1. Asynchronous FreshTags

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    I have updated my version of FreshTags to include support for asynchronous loading of posts. Now if you add the following code to your template:

    <script type="text/javascript">var freshtags_tag_format = "drop-add-async";</script>

    Instead of the drop-down box taking you over to the tags post page it will load the posts for the tag combination for you asynchronously in the sidebar.

    A nice side-benefit of this is that you may now use all the other FreshTags tag-list types (except custom), including flat, flat-multi, list, list-multi, scroll, drop, and sub. Just put them in the above code where I have 'drop-add-async'.

    You will have to be using the jscripts.ning.com version of my FreshTags implementation for this to work, instead of the old one hosted on AWriterz. The code for the new include (which you can replace the old one with to upgrade) is:

    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://jscripts.ning.com/get.php?xn_auth=no&amp;id=818185"></script>
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    Creative Commons Licence © 2006-2008 Stephen Paul Weber. Some Rights Reserved.
    Stephen Weber at 2006-06-06 06:03 | 1 Comment / Trackback

  2. Last Updated Posts

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    Aditya of The Last Word has made a very useful discovery — the new Blogger RSS feeds are ordered by last update! This means that when you make an edit on an old post, that post is moved to the top of your RSS feed! The use for this immidiately becomes apparent : a widget for showing which posts have been updated recently!

    Based off of a quick hack Aditya threw together I have developed some reuseable code to just this end. I have it running asynchronously in my sidebar under the 'Previous Posts' heading. When you first load the page (or if you have JavaScript turned off) the normal Blogger-generated 'Previous Posts' list is displayed. After the page has loaded, if you have JavaScript on, the list will update to a list of the most recently updated posts.

    So, on to the code! There are two versions of this hack : synchronous and asynchronous. If you want it to run synchronously (that is, the page waits for the hack to finish before it continues to render) place the following code where you want the widget to appear:

    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://jscripts.ning.com/get.php?xn_auth=no&amp;id=1317016"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
    //<![CDATA[
    do_updated_posts('<$BlogURL$>','',5);
    //]]>
    </script>

    You can change the 5 to whatever number of posts you want in the list. Save and republish : you're done!

    If you want it to run asynchronously (the page loads before the hack does), insert the following code into your <head> section:

    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://jscripts.ning.com/get.php?xn_auth=no&amp;id=1317016"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
    //<![CDATA[
    addLoadEvent(function(){do_updated_posts('<$BlogURL$>','last_updated_posts',5);});
    //]]>
    </script>

    Again, you can change the 5 to whatever number of posts you want in the list. Then, insert the following code where you want the list to display:

    <div id="last_updated_posts"><i>Loading…</i></div>

    Save and republish. You're done!

    The whole way this works may just be a bug in the rss.xml generating engine. If it is, this hack will stop working when they fix it, since it is dependant on the order of items in rss.xml.

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    Creative Commons Licence © 2006-2008 Stephen Paul Weber. Some Rights Reserved.
    Stephen Weber at 2006-06-06 04:51 | 6 Comments / Trackbacks

  3. IM Interoperability

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    Jabber is the ineroperable-IM protocol… but only geeks even know it exists! With the advent of Google Talk there are more people using it — but many of them don't even know it. So while Google has federated with the Jabber/XMPP universe, most IM users are still stuck in the MSN, Yahoo, AOL world unable to read out.

    The big guys may only be in it for the money, but they're not stupid. They know that having an account on every major IM network is a huge pain. They just haven't figured out yet how to work together without losing their precious revenue. They seem to be moving in the right direction, however. The MSN Messenger (soon to be Windows Live Messenger) team has affirmed and re-announced their intention to federation with Yahoo Messenger.

    It seems to be unclear whether this will be an actual network federation or a multi-client style feature. What I mean is, will only users of the newest versions of WLM be able to talk to Y!IM? What about older clients? What about Jabber transports? Obviously the transports should be able to evolve to support this (yay!) but whether they themselves allow for full network federation, I think, will be an indication of how ready the big guys are for interoperability.

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    Creative Commons Licence © 2006-2008 Stephen Paul Weber. Some Rights Reserved.
    Stephen Weber at 2006-06-06 00:01 | 1 Comment / Trackback
Stephen Paul Weber