as a set of bookmarks for you. They also help build page rank in search engines for sites you wish to bestow page rank on." Not sure how to do this yet, most likely via the admin page. http://radio.outliners.com/stories/storyReader$85
done, even though it was a stage 3 feature originally->Paragraph & Sentence Level Adressability
An anchor tag in front of every paragraph. This anchor tag is id'd by the first characters of the paragraph. A link to this anchor tag is added at the end of the paragraph. It looks like this: '. ' In other words, a period (the natural end of the sentence) and four non-breaking spaces. CSS will be used to make sure they look normal until mouse-overed, when an underline will show.
This means that users will be able to copy the link to the '. ' and paste it into a browser which will load the page to that paragraph. A question remains: Will I have to get rid of the frames to make this work? Can a user paste a URL with an anchor tag?
We may do sentence level addressability in the same way. But for the user, it's still useful to be able to point to full paragraphs...
From http://www.webdevtips.com/webdevtips/developer/rss/index.shtml Basically here's how it works:
You create a file that contains all your headlines, links
and descriptions.
You go to relevant news sites and submit your feed for approval.
The sites will check your file for changes at a time scheduled
by the individual sites.
If the file has been updated then your updated headline(s) will
be processed into the system.
Step 1 - create
the file
Step 2 - validate
the file
Step 3 - submit
the url
Step 4 - what
to expect
RSS Attachments: From http://backend.userland.com/enclosuresAggregators Note, we will not support included attachments in RSS for this stage, this is FYI only. RSS 2.0 has a neat feature that allows an item to have an enclosure. Like the enclosure of an email message, an RSS item enclosure is something big that may take a long time to download, or something binary that isn't text you read. You can read the text that describes the enclosure, or the enclosure may somehow be related to the item. An example. Suppose a news source, like the NY Times runs a movie review. It might make sense to enclose a trailer for the movie along with the review. Or a band might use RSS to keep their fans informed of what they're up to. An enclosure could include a bit of music to illustrate a point. The cool thing about enclosures is that they can be time-shifted. The aggregator or news readers should not download the enclosure until the computer is idle, and should not present the item with the enclosure to the user until the enclosure has been downloaded and is resident on the local hard disk. The key premise is No More Click-Wait. Please read the background piece for more on the philosophy of enclosures. This article is a walkthrough for developers showing them how to support this feature of RSS.