Andre Venter: Radio

Combined RSS with OPML output

Mon, 08 Sep 2003 01:40:50 GMT

Neat search

Sat, 06 Sep 2003 01:07:16 GMT

script for the Radio aggregator... Read the comment at the head of the script to learn how it works.
[Scripting News]

Well-formed writing and information routing

Tue, 02 Sep 2003 01:26:11 GMT

"The tagging conventions I've been applying for the last four months are really springing to life, now that structured search of my blog is available..." (Jon Udell)
[via Daypop Top 40]

Trackback bug and workaround

Tue, 02 Sep 2003 00:25:47 GMT

I've posted some detailed information in Radio Userland's forums about what I believe is a bug in Radio's implementation of trackback. The nature of the bug is this: When a post is first published with links that Radio will send a trackback ping to, sometimes those pings are not successful ...
[The Tweezer's Edge 2]

Customizing pages in the Desktop Website other than the home page

Tue, 02 Sep 2003 00:23:01 GMT

Lawrence Lee at Radio Userland posted an excellent tip in Userland's forums today, in response to Lisa's question about customizing the #template.txt file differently for her weblog and her Desktop Website: How do I customize the appearance of pages in the Desktop Website? ...
[The Tweezer's Edge 2]

Two RFCs: Comment notification in Radio and Manila

Sun, 31 Aug 2003 02:57:02 GMT

"Manila-Dev: RFC: Comment notification via email Radio-Dev: RFC: comment notification for Radio via email If you're a Manila or Radio developer, please have a look, and post any comments or questions you have on the corresponding mail list. Thanks!"

[Jake's Radio 'Blog]

Using a graphic as a link in the Navigator Links

Sun, 31 Aug 2003 02:49:04 GMT

In Radio's discussion forum, Christopher Burton asks how to use a graphic as a link in the Navigator Links. Julie at Sexy Magick offered a Newbie Tip explaining how to add a link to a graphic, which can be used above or below the Navigator Links, but not within them. As far as I know, Radio...
[The Tweezer's Edge 2]

Update to Monthly Archive Macro

Sun, 31 Aug 2003 02:47:38 GMT

Thanks to a tip from Lisa ( distant, early morning ), the Monthly Archives Macro now respects the #renderedFileExtension directive in #prefs.txt. To get the update, download the new version of the macro and follow the directions to install the new version over your old one.
[The Tweezer's Edge 2]

Location, now what?

Thu, 28 Aug 2003 22:32:29 GMT

For an idea of what you can do with Location-aware weblogging.... for your consideration my geocoded Photo Album and map view.
[Brain Off]

Mikel Maron's Location tool for Radio UserLand

Thu, 28 Aug 2003 00:01:42 GMT

Another excellent geographic hack from Mikel
"This tool enables geotagging of individual weblog postings. Below the post editing box, there are inputs for latitude and longitude. A good site to find lat/lon coords is maporama. The lat/lon coords should be entered in "decimal" form. In the weblog's RSS file, the item will list the latitude and longitude in the "geo" namespace..."

<item>
<description>Brighton, UK is a laid back town.</description>
<geo:lat>50.8351</geo:lat>
<geo:lon>-0.1322</geo:lon>
</item>

You can add a link to a map of the location, in the #itemTemplate, by using this macro: <%locationlink(<%itemNum%>)>, resulting in Download Location.root to your Radio Userland Tools directory, restart Radio, and geo-freak out!
(via Brain Off) [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]

RadioExpress, K-collector, liveTopics

Wed, 27 Aug 2003 03:13:33 GMT

an older post I missed...

Roland Tanglao's Weblog: Friday, May 30, 2003: "[HELP] Want to make Radio Express work with K-Collector Now that I have got K-Collector working, I'd like to enable it from RadioExpress. I imagine it's a one line fix or at most a few lines. I'm willing to code it if somebody tells me what line to insert in the RadioExpress file. Anybody?"

Ok -- here's a version which uses the builtin website homepage posting form; which will recognize the necessary callbacks for K-collector, or liveTopics. Download this. Install in www/system/pages/radioExpress.txt and configure here.
[Brain Off]

RSSDistiller

Wed, 27 Aug 2003 03:12:23 GMT

This is one under recognized vital software. Quietly humming under the hood, I rely on it heavily for filling the HTML-XML gap. Working with screen scrapers is always an iffy maintenance proposition, though Paolo explains well the process for the non-initiated. Engaging sites to create their own RSS feeds is ideal, but I want my RSS now. Would be nice to have a more community oriented, distributed effort, at scraping and maintaining "pre-RSS" feeds. I also heavily rely on the straining NewsIsFree syndicator. Here's the list of my RSSDistiller feeds. No guarantees these will update regularly.

Burn It Blue Top electronic music site [html]
this is Brighton & Hove News [html]
Craigslist SF -- Internet Engineering jobs [html]
Craigslist SF -- Software Engineering jobs [html]
Duece of Clubs funny stories about phone booths [html]
Edge big thinkers [html]
Flipdog SF software search [html]
The Memory Hole where did that news go? [html]
Muxway Joshua Schachter's quick links [html]
Norra Vasterbotten far North Sweden news [html]
Rathergood viking kittens updates [html]
San Francisco Bicycle Coalition [html]
SF Station local events [html]
Bruce Sterling [html]
transportation for a livable city SF urban transport [html]
Volunteermatch sf volunteer opportunities [html]
William Gibson [html]
x-entertainment 80s pop culture [html]

[Brain Off]

Modifying the aggregator

Wed, 27 Aug 2003 00:47:24 GMT

Steve Kirks asks: "If anyone has seen some previous Radio work with modifying the aggregator, specificially the layout, I'd appreciate hearing about it.
[house of warwick] Well, how about Mike Maron's nifty MyRadio tool? It does a pretty good job at providing some additional features:

Custom feed groups in separate page views
Custom newsViews: i.e. Userland, MyYahoo or activeRenderer view
ENT 1.0 topics filtering
Scraping modules for quotes, ebay, weather, fedex & Newseum Today's Front Pages

While it is still in active development and could do with a bit of polish, MyRadio is a mature and effective extension of Radio's basic aggregator feature set. In short, good value! (UPDATE: I had to repost this (completely - delete and repost) due to an upstreaming glitch - I think I've found a scenario that upsets Radio's upstreaming - first I need to reproduce it, though, before posting about it)

Yahoo News RSS feeds

Tue, 26 Aug 2003 23:35:48 GMT

A page with XML coffee mug signup links to the new Yahoo News RSS feeds. If you have Radio UserLand running, just click a mug to subscribe to a feed.
By lawrence@userland.com (Lawrence Lee). [UserLand Product News]

RSSlets Are Just the Beginning

Tue, 26 Aug 2003 17:14:14 GMT

Phil had a nice post tonight about RSSlets from Eightlinks. I remember the Amazon RSS feeds hitting the ether about a month ago. RSSlets by themselves provide point functionality. I disagree with the location of the intelligence -- on a server. RSSlets in a MoveableType world can only be server based. In a Radio world, RSSlets are desktop based. Once you move this type of functionality to the desktop, a whole new world opens up. What is needed is a supervisory engine in Radio that provides a plug-in architecture for RSSlets. The rough structure is there with Tools, but this structure needs to be extended to provide management for RSSlets, a simple interface for creating RSSlets, interfaces that feed the news aggregator, and an engine capable of learning your preferences based on RSS subscriptions, RSSlet return data, and specific user input.
[Dann Sheridan's Weblog]

Embedding RDF in HTML

Tue, 26 Aug 2003 00:03:31 GMT

Radio embeds RDF data in the HTML output of my blog. I recall reading about this in the past. What is the commonly accepted view on this (from the RDF folks)? Good or Bad? Update: I found this article by Sean Palmer. The answer: It depends. But basically, OK.
[Blogdigger Development Blog]

New macro tricks put to good use

Mon, 25 Aug 2003 01:26:54 GMT

More insights and tips from TweezerMan! ...Since I worked out the programming for my monthly archive links macro, I keep seeing little things everywhere that I used to think would never be fixed but now are "not too difficult" or even "easy". In my news aggregator, I am subscribed to my own XML feed so I can see what is going out on...
[The Tweezer's Edge 2] Good value again!

Tracking down Radio problems

Mon, 25 Aug 2003 01:19:28 GMT

Well documented Radio debugging help:

[The Tweezer's Edge 2] Good value!

Remote Radio

Sun, 24 Aug 2003 02:48:52 GMT

Whoa! I missed this one: a rundown of the steps I took to get Radio running on a home server... -- Remote posting via web browser from anywhere -- Remote posting using my news aggregator -- Remote pref/template management Good value!

PyCS RSS comment feed help

Sun, 24 Aug 2003 01:46:04 GMT

Just got a question from Rogers Cadenhead about the PyCS comment RSS feeds. You can get lots of different types of comment feeds. This information is taken from Georg's PyCS RSS comment feed announcement mailing-list post.

The URL for your comment feed looks like this:

http://www.pycs.net/system/comments.py?u=0000001&format=rss&full=1

That gives you a feed for user #1. Change the number after 'full=' to get various different types of data in your feed:

- full=1: a feed with shortened description elements (only the first 40 bytes)

- full=2: a feed with full description elements

- full=3: the same as full=2, but including all comments (the others only include the last 14 days of comments)

So if you want to download all your blog's comments at once, fetch with full=3. Subscribing to that might suck up a fair bit of bandwidth (I'd recommend full=2 for tracking comments in an aggregator), but if you need them all for some reason (changing comment servers?), use full=3.

Comment [Second p0st]

Comment Monitor plus Trackback monitor!

Sat, 23 Aug 2003 23:12:03 GMT

Now here's something I've been wanting badly: The Radio Comment Monitor can now be used to keep track of your trackbacks. Just put http://radiocomments.userland.com/comments$trackback as the comment server, and keep everything else the same, and you should see your trackbacks. (For new readers, the Comment Monitor gives you an RSS feed of comments made on your Radio weblog. If you have difficulty keeping up with them, go to the Comment Monitor page and enter your comment server and usernum, then click the 'See your comments' button, and the 'Subscribe in Radio' button to subscribe to the new feed). Comment
[via Second p0st] [Dewayne Mikkelson and his Radio WebDog, Shadow] Good value!

New Radio feature: WYSIWYG editing in Mozilla

Sat, 23 Aug 2003 02:26:30 GMT

Today we released a new feature for Radio, WYSIWYG editing for Mozilla.

The editor works in Mozilla 1.3b or later on all platforms.

By lawrence@userland.com (Lawrence Lee). [UserLand Product News]

New Radio macro: Monthly Archive links

Wed, 20 Aug 2003 20:58:45 GMT

David Phillips has written a new Radio macro that creates links to Radio's monthly archive pages. You can see how the macro works on David's weblog.
By lawrence@userland.com (Lawrence Lee). [UserLand Product News]

How to build a rich, interactive Webtop for Web 2.0

Wed, 20 Aug 2003 12:07:07 GMT

The first step is to do everything that is possible with the existing browser (IE primarily) behind the scenes. What do I mean? A desktop CMS (content management system) with hooks to open Web 2.0 transport networks would provide the ability to recombine data and content custom ways within an existing browser. With that in place, the second step is to build a new presentation layer that goes beyond the constraints of a vanilla Internet Explorer (by putting the CMS in place first, it is easier to leverage the capabilities of the enhanced browser). Here are some ways to do this:

Hire a development company like Social DynamX to build a custom interface that leverages Internet Explorer to provide a better user experience. See FM Radio for an example of an Web Services powered rich client interface built on IE.
Build it yourself using a development tool like Zeepe. FYI, they also have an example built on UserLand Radio called Radio Case.
Trash IE entirely and build a customized version of Mozilla.
Build a Macromedia Flash MX application that runs inside the browser locally. Here's a server side example. Any local examples? Another method is to build a custom app using Macromedia Central and trash the browser entirely.

[John Robb's Weblog]

Radio Howto: ping the Technorati RPC server

Sat, 16 Aug 2003 23:07:05 GMT

I have done it! [Insert trumpet flourish] After reading this post about how Technorati works, it was suggested that you ping the Technorati RPC server so it knew that you were around. I wanted to this with every post and asked some questions on my weblog in this post. Well, I spent some time inside Radio and have figured out a solution. I wanted the correct Technorati URL to automatically populate the "URLs to Ping:" box on the desktop website. Here's a short description of how it's done. [this is all at your own risk. I'm a Radio novice and you probably shouldn't take my advice. Ask Jake first.] Open the Radio application. Go to the Tools menu and choose Developers...>Jump... Type radio.macros in the dialog box and click OK. You are now looking at a list of Radio's built in macros. Scroll down to near the bottom of the list to find "weblogPostForm". This macro generates the weblog post form (duh!) found on the desktop website home page. Open the macro and look for some text that says "bundle //trackback URLs to Ping box" This is the "bundle" of code that takes the generates the "URLs to Ping:" text box and assigns the contents to a variable when the form is invoked. Now that we are in the right place, here's where we make a change. Remember, if you screw this up and destroy your copy of Radio without a backup, it's your own fault. Open the bundle (on a Mac double click the triangle). Open the subheading of the bundle. You should see the first line of code start with "add(". Look for the HTML tag "text area". It's inside this text area of the form box that we will add some text. This will allow it to autopopulate the form each time. Now, inside this tag, look for a formating part that looks like this:

wrap="soft">

Add the Technorati URL (http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping) to the right of the ">" symbol. Close all of the Radio app windows. Restart Radio, if you like. Reopen the desktop website home page. Now, when you post articles using the desktop website, the Technorati site will get a ping, along with the trackback URLs.
[house of warwick]

Radio, firewalls, and simple solutions

Sat, 16 Aug 2003 22:33:30 GMT

I meant to post this a couple of days ago. Dann, I have felt this pain:

"Oh, The Horror!!. The evil triad: Radio, my old firewall, and my ISP. The past 72 hours have been quite unintentionally Radio free..." [Dann Sheridan's Weblog]

[house of warwick]

AddedValues Plugin for Manila - successor to the Metadata Plugin

Sat, 16 Aug 2003 22:31:48 GMT

What is the addedValues plugin? "addedValues is a rewrite of the popular Metadata Plugin for Manila. The goal of the rewrite was to create a robust and extensible version of the Metadata Plugin, while removing some of the limits the architecture of the Metadata Plugin imposed." (via manila-dev list: Manila blogging and CMS system)
[Roland Tanglao's Weblog]

Hacking Radio/Manila weblog suggestion

Sat, 16 Aug 2003 17:15:31 GMT

Dann Sheridan asks Jake Savin here if a hacking Radio/Manila blog would be appropriate. I'd love to see one myself. [house of warwick]

Radio post index script updated

Fri, 15 Aug 2003 14:09:39 GMT

The publisher of the All That Jazz weblog called my attention to a problem with my Radio post index script: It only worked if weblog entries ended with html. I've updated the script to look for the #renderedFileExtension directive, using it to define the file extension when present, so PHP pages and other formats can be supported. [Workbench]

Weblog survives Radio reinstallation

Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:50:04 GMT

I did a clean install of Radio UserLand last night to correct some nagging database problems I couldn't resolve, such as nightly scheduled tasks that stopped running and flaky retrieval of news aggregator items. It took about a half hour to update Radio.root completely, register my serial number again, and set my software preferences and theme back up. Afterward, I shut down Radio, copied my old weblogData.root file over the new one in the Data Files folder, then ran the application. Everything was where I expected it to be, but it took all night for Radio to republish several thousand weblog pages and other files. While I was tinkering with the site, I turned on the trackback feature and wrote PHP scripts that route comment and trackback URLs to the correct URLs on Pycs.Net, the Radio Community Server clone I've been using as an alternative to UserLand's server. The reason I needed the PHP scripts was because my Radio install has a new user number granted by UserLand, 128729, that replaces one granted by Pycs.Net, 0000001. Since some of Radio's features are organized by user number, such as the most-visited weblogs report, I wanted a user number more likely to be unique. I'm publishing my weblog with FTP to my own server, so I can change user numbers without changing my site's main URL. The reinstall appears to have solved my problems (and I don't know yet if trackback worked), though I've undoubtedly created a few new ones. [Workbench]

Radio UserLand Kick Start

Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:16:06 GMT

Roger's Book. If you haven't ordered your copy yet, read this and follow the link to Amazon. It's great that we're going to get some help for Radio. I recently bought a copy of Frontier: A Definitive Guide from an Amazon vendor, mainly to have an easy reference. [house of warwick]

Illustrated MT templates

Thu, 14 Aug 2003 10:07:13 GMT

Nice dissection of how templates in MT work. Need this for every blog system including Manila and Radio.
"Tackling Movable Type templates and CSS for the first time can be daunting. The MT default templates contain four kinds of code: CSS, HTML, MT tags, and Javascript. I'm working on a little project to break it apart in an illustrated way. It's not exactly a Movable Type tutorial, but it does point out where divs are and what the tags look like in code and rendered in the browser. If you click the images above, the first image shows where the div sections of the MT index template begin and end. The second one breaks apart the code for the blog entry and points to each section in a sample entry. The smaller images below show details for calendar, search and side menus"
(via mediatinker.com) [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]

Radio UserLand Kick Start on backups

Wed, 13 Aug 2003 23:28:30 GMT

A new chapter of Radio UserLand Kick Start can be previewed on Workbench: Chapter 9, Backing Up Data. Though the standard disclaimers apply -- this is a pre-publication draft -- I spent a lot of time trying out Radio's backup procedures, sometimes by necessity when an experiment went awry. At this point, I've destroyed and rebuilt my 850-entry, 1,100-page weblog around a dozen times.
[Workbench]

Turn Your Radio On

Wed, 13 Aug 2003 13:26:25 GMT

Thomas N. Burg points to info on PNG support in Radio.
[via the inimitable Schockwellenreiter]

Centralized CSS in Radio

Mon, 11 Aug 2003 12:28:48 GMT

"If you would like to centralize your Radio CSS you can simple save your Style sheet as "#cascadingStyleSheet.txt" then place it in your "www" folder. Then simply add the <%cascadingStyleSheet%> macro to your template. Your CSS will be included where you included your macro."

This method will work even if you create a theme out of your design.
(via Bryanbell.com) [Dewayne Mikkelson and his Radio WebDog, Shadow]

Wizzy-Mozilla on the way for Radio

Mon, 11 Aug 2003 12:07:09 GMT

I've got WYSIWYG editing working in my copy of Radio running with Mozilla on MacOS X. It should work with Mozilla 1.3 or greater, on all platforms.

I'm using it right now to create this post. (Cool, heh?) Here's a screenshot.

In a lot of ways, it seems more powerful than the editor included with IE 5 and up (Windows only). For example, it's got multi-level Undo/Re-do, and it uses inline styles to do its formatting, instead of the rather ugly HTML that IE produces.

I'm planning on releasing a beta for Radio users later today. (Don't worry -- a Manila version will be close behind, since most of the code is shared.)

Happy. :-)
[Jake's Radio 'Blog]

Export your blog to txt

Mon, 11 Aug 2003 11:39:23 GMT

Andy Fragen contributed a new tool to the Radio -Community, thanks - as always... [thomas n. burg | randgänge]

Radio, Trackback and Technorati

Sun, 10 Aug 2003 13:31:08 GMT

Steve Kirks was wondering "...if, with the new implementation of Trackback in Radio, the code exists to ping Technorati, too. I started perusing Radio.root and I think I found the right place: system.verbs.apps.weblogsCom As for now, people who use the web interface of Radio, just add this: http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping to the "URLs to Ping:" box on the Radio home page..." [house of warwick] Over at the Technorati Developer Wiki there's a HowTo page for most blogging tools, albeit with no method for Radio yet. But then there's also the problem to consider (as David Sifry sees it) of Radio's"... obnoxious habit of sending pings to www.weblogs.com for each weblog "category" if you use multiple categories on your blog. Same information, same author, just link spam, basically"

myRadio

Sat, 09 Aug 2003 11:24:55 GMT

myRadio "extends the Radio Userland aggregator from rss to any networked data (xml, html, soap, personalized services, etc), and any layout. It is exceedingly simple for developers to add functionality to the framework. The GUI (screenshot) is reminiscent of My Yahoo! and other server based personalization tools." [Lockergnome's RSS Resource]

It's The Outliner, Stupid

Sat, 09 Aug 2003 10:40:16 GMT

Alan Kleymeyer of Social Dynamx (who I am sure is not stupid) commented on my desire for a lite Version of Radio which can be used to manage Manila sites.

"SocialDynamX has cut their teeth on Radio with the release of FM Radio. Everything mentioned in this thread is a goal we have in our current project of bringing a "Manila lite" to market. Though initially we'll probably try to leverage the UI developed for FM Radio, we are open to suggestions and are at an early enough stage for everyone here to contribute to the direction of ManilaEdit (I like that name, crueuss, mind if I use it?). Another benefit of keeping the interfaces similar is that we can support the editing of multiple Radio blogs and Manila sites in one application. Tell us what minimum functionality you would like to see, keeping in mind it is a "lite" version intended to satisify the day-to-day update of a site." - Alan Kleymeyer

I'm concerned that Alan doesn't appreciate the Outliner which makes Radio so powerful. It would not be enough to simply have the ability to remotely manage templates, and stories like this.

Plus to have a Windows only piece of software would be extra disappointing.

I like Radio as is. Radio is already on multiple platforms. Radio's native editing metaphor is the outline. All I want is a version Radio with less menus and function. A simplified Radio purpose built to do only one thing, manage multiple Manila web sites.
By me@bryanbell.com (Bryan Bell). [BryanBell.com]

Paolo Takes the Manila Editor to a new level

Sat, 09 Aug 2003 01:06:40 GMT

"...Creating a tool that allows you to edit on any image of your weblog simply by clicking it and having it opened with PhotoShop seconds later would be an easy task for Radio. Same thing for any piece of text (or, in perspective, audio or video).

So this could be my long term wish for UserLand: allow us to manage our weblogs on-line with Manila (doing it server side has some significant advantages), and use the full power of Radio to make integration with local applications a unique experience. I want to write with Word (or BBEdit, or anything different from the browser), edit my images with PhotoShop, organize my pictures with iPhoto, my appintments with iCal, but I don't want to spend my life uploading and downloading files.

PS: if this Radio/Manila integration could be done using some new or extended kind of open API which all developers could use, it could mean changing the world. Once more." [Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo's Weblog] By me@bryanbell.com (Bryan Bell). [BryanBell.com]

newMessageCallback undefined fixed by clearing urls list in config.root

Sat, 09 Aug 2003 00:51:33 GMT

Blogging this to find it later should I need it.
I had a similar problem. (it is almost one year later) It first cropped up when attempting to create a New Story. Frontier reported that "newMessageCallback" was undefined. After rebooting we got the "membersRootFile" undefined, or sometimes a different but similar complaint. It turned out that there was a corrupted list in config.root. It was the "urls" list. Frontier would get an out of memory error while attempting to unpack this list while running mainResponder.init. I couldn't even double-click on the url list to expand it, I'd get the out of memory error. So I selected the url list, cleared it, & restarted. Frontier made a new url list & we were off & running again;
[Roland Tanglao's Weblog]

Possible reasons why a Frontier database may not open

Sat, 09 Aug 2003 00:50:07 GMT

f string: Frontier:Guest Databases:apps:mainResponder.root
openOnStartup boolean: true
runStartupScript boolean: true
supportsSubscribe boolean: false

Does the ["#startup"] exist in mainResponder.root?
[Roland Tanglao's Weblog]

Orlando Vacationer weblog launched

Sat, 09 Aug 2003 00:34:50 GMT

I'm using Radio UserLand's categories feature to publish a new weblog at a separate domain. Orlando Vacationer is a weblog devoted to "Disney discounts, park perks, and tourist tips" for the Mouse-infested city that I visit with my family around 8-10 times a year. The domain is new and may not have propagated to all parts of the Internet yet, so if it can't be reached, try its category address.

I'm going to write an article on Workbench about using Radio to publish a category that looks like an entirely separate weblog. Right now, the biggest issues to resolve are two problems in the RSS file: the title element calls it "Rogers Cadenhead: Orlando Vacationer" and a link element that is using a Workbench URL instead of orlandovacationer.com. [Workbench]

Rendering PHP Files with Radio UserLand

Sat, 09 Aug 2003 00:32:40 GMT

A Workbench visitor asks: How can I use Radio to render .php files instead of .html files when upstreaming?

The file extension is determined by the #renderedFileExtension directive. By default, files are rendered with the .html extension. To set the extension to .php for an entire folder and its subfolders, edit the #prefs.txt file in that folder and add this line:

#renderedFileExtension "php"

Here's an example: the xmas.txt file and the xmas.php page it produces.

To set the extension only for a specific file, add the same line at the top of the file along with any other directives. Leave a blank line after the directives and before the content of the page, but don't put blank lines between each directive. [Workbench]

Get rid of auto paragraphs and calendars in Manila Sites in {bodytext}

Sat, 09 Aug 2003 00:15:59 GMT

You can also put a calendar macro commented out in the home page template, which is what I'd recommend. The content will still be there, but it will be ignored. As for the paragraph tags, the first thing to do is turn off auto paragraphs. [YourManilaSiteTable].#prefs.autoParagraphs = false. That will get most of them. You may also need to search for any place in manila that is adding its own paragraph tags. See above for the maintence issues that this can cause
(via Re: editing {bodytext} macro) [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]

Bryan Bell and Radio Lite

Fri, 08 Aug 2003 23:45:36 GMT

Bryan hit the nail on the head with his post about Radio Lite. I need a Radio that runs smaller and with less processor cycles. NetNewsWire is great for posts, but sometimes I want to tinker with the backend. If I run Radio on my native machine (a TiBook/550 with 768MB of RAM), the processor sits at 50% utilization. After 2 minutes or so, the fan kicks on low. After 5 minutes, it's hard to miss the fan on high speed and the lack of "snap" to the apps.

What's going on with Radio versions? When will we have a faster Radio environment? [house of warwick]

In my experience, using Radio under W2K at work and OS X at home, the Windows version is significantly snappier and a whole lot more responsive. This is expecially bitter for us Mac users, since it's roots in Frontier run real deep on the Mac side - notwithstanding the fact that its integration with the system and other apps is more complete on the Mac (ok, a little less so under OS X than OS 9 - but still!)

Wishlist for Radio features.

Thu, 07 Aug 2003 11:24:06 GMT

In response to this post on Paolo's website, here's my list of wishes for Radio (in order of importance): #1-- Like TypePad, add an easy way for me to list what I'm reading and what I'm listening to--all linked to my Amazon Associate ID--to allow visitors to buy something and I get a commission. If nothing else, the groovy book/album covers are great. See my TypePad test site. #2--Easy remote hosting/domain hosting. FTP is fine, but I'd like the referrer rankings to work outside of Userland's servers. Include in this feature the ability to run Radio on a computer at home and post easily, just by checking a box. I'm doing it now, but I had to do this. #3--Alternate servers for comments, chosen from a drop down list on the pref page. Apple provides three time servers for all of it's customers world wide. It would help during times when servers are overloaded. #4--Auto-generation of aggregator "home page": What is this? Well, you set Radio to subscribe to sources. It generates a *publicly* accessible page on your site so you can view the content. #5--Aggregator can import OMPL files (like from NNW) to allow easy additions of subscriptions #6--Theme packs for sale #7--Theme building functions Update: Here's another short list. Cristian, I'm with you on HTML. I can do it, but I bought Radio to skip it. [house of warwick]

WYSIWYG Editing in Mozilla Comes to Conversant

Thu, 07 Aug 2003 11:09:51 GMT

Hip Hip Hooray! Hip Hip Hooray! I've been working for some time now on a groupware/collaboration site based on the Macrobyte Conversant platform. Today Macrobyte released their HTMLAREA3 capability. This is very cool -- cross-platform WYSIWYG editing in Mozilla 1.4 and above. I've never used WYSIWYG because I had to use MSIE to make it work, and because the MSIE implementation was crude. But this is much better. Support for tables, background colors, HTML source toggle -- lots of available features. I'm looking forward to using this. And my users are going to love it. [b.cognosco]

Why I will not sign up for TypePad

Thu, 07 Aug 2003 10:58:35 GMT

TypePad is a wonderful idea whose time has finally come. UserLand started this with the right idea some time ago, but couldn't make a go of it. Now that the rest of the world is ready, Ben and Mena of Six Apart, developer of Movable Type, have rolled out TypePad.

I was ready to purchase the service, but I stopped to take an inventory of my blogging self. I have a server-based weblog product. It has multiple categories, scripting, automation, no recurring fees, supports multiple standards and is frequently updated and fixed.

I'm sticking with Radio, and I'm ready to evaluate Frontier and Manila. I want to create websites, give 'blog space to friends (through Manilla) and have a place to experiment and evangelize RSS and weblogs.

[house of warwick]

I'll second that!