Mappa Mundi is now a homebase for the Internet Multicasting Service's - Core Technologies Program. They are forging ahead with and interesting SpaceMapper concept. The popular, valuable and interesting Mappa Mundi archives remain available.
In my last post I accidentally reminded myself of a general concern I've been meaning to voice regarding XML and writing. If you actually viewed the last post within NetNewsWire, or any other RSS reader, or via syndication on another site, it's painfully obvious that I wrote my last post without regard for the flexibility of context that XML content storage affords. Which leads to the more general question: what is being done to inform writers how to chunk information into neat re-orderable chunks that are not inter-dependent to their original context? I should point out that I'm not experienced in the field of technical writing, which may already have compensations for this? Besides some extroadinary language processing, I can't imagine a way that this problem could be fixed automatically. In fact, I would imagine that problems regarding context of content could easily slip under the radar for many projects which use XML to structure content. Of course this would be more applicable to situations where paragraphs of text are involved, rather than applications which simply store pair after pair of someVariable=someValue.
I've been inspired lately by NetNewsWire Lite, a new website syndication file reader for OS X that can be used to review your weblog and news sources for instant updates on the latest postings. RSS is of course available for this site, and also for most of the sites on the blog roll (related websites) to your left (netscape 4 and non-css browser users, the blog roll is above :-) ). As I ever so slowly get around to redesigning this site's interface, the ability to preview current posts from the blog roll crossed my mind. This SitePoint article PHP and XML: Parsing RSS 1.0 from last year makes it clear just how easy it is to get PHP and RSS to play nice.
WebVisions 2002: "WebVisions brings together the web's thought leaders and visionaries in design, user experience and content creation." August 16th at Portland State University.
I'm no mac expert, I'm certainly no UNIX or server admin expert. When a client asked if I could configure their Xserve to run an application which requires php and mysql on an secondary domain I didn't have a lot of self confidence. Then I found this PDF book by Søren Theilgaard, downloadable for 20 US dollars. Now after about an hour, I'm all done and everything is working. If you know what you're doing with UNIX, OS X, or server administration in general, this book might be redundant - but for a newbie like myself, the book is everthing I needed in one handy PDF file.
"This book answers two questions. The first question is 'Why should I make my web site more accessible?' If you do not have a web site, this book is not for you. The second question is 'How can I make my web site more accessible?' If you are not convinced by the first answer, you will not be interested in the second."
Mark Pilgrim (of Dive Into Python fame) has pulled together the web site accessibility tips and personas that he's been introducing on his weblog for the past month and self-published this online book.
Simon Willison has created a search engine example using php and the new Amazon web service API. Neat stuff, and smart move on Amazon's part.
Weblogs ('blogs') have been getting great press lately, but you may not be acquainted with another, and in some ways inherently more collaborative, form of web-based information management : wikis.
There are dozens of different wiki engines available (many of them licensed as free software), written in different languages and storing their data in different formats.
Won't you try the wiki way today?
An article in apple's internet developer library details why the free development tools (available for download via free registration with the apple developer center) maybe a great choice for the serious php and perl coder in the OSX environment. I'm doing the hefty 292 Megabyte download to give it a shot, but I'll be surprised if it ends up being a better choice than trusty ol' BBEdit.
You're interested in Flash design and development, and you wish you could have attended the recent Flashforward conference. Get the next best thing - a full rundown by Todd Dominey, and lots of photos. Thanks Todd.
Jarrod has been nice enough to add Webgraphics to his list of minimalist web sites. I wonder if minimalism isn't a happy side effect of folks switching over to tableless or tablefewer CSS based coding, which benifits from a clean slate for coding purposes. This is via zeldman.
Guide to Ease, a blog authored by Peter Van Dijck, author of xfml, which I've been thinking about lately thanks to Joshua, posted a link to this (unrelated to xfml) functional spec tutorial.
Might be a good idea to make a flash navigation system which pulls it's information from link tag information, would promote accessibility through consistent use of link tags, and if such a system could be made, it would be quite extensible for dynamic sites. I'm not sure how/if flash can be directed to read specific text from the page in which it is embedded.
Thanks to Dave who responded straight away to my request to merge "Page Weight" and "Download Calculator" to yield Page Weight & Speed (IE only, drag this link to the browser Links bar.) Longer description here. Very useful, just a pity about the linked resource limitation.
Now that I've been using the new eMac for a few days I have some thoughts to share, ostensibly for those who are considering purchasing one. It's beautiful, and I don't say that lightly. I was kind of expecting a slightly modified version of the imac box, but this is a different animal. Being an all in one, and by it's profile, it may seem more like an imac, but I think there is something different about the materials used, it's the same thick glass-like plastic that can be found in the new flat panel LCDs, backed with white for a very clean non-see-through appearance. The mirrored speakers give the thing a sort of retro look, like a 50's radio with two big nobs. They keyboard and mouse that came with it are a very clean white, and so the whole thing seems very hygienic, but in a welcoming way. The cd open button on the keyboard is both handy, and keeps the monitor clear of breakable parts. All the many ports are easily accessible from the right hand side, with the power button also being located there. A very simple panel on the bottom releases with one screw to reveal the memory slots. Power is indicated by a low circle of light to the right of the cd drive, it's completely behind the opaque glass so when the light is off you wouldn't even know it's there. The panel up front with the silver apple pops down so the cd drive can slide out smoothly. It decidedly heavy - fifty pounds, but given that I can lift it onto my desk, and I knew I wasn't purchasing a laptop, this isn't a hindrance. If you've gotten this far you'll notice I'm not speaking about the technical details, I thought that the aesthetic experience would be more valuable than a reiteration of the details that can be found elsewhere.
After installing the public preview of Quicktime 6, and conducting a myriad of tests, I was successfully able to get a sample QTVR file and some simple flash widgets to co-exist. I'm not 100% certain that quicktime 6 was the missing factor, this might be possible with Quicktime 5 for all I know. Here's what I did: Import flash QTVR as linked movie in Flash MX, place the QTVR resouce in the movie and added some simple buttons, exported as a Quicktime movie with QTVR controls. Unfortunately there is one severe limitation that I can't seem to get around: only one QTVR file can placed in each flash file. When two are placed (in different parts of the timeline) the first one will load and work correctly but the second will not show. I tried placing the files in different scenes, and with different "breaks" between them, but it seems that the "flash layer" that one is alloted when saving to quicktime format prevents this. Perhaps one could figure out a way to trigger the loading of seperate Quicktime movies to use them like scenes, but I think that they would either load in seperate Quicktime player windows, or produce a signifiant wait time (or both).
The Apple eMac is within my price range for the upgrade I've been needing. Do you have one or know of someone who does? Please share positive/negative reactions to it in comments to this post. If I don't get much feedback, and still go ahead and get it, I'll post my findings here for those interested.
Happy 4th of July for the United States. Here in Atlanta Georgia, a huge number of folks are taking part in the annual The Peachtree Road Race 10K. This year I started to run regularly for excersize, but I'm completely winded after going about half of the 6.2 miles that the racers will be completing today. I can't think of a clever way to tie this post into anything relevent to web development or design, but since it's a holiday perhaps you'll bear with me.
Dean at Textism is teasing us with a screenshot of a php/mysql app he's been working on called Photos 1.0. He's also installed a daily photo system of "Oliver" his dog with RSS hooks.