Rodent Regatta

Yesterday, during the marathon effort to correct some deficiencies with the syndication features of this web site, I discovered some other things that need attention.

Firefox – While I think I’m avoiding some security risks by using Firefox, the list of frustrations continues to grow. If I get an email in Outlook with a link in it and I click on that link, Firefox launches again and a dialog box opens asking me where I want to save a file. The links are not files I want to save at all, but Firefox doesn’t get that. The almighty ”tabbed browsing” doesn’t open the link in a new Firefox tab, either.

Couple this with the growing number of times that I’m seeing Firefox completely stop responding, and I begin questioning the wisdom of being on pre-release software. The other big nuisance I’ve found is the loss of the functionality of the editing icons in the extended entry field of Movable Type. Meryl had provided some tips on making them work in the ”entry body” text box. If you try to bold, italicize or insert a link in the extended entry field, Firefox puts it in the entry body. Here they are in list form:

• pdf files lock up Firefox
• Firefox stops responding fairly often
• Movable Type’s text entry icons don’t work in the extended entry field
• email links open a new copy of Firefox and a dialog box to save a file
• favicons frequently stop displaying

Syndication – The problems are well-documented. Three different feeds. One is completely hosed. One of these days, I’m going to put a link in the sidebar that says, ”Syndicate This Site.” That link will take you to a separate page of syndication possibilities like Shirley has created. On that page will be an Atom feed, an RSS 2.0 feed and an RSS 1.0/RDF feed. From there, you’ll (one day) be able to get to RSS feeds for each category. You’ll be able to get to feeds that include comments and some that don’t. This seems like a reader-oriented way to design things. People can see what they want to see.

Comments – I need to rethink how my comments work. If there’s a link inside a comment right now, it opens in the same pop-up window as the comment. That window cannot be resized or scrolled. That’s just wrong. Also, the XHTML allowed for entering and editing a comment needs to be changed. Examples of comments (numbered sequentially) and styled well can be seen at Matt’s and Keith’s and Paul’s sites among many others.