Tuesday, May 28, 2002

A Radio Tip Did everybody but me know that in your Radio text entry box SHIFT+ENTER causes a single line space? Enormous thanks to Ian McKenzie for the tip. It works! Every time!! 10:27:13 PM     Comments[]

Radio Themes - Part 2 THE DESKTOP WEBLOG: While I'm rolling on the notion of themes in Radio, let's cover a couple of additional topics. First, there's the matter of the desktop weblog and the text entry box. I'm fine with all of that with a tiny exception or two. I'd like to know what controls the font that I'm typing in right now, what font this shows up as when posted and the details of line spacing, etc. If I press 'enter' after typing a line of text, I'm automatically at a paragraph break. In other words, I've double (line) spaced down the page. Where is the control for this? When I conclude something and post it, there are a couple of lines after my post and a short line - left justified - containing the time, the permalink icon and my comments indicator and counter. Does the #itemtemplate control 100% of this? Is it telling this short line of information to left justify? Is the same template specifying the color, size and font for the time, comments, etc.? Where is the permalink icon specified? If I wanted the first line I type in any post to be all caps in a specific font, can I make one of the templates force that? MY HOME PAGE: Now let's consider my home page as rendered in the Transmitter theme. If I start in the upper left-hand corner and identify every component of the home page, how do I "map" those into a new theme? For the moment ignore the large button graphic and notice that the title begins a certain distance from the left-hand edge of the screen. Where is that specified? What do I change to alter that? The title is also in a certain font at a certain size. Again, where does the Transmitter theme find the information to render the title that particular way? Right below the title is this: Updated mm/dd/yyyy; hh:mm:ss A/PM. Where is this specified - both the look and the placement? Further down the left-hand side is a list of navigator links. Does the pref called navigator links specify their font, size, etc.? Does that same pref specify that they are X distance from the left-hand side? Is the orange background that the navigator links are on specified in the navigator links or does that come from the home template or possibly the main template? Can you move the location of the calendar over there on the right to somewhere else? If so, where is that controlled? By now you understand that I want to be able to take every piece of my weblog as rendered in the Transmitter template and remap those pieces to a new theme. Placement on the page, colors, fonts, sizes, graphics - everything is fair game; but, where do you begin to build a new theme? Anyone interested in helping me reverse-engineer a theme? Click here if you missed Radio Themes - Part 1 6:01:05 PM     Comments[]

Radio Themes - Part 1 I know enough about Radio to be dangerous only to myself. I don't know enough about Radio to be dangerous to anyone else. However, I've had an idea about what I want to do with this tool for quite some time. I haven't had a clue how to get started in that direction. This post is an attempt to launch my efforts in the proper direction. The summary statement goes like this, "I think that what I'm trying to envision is a different theme for Radio." Earth shaking isn't it? What I mean is that no matter how good I become at editing, altering and embellishing the #hometemplate.txt or the #itemtemplate.txt files of this weblog, I'm simply changing minor things about the Transmitter theme that comes with Radio. What came to me like a bright flash in the night is the fact that every icon, every font, every placement of anything on every page is a result of something that is "programmed" or "scripted" into the Transmitter theme. Trying to piece-work all the changes that I want for my own site is probably a far greater task than simply starting with a blank HTML page and beginning to do the layout and design work for the look that I want to wind up with. In other words, it may be easier to lay out a weblog home page with one of the popular page design tools and then begin to understand where all of Radio's templates, macros, directives and pieces should be placed. If any of the readers of this site have "broken the code" and identified a specific sequence of steps that yields a brand new Radio theme, please let me know! Click here to go to Radio Themes - Part 2 4:59:06 PM     Comments[]

A Radio Lesson I've grown pretty fond of Userland Software's Radio product. I'd estimate that I understand 5-10% of what it can do! The simplest things bog me down, so I'm very slow in learning how to make the product do the things I want to do with it. However, during the long weekend, I accomplished something with about 6 to 8 hours of work that might have taken a lot longer. Other users of Radio might benefit. I wanted to add a list of links to my public home page that would allow my posts to be viewed by category. I use 20 categories right now. However, after adding the links to my home page, two things were wrong. First, those links weren't showing up on the pages that showed posts by category. Second, none of the other changes to my #hometemplate & #itemtemplate were available on a 'category view page.' For example, my comments weren't available and the search feature for my weblog wasn't available. Using the Radio Discussion board, Matthew Ernest solved my problem. (I think Matthew works for Userland, but I'm not certain.) He pointed out that each category folder under the www folder has its own set of templates. I don't know whether Radio defaults to this condition or whether something I did in all my trial-and-error work caused there to be templates in the category folders. In any case, he suggested I remove all of the # files from each category folder - except for the #prefs.txt file. That file determines what gets posted in that category. Once those folders no longer had #hometemplate.txt and #itemtemplate.txt files in them, Radio began to look back up to the primary #hometemplate & #itemtemplate files. Now I have category links, comments and a search feature in all the views of my posts. Thanks Matthew! 10:30:58 AM     Comments[]

© Copyright 2002 Steve Pilgrim.