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.

Apple’s AirPort Express caught Walter Mossberg’s attention yesterday. Today, David Pogue [free subscription may be required] weighs in with his own analysis. While not the end-all-be-all solution, this seems like one more favorable entry on the side of the ledger that says, ”Apple is the right alternative to Microsoft’s security mess.”

After nearly a full day of trying to figure out how to edit my three syndication feeds so that full entries are shown in FeedDemon, I can tell you that I simply do not possess enough IQ to make it happen. My experience and background simply doesn’t involve day-to-day programming.

For those readers who would like to read full entries in your news readers, I apologize. I simply cannot figure out how to provide that to you. Something between Movable Type, the three feed templates, FeedDemon and the way I use scripts and other features on my weblog is in conflict.

To those who have offered suggestions and advice, I appreciate the help. I wish I were smart enough to take advantage of it, but…

...that is not to be!

This marks my fifth entry about all this. Here are the previous four: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |

I’m simply documenting my efforts so when this rolls around next year, I’ll have some backdrop for all that I’ve tried to do. Never mind RSS feeds for categories, with and without comments or feeds with the author’s name identified. I can’t make the most basic of changes to this stuff. Currently, the index.rdf file isn’t even viewable. Having begun my day at 2:45 a.m. this morning, this has felt like a total waste. It’s now 8:30 p.m.[NOTE: There really should be some documentation for this mess!]

The other joy I’ve discovered is the the editing icons do not work in the Movable Type Extended Entry text box when Movable Type is running in Firefox. They work fine in the primary text entry box, but not in the extended entry.

How fast can I buy and get transferred to a Macintosh? I want to use a computer – not spend all my time troubleshooting it.

I hate testing a live weblog for all the world to see. If I understood more about how all this junk works, I might be able to somehow test offline so that the weblog isn’t cluttered with RSS and Atom and RDF testing.

All I’m trying to do is get an extended entry to show up in one or more of the three feeds. I’ve given up on figuring out how to make ”author name” appear in a news reader.

Whatever. This is a second test for the morning. Can you see the extended portion of the entry. It follows…

Here’s the extended portion of the entry. I doubt very seriously that it will be visible in your news reader.

• ** UPDATE * * * Just as I expected, it doesn’t work. I can’t tell whether or not this is a result of running the script for ”read more/hide more” when there is an extended entry. Maybe it is some missing element/tag/variable/container/syntax/XHTML/CSS/add your acronym here/add your term here/dollar sign/frustration sign/why isn’t this explained somewhere/.

This will probably wait another year.

MT Entry Body

MT Entry More